I am not sure where to begin since it has been so long since my last substantial piece of writing. Much has happened in the last month in terms of small stories I could tell you. In fact, quite often something would happen and I'd think to myself, "Hmmmm....that would make a nice small story for the journal," but it seems that now I've forgotten most of them. Laziness is a terrible thing. But hell, let's see if I can come up with something.

Due to 3rd year high school students essentially wrapping it up around the end of January, February saw a few schedule changes for me. At Yuda (girls) I picked up two new classes to replace the two I'd lost and promply had a few girls seem to fall in love with me. I don't consider myself anything special in the "love, romance, looks" department but for some reason these girls really took to me. Like I told Amy, in America most girls don't look at me twice. Sure once in a while some girl might have had a crush or something but I'm pretty sure I could count the instances of that happening from the last ten or so years on one hand.
Anyway, these girls look at me in the manner, if you can remember this, that the girl at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones movie looks at him in class. You might remember this. There is some girl in the class he is teaching near the start of the movie and she has somehow written "I love you" on her eyelids and then she closes her eyes when he looks at her during his lecture. Ok, minus the writing on the eyelids this is how about four or five of the girls look at me. Makes me unconfortable but then again (I can't lie) quite happy. Of course, they are high school girls and I have to remember that I am twice their age but still, as a guy who got diddly-squat for attention from girls in my high school days I have to enjoy it when I can.
So I teach them and they look at me and smile and eventually I leave and they see me in the hall and blush and it makes for a nice day. Some of them even gave me chocolate for Valentine's Day. That day is slightly different over here, in case I haven't ever told you about that.
Valentine's Day in Japan is a day on which girls give chocolate to boys they like. They also give it to their fathers, male teachers, and sometimes even their brothers. Like everything else the Japanese take from the west, they do it in a slightly different manner. In fact Valentine's Day has a companion holiday in the form of something called White Day, which falls on March 14th. On this day it is the boys who are supposed to give things to the girls they like, and probably their mothers, female teachers, sisters, nurses, cheerleaders, dental hygienists, etc. I don't know. Anyway, I got a few chocolates from about seven girls who all seemed happy to give them to me and looked a little embarrassed.

In other news, Minobusan (Buddhist school) has managed to screw me over twice. Not that I care too much.
This last Monday and the one two weeks before that I showed up at the train station down there at my designated time to wait for the bus. But no bus came. This has happened before and only once did they not send someone to come get me in one form or another (one time a guy came to get me in his car, another time a guy showed up to put me in a taxi and another time they called the taxi dispatcher who came running out of her office to put me in a taxi). That one time last year that nothing came for me I went back to the Kencho and told them what happened and that was that. I think I wrote about that way back when.
So anyway, the last time I was there was about six weeks ago and Kobayashi-sensei told me that I had two more times at the school before the end of the school year. So I wrote down the dates he told me and this is what happens. Both times I gave the bus or person to pick me up or message about what to do an hour to get there and both times I have ended up boarding the 1042am train back to Kofu. I don't get it but I ain't gonna rock the boat so soon before I leave. Honestly, I just don't care. These last two times I've just ended up coming home and essentially taking the day off. Screw it, I say. I don't think I deserve further punishment in the form of sitting at the Kencho all day because some school forgot about me.
So there you go. I'm not sure when I am supposed to go back there but I am sure it won't be until April after the new school year starts. I guess I'll have to have Hiroko at the Kencho call for me.

My lessons with little six year old (he had a b-day in January) Keichiro continue. I've been about four or five times now and before every lesson wonder, "Am I going to be able to pull this off?" and after every lesson think to myself, "Well, that went ok." I honestly don't know how I am doing it other than to say that Amy is helping me. I don't know a damn thing about teaching, much less teaching small children, and someday I will look back on this whole experience like one who has hung from a small rope off a cliff or someone who has narrowly avoided a major traffic accident might look back at their experience.
I will say that it seems to be working out for the most part but leading up to every new session with the little man or every new game I play in some class I wonder how I am going to get through it. I just hope I write better than I think I teach. But hey, the students love me and I have a whole new respect for teachers of all students and especially those who teach small children; Amy, her sister, and my aunt Judy are the first people that come to mind.
Anyway, tonight I have the little bugger and I plan on teaching him a little about numbers. He knows one through ten but eleven and beyond are not programmed into his memory. Not exactly riviting stuff for yours truly but it's only 40 minutes and then his father and I go to celebrate another successful session. At least that's how I look at it.
Last week he took me to a yakitori (yaki means grill and tori is chicken) place where we ate chicken, tofu with garlic (this was excellent), salad, potatos, and various other things served to us on individual dishes. We also had a couple beers and a little sake.
After that he took me to a bar where there was already a small office party going on. The guys were singing kareoke and laughing and carrying on at a table so we sat at the bar and enjoyed the show and talked to each other and the bartenders. The bartenders were a couple young ladies who seemed very happy and delighted to serve us drinks. One of them even spoke pretty good English and told me that she'd like to practice her English more regularly. In fact, she offered me free drinks anytime I could come back and talk--yes, she made a very convincing argument. I haven't been back yet but perhaps soon I might go back and take her up on the deal. Let's see....speak English to a young cute bartender and get free drinks. Now there's a tough decision to make.

Yesterday I hit Sundai junior high for the last time this school year. At this school I teach 2nd year students (the American translation would be 8th graders) and have three classes of 'em consisting of about 40 students in each.
These kids were always good, probably because at one visit every two weeks we never got to really know each other to the level where that comfortable familiarity settled in. At my other junior high the kids, at one visit a week, have really loosened up on me and at times I have to shout above them to get them to shutup. But here they always sat at attention and really never got out of hand.
But anyway, yesterday was my last time with these guys and as today starts their final exams the teacher wanted me to just have a nice relaxing time with them and play a game. So I took one of the games that worked well for me at the other junior high (I've also played it once or twice at the academy) and used it on these kids.
It's a game I call 'catagories,' is very easy to run and provides a little vocab lesson for them too. What I do is put up five catagories on the board--yesterday it was Sports, Food, Animals, 'That is a _____ cat.' and Things in the this Classroom. I put them into groups and tell them I want one word for each catagory that begins with the designated letter. So let's say I give them 't'--they can give me tennis, tomato, tiger, tough, and teacher. I put them into groups for this game and we keep score as follows. Say group 1 gives me tiger for the Animal catagory, group 2 gives me turtle, group 3 tiger, group 4 tortise, group 5 tiger and group 6 turtle. Since tiger was repeated by groups 1, 3, and 5, they each get one point. Turtle was also repeated so groups 2 and 6 also get one point. But group 4 said tortise and was the only group to do so, so they the much coveted two points.
So after every letter I give them, I give them five or six minutes to come up with answers and then I collect all the papers and go about writing it all up on the board so that they can see what each other came up with and so I can easliy tabulate the scores. I can usually get through about three rounds in a class. Most of the time I give them relatively easy letters such as 's' or 't' or 'a' but once in a while I'll throw something a little more difficult such as 'r' or 'f' at them. So far I have not given in to the temptation to give them 'x' or 'q'.
So we are playing this game yesterday and it's the last class and group 6 has a little troublemaker in it--I call him 'genkiboy' (genki essentially means happy and healthy) cause believe me, he is happy and healthy. He's a good kid and actually I really like him but I can guarantee you that in a couple years when he's a bit older and more cynical he's going to be trouble for some teacher. Anyway, the letter is 'a' and for 'things in this classroom' he has his group write 'adult book'. Now that's funny coming from a high school class but from 8th graders I wasn't sure how it was going to be taken by the teacher or by the other students. But I wrote it on the board anyway and the whole class laughed and laughed. For this catagory I have sometimes had the students show me that what they've written for the answer to this catagory is actually in the classroom, so I turned to him, looked him dead in the eye and said, "If you can show me an adult book I will give you your two points." To this his teacher then said, "Yes, and I will take book away." Of course, the students thought all this was hilarious and Kiyanagi-sensei and I just looked at each other and shook our heads while slightly smiling. It was damn funny but I thought that as a teacher I shouldn't congratulate the kid on a job well done. So I just held it all in and tried to look somewhat professional.
But it gets better....same class, same group, same genkiboy about fifteen minutes later. Letter is 's' and for sports they had written 'sex'. "That little shit," I thought to myself as I wrote it on the board. Now, of course, some of you might be questioning my wisdom at writing these things on the board--why not just skip it? Well, that thought did occur to me, but I honestly don't believe in sheltering kids from real world. If they are old enough to write the words 'sex' and 'adult books' as jokes then they are old enough to deal with the aftermath. And really there isn't too much of an aftermath. I just play it down and don't hoot and howl with them like they probably expect me to. So for this instance I just looked at their group and said, "Sex isn't a sport cause you don't keep score," and wrote a big zero next to it. And no, I don't need any frat-boy humor on that one. I can figure it out myself. So that was that and the class thought it was funny and group 6 lost.
I actually had the same thing happen at the academy a couple months ago but as they were high school boys it was a little easier to have fun with.

So that is all for today. Amy's mother has alerted me to the fact that I never finished my Hokkaido story, so I will try to get back on that beast and finsih it soon. Sorry, Mrs. Schaumburg.