Well, it's been two weeks since my last entry so I know that some of you have had trouble getting yourselves out of bed in the morning. I have that same feeling at the end of football season. But, rest assured, I am back.
I do have a good excuse for my absence though. Well, perhaps not a good excuse but an excuse nonetheless. Read on.

Last Monday I came to the Kencho with a book to read, a short lesson plan to get done, and every intention to write in here and get you all updated on the latest travails of my life and times in Japan.
But when I got on the computer to do the writing, I wasn't able to log on to the internet. At this point I remembered what a friend, Dilek, who works here at the Kencho had told me. Something about the place installing firewalls. "But," I thought to myself while staring at an all-grey screen, "that shouldn't stop me from being able to visit all sites." I was trying CNN.com, hotmail.com, ESPN.com, etc. and nothing was coming up.
It was here that I began to get a little angry figuring that maybe the computer I normally use had been disconnected from the internet permanently. But just about this time one of the girls noticed my troubles and said something to one of the guys nearby who then came over to me and explained, in 60% understandable English, that the Kencho was now under the influence of firewalls. And went on to say, "For example, violence and sex."
At this I thought to myself, "Ok, but why aren't any of the sites I am trying to bring up coming up." For, if you must know, I was not typing in things like adultxxx.com or killyourlittlesister.org or sandm.fun fun fun. I was, at this time, really trying to check out CNN because I hadn't turned on the tv in the morning before I'd left for this god-forsaken place.
Then he asked me, "What are you trying to see?"
"First I was trying to check out the news at CNN," I told him.
So he went off to his laptop on his desk and then looked over telling me, "CNN is ok," and giving me a smile. So I tried again but it wasn't coming up. It seemed to me that, as I said above, the computer wasn't even hooked up to the world wide web. Now, in the States at this point I would have alerted him or the entire office to my plight. But beings how I'ms in Japan an' all, I ten' ta try ta figure things ou' on my own more. Me being a foreigner an' all.
It's just difficult to get my point across much of the time. And how important are they going to find it that the foreigner can't check the news.
So I went back to my desk to resume reading about Darwin and his exploits in the Galagapos. Certainly he had is harder than I do. Course, everyone on his boat spoke his language.
Anyway, a little while later Miharu came over to use the computer (she's the gal in the office that talks to me more than anyone else, and her English while not perfect is pretty good). I don't know what she does on that computer but whatever it is it wasn't working on this day. So she, being able to speak Japanese, alerted a few guys in the office who came over and pressed buttons while saying things like, "What the?" and "It's not working," all in Japanese, of course. I was just sitting there reading and watching them out of the corner of my eye thinking, "this is what I was trying to tell you earlier, people." Oh, but let the office cutie have trouble and everyone comes to her rescue. Well, it's either that or the language thing again.
So eventually some guy I've never seen before showed up and fixed the thing and Miharu could do her work and I just kept on reading about mutations in cells.
But the real fun comes a little later. You see, you might remember that I mentioned the word firewalls, well, sure enough there were in fact firewalls installed at the Kencho. I know cause I couldn't access my hotmail account. Not only that but I did a Google search for another email account to open so that I would be able to email from work when needed and yahoo and gmail and a few other were all blocked.
But wait, it gets better. I was able to access the blogger site where I go when I want to write here. It came up with no problem. So I opened it up, typed in my password, and clicked into the template that allows me to write and then publish. All was going well and I wrote a medium sized entry (perhaps half an hour's worth) and then hit the publish button. But to my horror the normal screen that follows didn't come up. What did come up was the same screen that was letting me know that the email sites were blocked. So I figured I'd hit the back button and save what I wrote on a word document and then somehow publish it later--I was mostly concerned about saving what I written rather than publishing it at this time--but when I went back the template I had just been writing on was blank.
You'll be happy to know that I contained my anger and still have a job.
So in the end I cannot send emails from work and I cannot post things here.
But lest you think this story ends in my defeat at the hand of some fool sitting atop his high horse decreeing that we of the lower ranks who must feed ourselves can no longer email from work, ha ha, fret not. For I have found a site that I can access from work. And I am able to email and blog. The blogging is a little tricky as I write it there and then have to send it to myself and then copy, paste and publish from home, but the true victory lies in that I can still write it at work.
I also want you to know that I do, in fact, realize that these firewalls were not installed to stop me, personally, from emailing and blogging, but still, it ain't to my liking. I have nothing else to do there. Yet, I am expected to show up when a school tells me not to come.
And as to the reasoning for installing firewalls as it was explained to me with that "For example, violence and sex," I say, "What does email have to do with sex and violence?" And what's more is that I didn't know the Kencho was in the habit of hiring children who needed to be protected from such sites? Hell, who's looking at those sites at work anyway? Save it for home!

Our Thanksgiving get-together went pretty well. There were nine of us and we ate too much, drank enough, watched a bit of football, and laughed a hell of a lot. Hard to go wrong with all of that.
Not much else to say about that except that we might do something similar around Super Bowl time.
For more details, see Amy's journal (link is to the right).

One of the guys from CNN's American Morning will be in Tokyo all next week if you are interested and have the time. It comes on here live in the evenings around 8pm, I think. That would make it 6am on the east coast, 3am on the west.
I watch parts of this show sometimes and lately the guy's co-hosts have been jabbing at him (I think his name is Bill) about speaking the language. They say something like, "How do you say 'good morning'?" And he says, "I don't know," to which they reply, "Ohio," with a thick American accent (oh-hi-yo). Makes me feel good about my Japanese abilities. At least I can sound Japanese in the few things I say. More than once I have walked into a teachers' room and said "Ohiyo gozaimas" to the two or three people in there who are not looking in my direction and they will say it back to me. But when they turn to see me they act shocked to see it's me and I can only take this as a compliment on my excellent ability to say that phrase and sound like any Japanese guy doing it.
Give me 20 more years and I just might be able to have a real conversation. But I tell you, those people who say you can just move to a foreign country and "pick up" the language are the same people who diligently study every evening. Osmosis is a myth in the world of foreign language acquisition.

That is all.