I’m back! My holidays are over and work is back on as usual. Sob! I was just getting the hang of sleeping late again and now it’s all over. I had the last two weeks to pretty much do what I liked. I went into work most days for the first week and a few days the second week. It takes me a while to enjoy holiday time or to know what to do with myself. I can get really focused on my job sometimes so I can’t think of things I would rather be doing. I guess that’s good because it means I have some level of job satisfaction but by the same token it means I am fairly complacent. That’s no good. Anyways, I had an enkai the other night to welcome all the new teachers to our school. They kept the speeches mercifully short. I have given up beer for lent so I only had disgusting sho-chu to drink which is like rice vodka or something. You drink it mixed with hot water or ice but we only had the hot water version. Gross! There was also red wine but it wasn't very good. The meal was ok though. I think I have just changed what I think is ok to eat these days. It’s been a gradual process. I still didn't manage to eat the egg cup filled with black squid babies. I have become better friends with many of my co-workers and we do more outside of work together. I had a nice trip with the first year teachers to Omachi. It is about an hour north of here. We had a nice onsen (hot spring bath) and lots of drinks. I got to know everyone who I work with a little more and made them feel more comfortable around me. For the ones that don’t speak much English, it is a little intimidating to just try and start up a conversation.

My holiday was great. I had a very busy three days with Emi. Fukuoka is in Kyushu in the south. We travelled there by bullet train (shinkensan) which is always a nice way to travel. We hit the highlites of which there are many. We went to an aquarium, up a tall tower, to the beach, lots of shopping and ate the area specialties. These are tonkatsu ramen (thin noodles in white soup with an egg and some meat) and mentaiko (spicy fish eggs). The ramen was excellent. You eat it at little stands called yatai, all over the city. We tried to go to the top three rated places but because they move around it was hard to find them. We found the number two place only and then settled for a random one on the second night. The random one wasn't as good but we met some business men who were quite drunk and thus willing to give engish conversation a shot. They surprised me by singing the Kiso festival song! They were fun old guys! They wanted to buy me some beers but once again I had to settle for sho-chu. Emi and explained Easter and the lent thing to the guys but everyone else started to listen too. They sound Easter and Lent very interesting. None of them had ever heard of it before. I think that is probably the real point of my job is to meet everyday people and talk to them about what ever interests them. That is better internationalizing then teaching the kids english I think sometimes.

I enjoyed a bit of city life and warm weather. It’s heating up in Nagano but it was quite nice down there. It rained for a bit but not too badly. One night when we were out walking, we found these old ladies stealing tulips out the flower beds on a pedestrian bridge. They were taking the bulbs and all, bagging them up and sneaking off. Emi went and stood beside them to make them feel awkward. I started taking a video of them with my camera. The flower beds were quite nice there. They were full of spring bulbs and actually look like little gardens. It was really surprising to see these old girls out there under cover of darkness, defiling public property.

Other news…hmmm. My friend Hitomi has been staying with me for a while. She is moving to Osaka but had to finish up some work before her successor took over. We had some fun times although she had to work over night several times just to finish up. I told her to shred the remaining documents and get some sleep which she did in the end. Good work! We sang a little karaoke and ate out whenever possible. She's now off in Osaka which is a fair distance away but I am determined to visit her a few times. We have a lot in common and I am sad that she left. I think she is too.

I met the new staff members at my base school. They are all old. Where are the young people? They are not in Shiojiri, I will tell you that much! Our new gym teacher is 63! I think we could have done better on that one. There is one new young person in the secretary group. That makes both of our secretaries quite young. Unfortunately, that leaves 10 other fairly old and seemingly uninteresting new people who have joined our staff. I hope we will get some student teachers at least. That would be fun. I just snuck out and went to the grocery store to buy sandwiches for a co-worker. It turns out there is no school lunch today. That’s good news. I’m having wontons!

I think the big news in Japan right now from my point of view is the murder of Lindsay Hawker. She was the 22 year old NOVA employee who was killed by a man asking her to teach him English. If you haven’t read about it, it is fairly scary. It is the kind of thing that happens to me all the time. People approach me on the street or in restaurants, asking me to teach them English in their homes or in a café or something. I think Japanese people are the most kind and trustworthy people on earth. Gisela has frequently said she can trust them more than she can trust herself. It’s true. I know that sounds silly because there are good and bad people everywhere but it is really easy to trust people here. As I have often said, people have shown us some much kindness everywhere we go that it is easy to think the best of people. The police here though have been really lame out pursuing it in my view. I have been reading about this story quite a lot and watching the progress and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of progress being reported at all. There has been nothing new in the paper here since Monday. They know the man who is assumed to have done it. He escaped from his apartment even though there were 8 police officers present. He just ran out the fire escape after answering only one or two questions. Ridiculous. How could he get away from 8 guys standing in his apartment? After he fled, they found her body, buried in sand in his bathtub. I don't think the police take crimes in which foreigners are the victims very seriously. Anyways, if you have a chance to read about it, do so.

Last bit of news is that I had another minor procedure on my jaw, fixing up the joint trouble I have been having. Recently it was impossible for me to chew toast so something needed to be done. I am feeling pretty much fine today. Just a little bit of an ear ache. Other than that, the dentists have come through again. I can tell already that this will improve my day to day life greatly.

Today's photos are of Fukuoka of course. They are weird cool things I saw at the aquarium, the view from the Fukuoka tower, the small ramen shops on the street (Yatai) and the bridge to the temple we visited. I can't remember the name already! But it was quite beautiful there. I hope everyone has a happy Easter. I am looking forward to it. Give me some comments, I haven't heard from you guys in a while.