This weekend has been pretty low-key. I'm a little low on yen right now, so I'm trying to spend a little less money. I tend to spend a lot when I travel, because the train is so expensive here. I think I'll be shocked at prices when I go back to the states.

I got a call from my family on Friday morning before I went to work, which was Thanksgiving evening for my family. They did the same thing last Thanksgiving. It was good to talk to them, but the reception wasn't so great because it was on my cell phone.

Friday afternoon I did my big presentation on America. The kids seemed to enjoy it. They liked seeing what cartoons kids in America watched (half are Japanese) and they liked it when I played them the four most popular songs in America. However, they didn't really like those songs, but they were more adult songs. I should try to find some pre-teen songs. I had time to show home movies, too, but not enough time to do the North Carolina presentation, so I'll do it next week.

Saturday I slept in while Victoria went to the General Education Center. The Toyama prefecture JETs publish a creative writing publication every four months, and Victoria is one of the three editors. They can publish it for free at the GEC, so they did it there. I decided to do something about my apartment, which was starting to look like a disaster scene. I managed to clean up the kitchen and all my recycleables, but I still have to work on the living/bedroom. I hope to make my apartment presentable again. It started pouring that night, but I made it over to Victoria's apartment anyway and we watched Ransom, the movie on TV that night, and the West Wing, which is shown in bilingual mode every Saturday night on the national TV channel, NHK.

This morning I woke up at 10:30 and went downtown to the CIC building, a tall building near the station. The owner of the building went bankrupt and the city bought the building. The city moved the Toyama Cosmopolitan Association into the building. I take Japanese lessons at the TCA, so they asked if I could help out at the grand opening ceremony. I taught a short English lesson and manned a table about America, which was more a forum for people to talk English to me if they wanted to practice.

One man came to talk to me and I ended up realizing he was a man who had been email stalking Victoria! It dawned on me when I was talking to him, and when he asked for my email address, I told him I didn't like to give it out to strangers. Victoria only gave him her email address because she thought there was a child (at a different TCA function) that was his son, but it turned out the boy wasn't actually his son. In fact, the guy told Victoria that he didn't have any kids, but was looking for a girlfriend (*wink* *wink*). She responded, "Oh dear, that's sad. Better go now." and ran off. He got home and sent her about three emails immediately, and didn't let up for two weeks, despite her not replying to them. You can understand why I wasn't anxious to give him my email address, too. After I got back from the thing today, Victoria checked her email and he had sent her another email, telling her that he had met her boyfriend, Brown.

Unfortunately, Victoria had some sort of bug this morning and was sick, but seems to be better tonight. When I finally feel over my two week bug, it was inevitable that she would get a little ill, too.

This week is the mid-year seminar for Toyama JETs, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Should be fun.

Happy Thankgiving! Unfortunately, this marks my third Thanksgiving sans family. I have to admit that it doesn't have the feel of a holiday without the gathering together bit. Luckily, Victoria drew a picture of all the family (including Whitefoot) so I wouldn't miss everyone too much.

I had some pumpkin products today, just by coincidence. We had pumpkin soup for lunch, which was pretty good. Jo, my co-worker, didn't like it though. It was the first time she had ever eaten pumpkin. Later, Victoria was eating a piece of pumpkin cake at Seattle's Best, which she shared with me. If I actually had an oven, I might consider buying a frozen turkey at the foreign food store and cooking it. No such luck, though. Victoria is predicting that I'll go crazy in the apartments in Australia and cook lots of things in ovens, due to withdrawal. We'll see.

Tonight I am making a presentation for tomorrow about America and North Carolina. I got my elementary kids to write down lots of questions about things they want to know. Some of them are a little strange.... "Which has more supermarkets, North Carolina or Toyama?" and "What is the biggest restaurant in North Carolina?" I don't think I can answer questions like these, from a lack of data. I did a search for the biggest restaurant in North Carolina on the Internet, but I didn't get a good hit. If you know, please tell me. The other questions are more sensible, like what music is popular. In addition to the presentation, I download some popular songs, and will show them some of the home videos we have on DVD. Hopefully they'll enjoy that.

My cough is still here. It's gotten a lot better, but I would just like for it to go away! It didn't interfere too much with my trip to Okayama last weekend. We couldn't get a seating reservation for the way down, but it didn't matter, because we hustled and made it to an early train at 5:13 pm that started in Toyama. So we were able to get seats together in the unreserved section. This was a good thing, because the train was very crowded. We had a 45 minute shinkansen ride from Shin-Osaka to Okayama, and we managed seats together for that one, too. It didn't really matter, though, because the train ride was so short, compared to the Toyama->Shin-Osaka 3 hours plus ride.

We found our hotel, which was hidden down a dark alleyway. Luckily, we were in Japan, so we were probably still safe. We went to Mister Donut for a snack and then went to bed. Saturday we slept in really late, and had breakfast at a cafe with some great warm chocolate croissants. Then we headed to Okayama's garden, Koraku-en. It is quite large, but a lot of it is grassy lawns, which aren't that impressive for me. For the Japanese people, seeing a grassy lawn is impressive, however. Many parks and all the school fields are made of sand and dirt instead of grass. They go around killing the grass on my school field, for reasons unknown to me. The nice things about the garden were the ponds, the warm benches to sit on in the sun, the crane aviary, and the bamboo that surrounded the whole park. The bamboo made knocking sounds as the wind pushed the stalks together. It was quite cool.

On the way to the garden we ran into a mean-looking man with 9 puppies. None of them had leashes, so they just ran around like crazy puppies. They seemed to come when he called them. At first we only saw three, then he whistled, and two more came. This repeated until all 9 were there. I think if I had 9 puppies, I would be much happier than he was.

After the garden we walked to the castle. The castle is quite large, and it has black wood panels on the outside. Most of the castles have white panels, so it looks quite different. The castle was destroyed in the war, so it is just a reconstruction. It was the only castle I've been to that was grandmother-safe. It had an elevator leading to the upper floors. It felt a little strange seeing one in a recreation of a castle. Inside the castle, Victoria and I dressed up in kimonos as a lord and lady. I'll put up a picture when I can. We're wearing wigs, too, so we look quite strange.

We ate at a great Italian restaurant called Pizza Patio. The pizza was some of the best I have had in Japan, and the prices were good. Afterwards, we went to an American bar called Hunter. We had a long conversation and then called it a night. We had satellite TV, so I watched the Rugby World Cup on it. It was quite interesting, and a very close game.

On Sunday we went to Kurashiki, a nearby town with a large (and I mean LARGE) Edo era district. Takayama has a lot of old shops lining some of it's streets, but only a couple blocks total. This district stretched for quite a ways. It was a beautiful day and tons of tourists were there, mostly Japanese. We ate a lunch from Wendy's by the river in the district. Then we went shopping and visited a ton of stores. Eventually, we got tired of shopping, so we headed back to Okayama, which was only 15 minutes away by train. I liked Saturday's restaurant so much, that we just headed back there. Afterwards we went to a nearby karaoke place. It was a lot of fun, and cheaper than Toyama. This might have been because it was on a Sunday.

Monday we checked out of our hotel and headed home. On the way home, we stopped in Himeji, a city between Okayama and Shin-Osaka. It took us about 90 minutes because we took local trains. On the shinkansen, it's about 15 or 20 minutes. The train went through many hills, and the hills were covered with trees changing color. It was a really nice train ride.

Himeji is famous mostly for it's giant castle. It's one of the oldest castles in Japan, and one of the few original wooden ones that is still standing. It's quite an impressive castle. However, like many castles in Japan, the insides were pretty barren and the tour mostly consisted of climbing up ladders until you get to the top. Still, I enjoyed it a lot. Afterwards we got a bento (packed lunch) and ate it outside. Of course, it started to rain when we were going to sit down. Luckily, there were some covered picnic tables nearby. Afterwards we went to Koko-en, a garden with 9 different style gardens inside it. It was quite nice. It was only constructed in 1992, so it wasn't too old. Victoria said it was the best Japanese garden she's seen. I agreed with her. It was very nicely done.

After the garden, we headed to the station and took a shinkansen to Shin-Osaka (30 minutes). We got seats on the shinkansen, but when we changed trains to the one in Toyama, all the seats were full. We had to stand up most of the way back. By coincidence, one of the Japanese guys I play basketball with every week was standing on the train next to us. It was good to talk to him, because I haven't come to basketball in two weeks because of my cold. We thought we'd be able to get seats in Kanazawa, but it turned out that hardly anyone got off there. Victoria managed to get a seat, though. Tons of people got off in Takaoka, so I got a seat there. However, it is about a 15 minute ride from Takaoka to Toyama, so I spent almost all the 3 hour trip standing or sitting on the floor.

We made it back to Toyama, and went to Toyama's latest attraction: a chain coffee shop. It's called Seattle's Best, and it's pretty much like Starbucks. It just opened in the CIC building 1st floor. It should be a nice addition this winter. Most importantly, they have real cookies. Anyway, the trip was a lot of fun for us, the worst thing being the trip home.

My sickness has dragged on through one week. I cough up a lot of phlegm, so I hope that's a good sign that things are getting better. I also take it as a good sign that I can smell today. Unfortunately, what I am smelling is the shockingly horrible body odor of one of the male gym teachers. It really stinks in here!

One of my teachers is quite sad today. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she got a call last night from one of her students' parents saying that their daughter never came home last night. She didn't show up for school this morning either, so my teacher is worried. I get the impression she is not a terribly good student, and could have run away or something. She said she also found out today that one of the students is bullying the other students, which is a problem I've heard about in Japan, but haven't really seen. I think it's a pretty tough day for her.

This weekend Victoria and I are going to Okayama. It is going to be crowded, we think. We booked our train too late, so all the seats are full on the trains. We have to chance it with the unreserved seats. Hopefully we can show up early to the trains and get an unreserved seat. Our first train begins at Toyama, so hopefully we can get an unreserved seat. I might show up an hour early to hold a place in line for us. If we can't get a seat for our second train, it's no big deal, because the train ride is only 45 minutes long. The first train ride is 3 hours, so we really want seats for that one.

We also had some difficulty in booking a hotel. Our favorite chain of hotels, Toyoko Inn, doesn't have a hotel in Okayama City. I looked at some other places online, but there weren't many choices that were affordable (there were lots of luxury hotels online). In the end, three hotels sent us notices that they were fully booked, and one had a double room available for us. So, luckily, we got a room. It turned out to be quite cheap, too, at 7400 yen for a double. Okayama has a famous garden area, and in a nearby city, there's one of the most famous castles in Japan. I'm very excited about the trip. However, it seems like I'm planning too many trips right now. I have to plan for a birthday trip, a trip in April, a trip in March, Australia, and Okayama! It's a lot of trips. The good news is that I'll get to enjoy the trips later.

I'm still sick today. Luckily I only have one class. I hope to get better by tomorrow, since I have two classes and elementary school then. Hopefully I can make it to the weekend.

We have a possible venue booked for the charity show, which is a relief. We might be able to get a bigger, closer place for the same price, so I'm looking into that now, too. We booked the same place that we had last year for the charity show. We keep having the problem every year that we don't try to book someplace until October, so many places are full by then. I hope that next year we can go ahead and find a new producer and book the hall in June or July. That would be easiest for the group next year. They wouldn't have to worry about finding a place again.

About thirty minutes ago one of the teachers came into the office and asked if I didn't like Japanese music. I said I liked it, and why was she asking. It turns out there was a concert going on with traditional Japanese instruments. No one had bothered to tell me, and I assumed it was a student government sort of meeting, which we have sometimes and I never understand.

This week I am helping students from 3:15 or so until after regular school hours. There was a test a couple of weeks ago for English proficiency. The students who passed the first part of the test have to take a second part this Saturday. There is an oral interview section to the test, so they want to practice for it. I volunteered to interview them after school. It's a good chance to talk with the students one-on-one also. I'll have about six kids each day for four days. It's been good so far.

Oh yeah, my teacher who I was told was sick turned out to be okay. She came back this week in perfect healthy (or at least appears to be).

Today I feel a little sick. I have a nose and throat problem. Luckily, I don't have any classes today. It's a test day, so they are busy testing all day. I've been cleaning out my inbox, and looking for Australian accomodation. My family, Victoria, and I will be headed there for Christmas and New Year's. It should be a lot of fun.

At lunch today, we had shishamo, which I think is some of the worst Japanese food. It's little pregnant fish, with the heads on the them still. We're supposed to eat them whole, but I don't eat them at all. It was on the last first-year English listening test that I don't like shishamo, so all the students who like shishamo in the class I eat lunch in, were waiting by my desk to ask me for my shishamo. It was pretty funny.

Normally I play basketball on Wednesdays, but today I think I will just try to get some rest. It's too bad, because I look forward to playing basketball a lot.

I feel like I am planning so many trips right now. Victoria and I might go somewhere in two weeks (there's a three day weekend), there's the Australia trip, a trip to Okinawa for my birthday, possibly a trip to Tokyo to attend a seminar in March about leaving the JET program, and then we need to start looking at plane tickets for Golden Week. We will probably take a five day vacation to South Korea for Golden Week. Golden Week is a series of holidays that are all in a row at the beginning of May. Last year we only got one day of holiday because most of the holidays fell on the weekend. This year we get 5 days in a row, and more if we took some vacation time. However, since school is in session during some of Golden Week, the schools don't want us to take time off then. Victoria won't have that much vacation time left then, so we'll probably just take the 5 days of holiday for our trip.

It's the most popular time for Japanese people to travel, so we want to make sure we get seats on the one daily flight to Korea from Toyama. Otherwise we'll have to travel to Osaka to get the flight, which would be an additional 3 hours travel, plus more money. The flight itself doesn't even take 3 hours. The flight looks to be about $750 USD, which is not very cheap. But we really want to go, so we'll probably pay it. I think my flight to Malaysia over Christmas was about the same amount. I hope hotels and the like in Korea aren't too expensive during that time, but I bet they will be.

Thankfully the election only lasted 12 days, which is a little bit crazy, I think. I think it's amazing that the candidates can only have 12 days to campaign from the announced day of the election to the actual election. Here the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning for president at least 16 months early. I do tend to think we go a bit overboard, however. I guess when there is a president, everyone has to vote for him/her, so it requires more campaigning. There's no president in Japan, just a prime minister. He's appointed by the legislature's ruling coalition, so there's no need to campaign for it.

The ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party won, again. It was not much of a surprise, but they did lose some of their seats to the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan. One reason it is not much of a surprise is that the LDP has always won. It has never lost since it's founding after WWII. It has ruled for about 50 years in Japan. I think even the Japanese are a bit surprised by it when they talk about it. Many of them think it has a lot of porkbelly politics, is large and inefficient, and tries to avoid necessary reforms. Yet people still vote for them. I think they must think the evil they know is better than a possible evil that's out there. Also surprising is that there are a large number of political dynasties. Many members of parliament's father also served on parliament (and some of their fathers).

There were some funny quotes on the BBC about the election. They interviewed different people in Japan about it. One woman said that in other countries, when the economy goes south and things start going badly for a country, that often people vote for a different leader. However, she said, in Japan they still vote for the LDP, despite the decade long recession. The LDP is so large that there are various factions inside the party warring over things. The current prime minister is considered quite flamboyant and rebellious. He says he wants to institute many economic reforms to help pull the country out of its recession. I'm curious if it will work or not.

Recently the Prime Minister dissolved parliament, which means we are having another election right now. This one is just as annoying as the last election. I wouldn't mind the elections, except it means there are vans driving around the town, or parked at popular locations, blaring out loud political slogans. Sometimes they aren't even doing that, but just repeating "Thank you very much!" over and over again. How annoying! I can't believe they put up with all that noise pollution here. They will do it as early as 8am and as late as 9pm. You can hear the vans a long way away. I just hope the elections happen soon.

In some more bad news, one of my English teachers was gone from school all week. Normally Japanese teachers come to work even if they are violently ill and likely to infect everyone else at school, so I figured it was serious. Someone told me she was in the hospital. Another person hinted she might be depressed and at a psychiatrist. I don't know what the deal is, but I wrote her a card and sent it today. I hope she is okay. She's one of my favorite teachers, because she is very funny, and good at teaching.

Last Friday I did a special Halloween party for my elementary school students. I dressed up the stuffed animals I always take to class with me, and had them do a little skit to explain trick-or-treating. I think the students got it, but you never really know. I think they were very surprised that we really did it.

At night, we went to a Halloween party in the nearby city of Uozu. It was fun, but a little expensive, since it was all-you-can-drink. We had a best costume competition (Wolverine won, followed by a nun and an old lady). The boobie prizes (a pair of plastic breasts) went to Colin, who dressed up as a cardboard box. It was pretty funny. We took the midnight train home and collapsed.

On Saturday, I helped out at a "juku" Halloween party. "Juku" is cram school. Cram school is highly recommended for students to help them get the edge on other students when applying for high school or university. Some students go to juku all the time, but many only go once or twice a week. One of my student's mother runs an English cram school, and she got me and another ALT to help out with her Halloween party. I helped out last year, too. This year there weren't as many students overall, but there were more students from my school who came. It was pretty fun, but took longer than I thought it would. Afterwards, they gave us sushi for dinner.

On Sunday, Victoria and I went to Kanazawa, a nearby large city. We visited Kenrokuen, which I've been to several times. It's a beautiful garden. This time, the leaves were changing color on some of the trees, so it was very pretty. Afterwards we went to the Garlic-garlic restaurant that we really like. We ended up in the worst possible seats though, jutting out into a place a lot of people walked by. It was a nice dinner, but at the end a giant engagement party came and they were pretty festive. That evening, we went to a bar I had seen that I thought looked neat. It was a really mellow place, with a pub sort of feeling. They even had cool non-alcoholic cocktails. A bar like that is a rare find in Japan.

Monday was a national holiday, so we just stayed in Kanazawa on Sunday night. We went to a temple that is nicknamed the Ninja Temple, because it has tons of traps and secret rooms and staircases to hide troops and spy on people from. It was really neat, and good practice for our Japanese since we had to go on a tour in Japanese to see it.