Making a Home (Theater!)

    I've never really had a home in Japan, for whatever reason. I've had apartments, but they were generally just places to dump my stuff and sleep. My last apartment was really big, but I only ever really used the corner of it -- that's where I put my futon. I always sat/laid there while I used my computer and that was all I needed.

    Sure, I got a sofa bed and put it in the other room of my old apartment, but that was more of a concession to impending visitors from America and Britain than anything else -- just like the table I bought. When I wasn't expecting visitors, my apartment turned into a giant dump.

    Literally.

    I'm not kidding. I would just dump my stuff on an empty space on the floor, lacking the furniture or some other more organized place to store it. As far as I was concerned, the apartment was just a giant storage shed because I never did anything else that warranted... well, anything else.

    That changed this year.

   Read on!

Busy Weekend -- Team Judo Tournament

   I woke up, bleary-eyed, at almost exactly 6:30 in the morning. My body is remarkable in that it'll let me sleep pretty much exactly the amount of time I want to sleep... and for once, I actually slept deeply. The down side was that since I'd had around four hours of sleep, all my body wanted to go was sink back into that deep sleep.

   Oh, well.

   I hopped out of bed and stumbled to the shower. My apartment's still a mess; I have three piles of old clothes sitting on the floor, bits and pieces from some shelving that I wasn't able to put back together (because other bits and pieces were missing), random do-dads that I haven't found a place for, and some messenger bags sitting by the wall. Somehow, though, I made it to the shower without killing myself.

   Read on!

Busy Weekend -- PTA Party

   This past weekend was a pretty busy one for me, with the festivities starting, quite literally, on Friday. Friday night featured a party run by the PTA to greet the new teachers and PTA members and also to send off the leaving teachers and PTA members. It started from six, so I stayed at school, went to the literature/culture club (which is really the story-writing and manga-drawing club), then got a ride to the party.

   My original plan, you see, was to ride my bike down the mountain to the party since it was a 20-minute trip at worst, and all of that downhill. I mean, how bad could it have been?

   Read on!

Neglect

   I've been neglecting a lot of things lately, mostly due to work. I haven't been taking pictures (though I tried -- more on that later), updated my resume, exercised/worked out, cooked, worked on the proofing company idea with rav, or punched up my blog's layout. What I have been doing is a lot of work and kendo followed by vegging out and not sleeping well.

   Read on!

First Elementary School Day

   I was a bit nervous today because it was my first day at the new school. I woke up around 8, which was fine, since my elementary days start at 10 for some strange reason. It means I miss the first two class periods of the day, which is inconvenient since it makes my schedule less flexible -- there are only six periods in a day and I'm only there for four of them.

   Since I have five classes to teach, that means that one class gets left out and the schedule gets lopsided as I skip between the two.

   Not much I can do about it, though.

   I left the apartment at 9:30 since I didn't know how long it would take me to get to the school. Since it wasn't cloudy, aside from some general light cover, I took my camera with me to get some pictures on the way down the mountainside. Yes, pictures for you, faithful reader.

   Read on!

The Picture Extravaganza

   First, I'd like to point out that I made two backdated posts that I wrote at home, before I had internet access here at school. You can read about my first night in Fujimi and the disaster that was my school introduction.

   Someone asked me to take more pictures, so I did, last Friday. It was dark and I was using my cell phone, so the pictures are less than stellar, but here they are.

   Read on!