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.