IrishOboe

Monday, Jan. 2 was a holiday so I took the opportunity to sleep and soon after I woke up it started snowing! This was the first snow that I’ve seen, and they were big flakes that melted upon hitting the pavement. I heard the snow stuck where there was earth, but there isn’t much of that around me. I had a relaxing day studying German, reading, and enjoying my last day of break, or so I thought.

When I rode to school Jan. 3^rd (Tues.) I was a bit surprised that there were no cars in the lot, though the baseball team was practicing. I found the school locked and after consulting my calendar I realized that today was a paid holiday for the school though it’s not a national holiday. Oh well, no harm done. I listened to my Japanese tapes on the way there and back and I got a whole extra day as a bonus!

I did work Wednesday and Thursday (Jan 4-5) and there weren’t many teachers there. I managed to come up with an idea for the term and get most of the work done for it in those two days. I’m glad I was here to plan. Otherwise it would have been a stressful start to the year. I’ve also been studying German every night. Some words are coming back and it seems like it’s so much easier than Japanese because of the cognates!

Epiphany (Fri. Jan. 6) was the first day of school and the students didn’t look too thrilled to be back. It was very, very cold. It was so cold that though my water was running in the morning my pipes were frozen when I came back from school. That’s with the sun on them! Somehow in Kofu the days are much better than the nights because the sun really makes a difference. I don’t know enough about weather to know why. The sun never helped that much in Rochester.

Anyway, I worked late because after school was the only time my JTE’s could get together to discuss my plan. I am still too pushy, but it went pretty well. There were concerns and doubts but in the end I think we understand each other. I’ll see how the first few lessons go before explaining my plan. I’m excited, though! I didn’t have class today because I only have morning classes on Friday’s and in the morning we had a big cleaning and an opening ceremony. We all stood in the cold gym again and this time you could tell who was singing the school song by whose breath you could see.

When I got home I frantically cleaned my apartment because Kasia was coming over. She turned out to be later than expected which meant that I got the toilet cleaned, the floors swept, the rug vacuumed, junk put away and tables cleaned. It’s nice to have a clean place . . .

Kasia and I went to an Indian place and had great food and conversation as usual. I made sure to leave the faucet dripping that night, and I was relieved to hear it dripping in the morning. However, when I went to the sink, there was a perfectly formed cylindrical stalagmite in my sink that nearly reached the tap! I got a great picture which I hope to post soon. After having fun melting the ice in my sink, Kasia and I we had a nice breakfast of oatmeal and cinnamon bagels (the last bits of the batch from Costco) and went to the store to look at electronic dictionaries. I soon got overwhelmed and decided I needed to do more research, but Kasia searched until she found one she liked. We went out to lunch and parted ways. Even though there was shopping involved I enjoyed the visit, as usual. I’m so terrible when it comes to shopping. I’d almost rather go without than make the effort to buy what I need. Of course, that could be due to the fact that it means I have to ride my bike in the cold . . .

Church was improvised at the Brown’s house because of some mix-ups. It was nice to be in the intimate setting, I thought. We ordered pizza (and I had my first slice of the famous tuna, mayo, and corn pizza the Japanese love. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but it’s not the greatest) and hung out rather than going out afterwards, which I liked because it was easier to talk to everyone.

Sunday and Monday (Jan 8-9) were the church retreat. Monday was coming of age day, which is a national holiday. Leslie stayed at my place Saturday night after church, and we both shocked ourselves by getting up right at the time we needed to be leaving to catch our train. I hadn’t completely packed, so in the biggest bit of panicking I’ve done in a long while we rushed to get to the train station to get a taxi. It was a bit of an expensive ride, but still, when you factor in costly mistakes like that it still comes out to be a better deal than a car.

The church retreat was nice. We went to a place for Christian organization retreats on Lake Yamanakako and the cabins were warm and nice and well-cared for. We had to cook and clean and bring our sheets, but it was a nice deal. We played games, had church a bunch of times and had some free time. There really wasn’t that much time to talk because we left around noon on Monday, but it was a nice time anyway. The speakers were from Christian Surfers Japan, which is a mission organization to surfers. They’re in Australia and the states, too. My favorite joke of the weekend was when Dave read Matthew 14 where Jesus walks on water and Dave said “This is my favorite passage in the Bible because this proves that Jesus was a surfer.”

Monday morning a number of us went to an onsen for the sunrise. After soaking inside for a little we went to the outside pools. It was so hard to walk down the steps to the pools in the cold. Once in the pool, though, it was beautiful to relax, look at the snow all around and watch Mt. Fuji light up with red as the sun came up. I was warm, my hair was frozen, and I really wanted to take a picture of two Japanese girls standing naked (but for the onsen towels on their heads) in the snow taking pictures of Mt. Fuji with their cell phones. Only in Japan!