My name in Kanji is 木居願

木 “ki” means tree 居 “i” means lively 願 “gan” means wish.

This was dinner on Monday, I believe:

Lunch on Tuesday:

I had a meeting on Tuesday after work. It was a meeting with my company to clarify some parts of the contract that maybe weren’t being observed. The bad news is it looks like the company wants to gradually turn our ALT contracts into NET contracts. From what I hear from my friends who have NET contracts, I don’t think I will find my job fun anymore. I hope I’m wrong about the companies intent to change my job description, but we shall see. The good news is I a yakitori place after the meeting and before Japanese class that is right across the street from the building where I have class. It was pretty tasty but not healthy. Those two go hand in hand, don’t they? After dinner, I went to class but I returned to the yakitori place after class to enjoy some more food and some conversation with drunken old Japanese men. It was really fun! All the food I had was free! The cook just kept cooking it and serving it, even though I didn’t order anything. I’m thinking I will go back there after class on a regular basis. The menu is small: chicken, beef brain, beef liver, skin, beef heart, or beef tongue; with your choice of sauce, salt, or garlic to top. They give you complimentary oden and, if you’re lucky, maybe even some pickled veggies. I think it would be fun to become a regular there.

While there, I found out about a bar in Utsunomiya staffed by monkeys. Yes, monkeys. They show you to your table and bring you napkins and what-not. I am definitely going.

I also found out about an Asian Hockey league that consists of teams from Japan, China, and a few other countries in this area of the world. There are teams in Tokyo, Hokkaido, and Nikko. Nikko is pretty close to my town, and I’m always up for going to Tokyo, so I think I might be watching some hockey in the near future. I hope there is a large enough fan base to make the games exciting… I also found out about an ice rink in Tokyo. Maybe I’ll skate too!

I went to the store, after we left the bar, to buy some baked goods on sale. I got a lot of good stuff, including a slice of pizza

Uh, waiter? There's octopus in my pizza...

My company didn’t send me a lesson plan for the elementary school so when I got to school on Wednesday, I asked for some direction. They gave me this:

Second period: Teach days of week

Third Period: Repeat

This is all needed. Why couldn’t I get it from my company? We just had a company meeting yesterday where the President told us not to take any direction from the schools, only from Heart. How can I follow through with these instructions when Heart has historically been rather skilled at dropping this particular ball.

The first class of the day went well because the teacher let me teach. The second class… not so much. The teacher kept making the kids do things and I was just the guy that spoke English on command. I met a new student today. She is from Canada and speaks English really well. I felt a little bad for her because she is probably super bored in the English class. Oh well.

I spent my free time working on an origami figure. The directions are all in Japanese but the pictures are almost enough. It took me a while to figure out some of the folds I had to make, but in the end, it turned out all right. What is it?

Some of the kids were little nuedges during the only class I had to teach at the middle school today. They seemed really tired and uninterested in learning. We did a map game and some of the kids just didn’t participate. I went over to a pair of girls that weren’t playing along and asked them to demonstrate for me. When I walked up to them, they were just staring off into space not talking to anyone. They straight up ignored me. It was weird. I felt like pinching them but that probably would have been inappropriate. Instead, I walked away and told them there would be a next time. I looked over at them and they were lively and talkative again, just moments after I left. They was another girl who just didn’t understand. She was going one-on-one with the teacher and she kept getting the directions wrong. At the end, she looked like she wanted to cry. Been there.

*pours out a 40oz. with respect for tough times in school*

On Thursday I ran in the marathon at the elementary school. At first, I put myself in the back of the sixth grade boys group. I ran at a leisurely pace so as not beat a bunch of little kids. I wanted to try but not try too hard. I ended up having to stop running about half way through because I was so tired. I resumed my pace after a short rest and came in 27th of about 50 odd. If I had started in the front, I would have probably finished better, but I didn’t want to discourage anyone. I did sprint the last 50 yards or so and I think that might have helped to encourage those around me. Before lunch I was super tired and hungry. Lunch was tasty and it helped satiate the best within, but it wasn’t enough. I found out the teacher who had gone to the stupid meeting we had on Tuesday was pretty gung ho about following the new rules.

Did you know? Excel spreadsheets have a maximum of 1,048,576 rows. They also have a limit of 16384 columns. This give you a total of 17,179,869,184 possible cells.

Today, all day, I didn’t have service on my cell phone. I started to freak out because I have been getting texts from my carrier but I can’t read them. I thought maybe they were telling me I hadn’t paid my bill and were going to shut off my phone. I dreaded having to restart my plan and pay fees. I was worried all day and was wondering who I could ask to help me read the texts. The clouds parted at the end of the day and I had a thought. I remembered what Roy from “I.T. Crowd” always says whenever he gets a call about a broken computer: “Did you try turning it off and on?”

I tried turning it off and on.

It worked.

Thank you Roy, you smug bastard.




I leave you now with three versions of the same sunset, each with different amounts of light:

And one picture of the guard who stands watch over the parking lot at the elementary school:

Welcome to my town