there has been a whole lot of nothing going on this past week. this weekend, the town bunkasai, or culture festival, was held at the town gym. saturday, after applying for an fsinet account during the morning hours, i walked down to the gym to check it out. i arrived, and i received a free lunch of gyuniku randomly, even though i had said i had already eaten. after that, i talked for a while with the giver of the free lunch about american music, movies, and books. i then proceeded to walk around looking at various artifacts of sanbongi culture. i wish i had brought my camera...there were several interesting paintings, pictures (most of the photos were of pretty women enjoying the sunflowers for which sanbongi is famous), and acts of calligraphy. all in all, pretty interesting; i was kind of dreading going, feeling that i would be bored out of my skull, but that wasn't the case at all. the next day was some kind of big mochi-making festivity, and, being the gaijin mochi-hater that i am, i skipped out and played perfect dark all day. bad me. oh, and my fsinet account came through sunday, so now i have unlimited access at the low, low cost of 2 man a year (about 180 bucks). i'm planning to get telehodai (all you can call to a couple of local numbers; the japanese phone monopoly, ntt, charges for local calls) tomorrow, so it will be almost like home with friends having no chance of actually talking to me on the phone. (not that i get that many calls anyway...maybe one a month) the internet is all i need. and this paddleball. the internet and this paddleball, and that's all i need...
that friday, i woke up at 6:45, got a shower, and headed into work expecting to slog through yet another exciting day of chuugakkoo, but, lo and behold, it turned out to be a day off. what a nice surprise! i had thought the day off to be monday. i checked my mail, biked back home, and slept for days. or at least, i was planning to until the rumbling of the construction woke up around 11:30. grrrrr... today i went to the kindergarten where i divided my time between falling asleep in my kindergarten class ("gurenn-sensei ga neteta!"), playing with the kids (using my oversized sweater to be the "te ga nai hito" (person with no hands)), and gazing dreamily at the cute kindergarten teacher whose class i attended last time i was at the kindergarten. tomorrow the gym should be back in business, so i least i can do something productive...i've finally started to delve into the backlog of must-read books i brought over here, cracking open pratchett's _color of magic_. anyway. in a little under two weeks is a three-on-three basketball tourney that i'm looking forward to. things are getting colder still here, although the weekend was absolutely gorgeous after a week of rain. i know i've mentioned it before, but rain here sucks big time. no lightning, no thunder, no fun. oh well, at least snow's coming...
been listening to: children of bodom, celldweller, circle of dust, the old 97's.