The Time We Went Out for All-You-Can-Eat Yakiniku

So, today I bid adieu to greatness as I usher in the era of my physical decline.

Bill James, a baseball statistics guru, found that most baseball players experienced peak performance between the ages of 26 and 28, after which time they began a slippery-slope-style decline.

Rather than dwell on the bleakness of my future, I choose to live out my unfulfilled sports glory through my children, and reminisce of the past. Today, it is in this spirit of nostalgia that I write about an experience that I had when my mom came to visit us in Japan while Mia was in the hospital in Matsuyama.

One day in late January or early February, Mom and I dropped by the Ehime Prefectural Information Center (EPIC) in Matsuyama to renew the agreement on my rental bike. While we were there, a very helpful woman named Noriko Omori gave us some advice on places to visit, as well as some simple maps of surrounding Matsuyama. Stef and I wanted to treat Mom to a nice dinner, so we inquired about all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurants, and she pointed to the unfamiliar side of the map and explained that there was a good one right by the movie theater on the far edge of town. She suggested that we first peruse the fine fabrics of the textile museum, after which we could enjoy the tantalizing taste of thinly shaved meat, meticulously marinated in a savory sauce and grilled right before our eyes at our table--perhaps after a soothing soak in the luxurious hot spring.

"Who talks like that?" I asked.
"Someone who's employed by the chamber of commerce," Mom quipped.

We decided we’d at least give the meat place a shot.

At night, when it was already slightly past our usual dinner time, we jaunted over to the train station to catch a city train to the unfamiliar neighborhood with the meat joint. We forgot to bring the stroller with us, and Kelsey stopped cooperating before we even got to the train station. On the train, the only way to keep her from shrieking was to hold her up so that she could hang like an Olympian on the hand rings until we got to our stop. I listened intently for the name of the stop that I thought we were supposed to take, and got off when I thought I recognized it.

It was about a five or ten minute walk from the station to the complex with the movie theater. Kelsey didn’t want to be held, but she wouldn’t hold our hands while she walked. She still hasn’t figured out that holding her own hand is not a solution. I walked alongside her like a sheepdog, making sure she didn’t stray into the street. Eventually it got to be too difficult, and I just picked her up and plopped her on my shoulders--much to her dismay. We walked around the back of a restaurant and through a parking lot toward the movie theater, keeping our eyes peeled for anything that looked like a meat place. One restaurant appeared to serve meat in some capacity, but most of the myriad restaurants in the complex offered some other specialty dish.

Omori-san hadn’t given us a name, since she didn’t know what the place was called. All we had to go on was the Japanese word for “all-you-can-eat”, or “tabehoudai”. I popped my head into a pachinko parlor to ask one of the peppy attendants if they knew where the restaurant was, and her pleasant demeanor turned serious. She called one of the other attendants over on her radio headset and they intently discussed the location of our mysterious restaurant. The girl wasn’t positive, but the guy she consulted was sure that we should head across the parking lot over to the place that had appeared to serve some kind of meat. We thanked the attendants and gave it a shot.

The restaurant appeared to be pretty classy, or, in other words, expensive. The menu outside the front door displayed a feast of a meal for the equivalent of about 30 or 40 dollars. Omori-san had pegged the tabehoudai price at about 12-15 dollars a person, and I probably could have eaten the 40-dollar feast by myself. I went in and asked the guy at the front desk if they offered tabehoudai, and he sadly replied that they didn’t. I asked if, by chance, he knew of one in the neighborhood. I was set on Mom getting to try yakiniku and on me getting my money’s worth.

The man, obviously impressed with my flawless Japanese, fired off the directions to the meat place. Just around some building, some nonsense words past the doohickey, a stoplight or two up the street, a left (or was it a right?), then kitty-corner (or past it--they sound the same) from a place. It was right there. I convinced myself that I understood his directions and set out with my increasingly impatient and hungry family in search for the mythical restaurant. I followed (what I understood of) his directions to the best of my ability, until we got to where I thought he had intended to send us. We realized that there was no way we would find it and decided to ask a third person for directions.

It was now nearly two hours after our normal dinner time, and we were all starving. I was walking the thin line between hunger and murder, and Kelsey was beyond unbearable. My final stop in the search for the meat shack was a restaurant-slash-coffee shop. Leaving the girls outside, I went in and asked the waitress if she knew of any yakiniku tabehoudai places in the neighborhood, and she said that she did, but that it was a bit of a walk. She hurried over to her boss, took off her apron and beckoned me to follow her. I expected her to just point us in the direction of the restaurant, but she was taking us there. An employee of a restaurant leaving her job to show us how to get to another restaurant. Would that ever happen anywhere else? Would the TGIFridays people walk you to the nearest Outback? Somehow, I doubt it.

We followed her back in the direction that we came from. We crossed the street, went around a few small buildings, walked through a parking lot, and jogged around one big building, until the restaurant was in sight. There it was, across the parking lot: the Holy Grail of Restaurants. The Big Cheese. The Hallowed House of Bounteous Beef. The same exact restaurant that sent me toward the coffee shop.

We thanked the lady for her help, and I burst into an uncontrollable fit of rage and tears. Or not. But at this point, I was ready to wither and crumble into nonexistence. Kelsey needed to eat. I needed to eat. We all needed to eat. We resigned ourselves to an okonomiyaki shop, which was a bit disappointing considering that the three or four places in which we had theretofore eaten were okonomiyaki shops. But it no longer mattered what we ate. I had failed in my quest to find the meat place.

We sat down at the restaurant and ordered our food, and they quickly brought out the ingredients for our okonomiyaki. Kelsey got a toy boat full of finger foods and noodles. When nobody came back to help cook our food, we realized that it was up to us to prepare it. While we had seen others make it, it was our first chance to cook okonomiyaki. And to burn okonomiyaki.

Burnt or not, it was extremely delicious. As miserable as we all were before we got there, we now felt pretty good about our dinner that night. We even indulged with some soft serve ice cream.

Exhausted, we carried Kelsey back to the train and went home for the night.

I have a whole life of physical decline ahead of me. It's time to focus on the areas that won't decline until I'm at least 30. Like wisdom. I discovered quite a few pearls that night:

1. The Holy Grail of Restaurants, no matter where you are, doesn’t exist. Don’t be stubborn. You will not find it.


2. Don't ask for directions in Japan. It doesn’t matter how little Japanese people actually know about something: they’ll go totally out of their way to help you, even if it actually ends up being more of a hindrance than a help.


3. Dang it, even in my nostalgic, partially-confabulated peak season, I was still a jerk.


4. You can never go wrong with okonomiyaki.

Grandparents Want More Pics

Pictures From My Phone

I finally got a memory card for my phone, so now I can upload my impromptu pics from the last few months.

Why I Hate Coffee - AKA, A Whole Bunch of Things Nobody Wants or Needs to Read

The other day, one of the Japanese Teachers of English at Minami junior high school taught a lesson about the English word "because". Many Japanese kids struggle with "why" and "because", but it's not due to grammatical complexity. Japanese is chock-full of vagueness and ambiguity. It's considered rude to question someone's motives, so you're forced to infer a lot of meaning from vague snippets of speech.

It's equally difficult for me to adapt to the Japanese way. In America, we say that there's no such thing as a stupid question. While that is not completely true, the underlying theme of the saying is that it's best to ask questions and understand than remain quiet in ignorance. There are times when I am expected to accept the decisions of "superiors", even if they don't make sense. I understand that they greatly value the social hierarchy in Japan, so it's not usually difficult to conform to the Japanese way. Not asking "why" is not my problem. My struggle lies with "because".

As I study Japanese, I gradually grow more eloquent in my speech. My pronunciation improves, and I learn more advanced grammatical structures that carry different nuances. I've learned a few different ways to describe my motives and actions. The problem is, I shouldn't be using them.

I've always struggled, even in English, to avoid explaining too much. When I do something wrong, I often feel the need to explain my motives or intentions, so that the offended party knows that my offense was a mistake, and not malicious. I learned a lesson in my many interactions in Guatemala--it's usually best to just apologize for mistakes and not try to explain your motives. People generally don't care what your motives were--they just want results. If you can't provide the desired result, it doesn't matter what your intentions are. As the old saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the streets are filled with cheese.

Today, the seventh grade students and teachers at Minami took a field trip to a park. One of the attractions at the park was a big hill with plastic grass that kids could climb up and slide down on plastic sleds. When we first got there, I sat and watched as kids slid down the hill together. A bunch of kids tried to stand and surf down the hill on the sleds. About an hour later, I decided to give it a go. I ran up to the top, grabbed a sled, and stepped in, leaning forward as I pushed off. I kept my balance pretty well, but eventually fell off and rolled down the rest of the hill.

I ran back up to the top and sat backwards in the sled, then pushed off blindly. The kids laughed and cheered as I zoomed down, and I eventually came to a stop. Right then, one of the teachers rushed up to me and told me not stand on the sled. Like a good Japanese boy, I acknowledged her. But that's not what I wanted to do. I knew that the kids had done it for at least a half hour without any adults going up to scold them. Perhaps one of the kids got hurt standing on a sled while I was away doing other things.

It's tough to keep my mouth shut when my feelings are pricked like that. I wanted to explain that I had seen the kids do it, so I figured they wouldn't care. But instead, I shrugged it off and gave her what she wanted. It doesn't really matter if she knows what my intentions were, or if I thought it would be OK. What matters most is that I allow her to save face without letting it bother me. I had fun taking a risk, and the kids had fun watching. I didn't get hurt. When I saw the teacher later, I smiled and acted as if nothing had happened, rather than being offended that she had singled me out.

Later, as we ate lunch, one of the teachers apologized for only bringing tea to drink. No worries--I grabbed a drink from the vending machine. But then, one of the teachers asked my why I didn't like tea. Most of you know that I don't drink tea, coffee, or alcohol for religious reasons. Try explaining that to a group of people that are apathetic at best toward religion. I told them that, as I had mentioned before, I didn't drink it for religious reasons. But even though I had religious reasons, I mentioned that I wasn't fond of the flavor. There's just something unappetizing about a drink that's supposed to taste like a leaf.

While I didn't offer that opinion to my Japanese colleagues, I could tell that I had responded with too much information. It's hard to know exactly how much information is appropriate. If they ask for an explanation, should I not give it to them? Should I have only mentioned that I didn't really like it? Or just that it was for religious reasons? In order to fit in, I have to not be me. And that's tough.

It's one thing to learn how to say things in another language. Learning what's socially and culturally appropriate for each situation is an entirely different beast--one that I will never fully master. I'll try not to explain myself too much--that's not a bad idea, even for my interactions with non-Japanese. And sure, I'll get better at knowing when to hold my tongue. But I'll always be American, and I'll always be me.

At Sakurai, I was playing dodge ball with the kids during lunch when the ball left the play area and bounced over a wall. I launched myself over the wall to grab the ball, when suddenly I heard one of the teachers yell, "Sensei! Kutsu wa dame!" That's Japanese for "Jesse, you idiot, you have landed on an elevated platform, upon which wearing outside shoes is a disgrace to the spirits of all our ancestors, and upon which you must now feel the bitter pangs of shame." When I apologized to the teacher, I mentioned that it's hard for me to remember the shoes rule, since we don't have it in America. What I should have said was nothing. Nothing but "I'm sorry." In Japanese, of course. Gah. Social nuance. Social nuisance is more like it.

During the conversation about coffee and tea, one of the teachers mentioned that he didn't like coffee when he was younger. He had to drink it a lot before he could tolerate it, and then he learned to appreciate the flavor. Kids here say the same about nattou, a sticky, slimy mess of fermented beans. Many still hate it even after being forced to eat it in their school lunches for years. My question is this--why would I want to eat something over and over that I didn't like, just so that I could grow to like it? Wouldn't it make more sense to eat things that I like? Perhaps it would make more sense if tea and coffee were the only things available to drink in the world. Thanks, but I'll have a glass of water.

You Will Never Reach the Twenty Fourth Level of Awareness

OK. Heads up, everyone: I’ve already posted two long entries to my blog today. This is my third post. Scroll down for the other two.

Stef took Mia to the doctor yesterday. She’s almost up to 8 pounds now. She’s strong, healthy, and growing. She’s very alert—often more so than we’d like. It’s always nice to hold her, but sometimes holding her keeps us from cleaning, or other things we need to take care of. I’ll try to post some pictures later.

We ordered a bunch of stuff from The Flying Pig, a service that ships Costco goods to your door in Japan. We got a box full of:
 Pickles
 Dr. Pepper
 Those Huge Costco Dogs
 Bagels
 Pretzels
 Tim Tams: Australian chocolate covered wafer cookie awesomeness

I never would have imagined I’d consider pickles to be a comfort food.

Close to our house, there’s a store that sells things in larger quantities than those of the normal stores. You can get ground beef, chicken, butter, baking ingredients, and all sorts of frozen goods at awesome prices. Some people don’t shop there because not all of the products sold there are made in Japan. Patriotism is fine, but call me a traitor if it’ll save me 30% on my groceries.

So This is What it Feels Like to Actually Work

If you care about my routine, feel free to read on. Otherwise, I've left you other things to enjoy today.

Just look up or down. On the screen.　

Imabari and Uoshima couldn't be more different. On the island, I had one junior high school student that never came to class, one 6th grade elementary school student that I taught nearly once each week, and three other elementary school kids in a combined first-and-second grade class that I taught twice every three months. In my last four months on Uoshima, I taught a total of four or five classes. Seriously.

My first day teaching at Minami Junior High School, I taught four classes. Minami is one of my five new schools, and it's my base school--the one I where I spend the most time. In Japan, junior high schools are made up of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. At Minami, there are four groups of students in each grade, each group having about 25 kids. The classes are numbered based on their year at the school--7th graders are in classes 1-1 through 1-4, 8th graders 2-1 through 2-4, and 9th graders 3-1 through 3-4. Students traditionally stay together in their home room while the teachers rotate between classrooms. It's probably a bit harder to get to know all the other kids at your school, but I'm sure that some kids grow pretty close after spending all year in the same class.

Each month, I teach five or six times at Minami. The classes are very simple; I'm often nothing more than a tape recorder for the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English), who's done most of the preparation for the lesson. It's nice to not have to stress about preparation at Minami, and the three JTEs that I work with are all pretty easy going. They're not all as comfortable with the English language, but the team teaching generally works pretty well. The kids don't usually have an ALT (assistant language teacher) in the classroom, so they get pretty excited when I show up. On average, I teach two classes a day at Minami, and usually with the same JTE.

It's a lot different having large classes. Games take a lot longer to complete, so it's easy to burn through class time. It's nice to have kids running around the school. Most kids are pretty well-behaved at Minami, though there are a few that like to be heard. I don't get upset, since that's probably what my teachers had to deal with. I'm pretty enthusiastic in class, and the kids usually feed off that energy.

Four to six days each month, I go to Sakurai Elementary School. There are three classes in each grade, each with 25-30 students. Instead of working with a JTE, I teach with varying levels of support from the HRT (home room teacher). My other elementary schools share the same setup. Most of the teachers understand a little bit of English, so they can help translate very basic words. Sometimes they are very self-conscious about their English and won't say a word during the lesson. Luckily, my Japanese has progressed enough to where I can translate most of what I say in English to Japanese.

Every time I teach at Sakurai, I teach all three classes of the same grade. It's nice having to prepare only one lesson for three separate classes. It makes it so that I don't worry as much about not being able to plan lessons with the HRTs until the night before, when I receive a phone call in Japanese.　

Shimizu elementary, where I go four or five times each month, is basically the bane of my existence. I teach two classes of two radically different grades (like 1st and 5th, 2nd and 4th, or 3rd and 6th), for a total of four classes each visit. English classes so far have taken place in a special foreign language room with materials and props--but the students have no desks. They sit on uncomfortable chairs and have no way to write. I'm beginning to see myself as an entertainer. Most of the teachers thus far haven't been too willing to help with the lessons, and they stand off to the side while I talk to the class.

Honestly, it's not that bad. It's just that it's so much busier than the other schools, and there's no communication with the staff. As I become more and more comfortable with Japanese, I am going to take it upon myself to initiate the communication with the teachers. I already communicate pretty well--I just am not yet familiar with all the school vocabulary (there wasn't much to discuss on Uoshima). In a month or so, I think I'll be up to the challenge. Also, as I learn which teaching strategies work best with each age group, I'll have a better idea of how to prepare lessons. Things will work out fine.

The first Monday of each month, I have an office day. I go to the city office and sit in a room with other ALTs from 9 until noon, and then I get to go home. From July 20th until August 30th, the students will be on summer vacation and I'll have office days. It's going to be great to sleep in until 7 and be home at 12:15 every day--and still get paid the same.

Every day I get up at about 6, put a cartoon on for Kelsey (who usually wakes up at about 6:15), and get ready for the day. I leave for work at 7:30 or 7:45, depending on the distance of the school I'm set to visit that day. Minami is a 15-20 minute bike ride from the house, while Shimizu takes about 20. Sakurai is a good 25-30 minutes away.

Two or three times a month, I travel to my last two schools, Okamura and Sekizen. They're really the same school; it's a junior high and an elementary school sharing a big building on Okamura, an island in the Seto Inland Sea. It's actually a lot like Uoshima--there are five or six junior high school students and about six or seven elementary school kids. It takes 20 minutes to bike to the port, and I take an 80-minute ferry at about 8:30. I arrive around 10AM and walk up to the school. I generally have two junior high school classes (about two students in each class) before lunch and two elementary school classes after. When I finish my last class, I leave the school early to catch the 4 PM boat back to Imabari. My time on Uoshima prepared me very well for Okamura. I know how to make lessons for small classes, and I really enjoy the face-to-face time with the kids.

Of all my schools, Minami is my favorite. John Scott's boy, Taro, is a student there. The kids really like me, and the teachers love to help me with my myriad Japanese grammar questions. They are often stumped when I ask about the difference between words. It's not surprising--imagine if I asked you to describe the difference between drop and fall. But I love the proximity to my house, the comfort I feel with the staff, and the stress-free quality that comes with working with good JTEs. The teachers genuinely seem happy to have me there; my predecessor wasn't quite as outgoing, from what I hear.

I love the island schools and Sakurai. I really enjoy eating lunch with the kids at those two schools. At Minami and Shimizu, I eat lunch in the staff room. It's quick and easy, but I miss out on QT with the kids. Today, at Sakurai, I ate lunch with the sixth graders. They sat me with a group of giggly girls that spent the whole time asking me questions about America and my family. It was a blast.

I really do love the kids. For the most part, the elementary school kids are peppy. The junior high school kids are a lot more self-conscious and unwilling to make mistakes in front of their peers. The same two or three kids will raise their hand every time in junior high, while a good 60-70 percent of kids will be willing to raise their hand in the elementary schools. Occasionally I'll run into a class that is either exhausted, famished, unprepared, or some combination of the three. They won't respond to any kind of game or question. When that happens, I just push on through, staying positive and trying to get them to participate. Having large groups of kids has reminded me how much I enjoy teaching. I love how I feel after a successful class.

Now I just need to get my own internet connection at home so I can fill you all in more frequently.

Not Even the Internet Can Avoid the Japanese Beaurocracy

Updates have been pretty rare lately, and I'm sorry about that. 3 weeks ago I went to the electronics shop to set up an appointment for broadband internet installation. I was told that since I don't have a home phone line (which is necessary for ADSL), it would take three weeks for them to come out and activate the service. My predecessor described this arduous task as "flipping a switch". Who knows--maybe it's a really big switch.



Stef set up a doctor's appointment for Mia for Wednesday the 22nd (yesterday), so I needed to call and let the internet people know that we wouldn't be there that day (they gave us a three day window, from Wednesday to Friday). When I called the English tech support line on Monday, the lady told me that I had given them the wrong address, and that I needed to fix it before they'd come out--and I'd have to wait another 3 weeks after fixing the address. I checked the paper carbon copy of the application that I had filled out, and lo and behold, I had written the address correctly. The person doing the data entry had left out the words "dai" and "ichi" in front of the building which together basically mean "number one" or "first". Never mind the fact that in my ward, Katayama, there are no other Tamai buildings. This was apparently a very serious problem. Of course, I've already received mail from the internet company at that address since filling out that application. But whether mail could be delivered or not, a missing "number one" just wouldn't do.

So, I got on the phone to fix the address that I had correctly given, but I had to call the Japanese customer service line. After waiting on hold for about 15 minutes, I gave up and decided to find a different internet service provider. That turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise--our new provider is actually about 10 bucks cheaper per month, and it's much faster. With YahooBB, we would have paid about 58 dollars a month for 12Mbps service, but since it's ADSL and we live far from the relay center, we would have been getting a 700kbps connection. Our new service, NTT, costs about 45 dollars a month and offers speeds up to 100Mbps (though 25 Mbps is actually a more realistic expectation due to various factors). In other words, we're paying less for something that's at least 35 times faster.

I'm interested to see exactly how fast we can download. If it gets up to 100Mbps, we could download 3.5 gigabytes of data in as little as 5 minutes. That would take almost a full day with the other service. Most people don't care as much about that stuff, but for a tech geek like me, that's heavenly.

Up until now, we've been borrowing our neighbor's wireless internet connection. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to connect for about 3 days now. So, until May 8th (when our service is installed), we probably won't be able to keep in touch. I was really looking forward to hearing from people on my birthday, but that's probably not going to happen. Hopefully we'll at least get the slow wireless connection up and running again. We can at least do Skype with that. I'm going to write another post or two today and post them above this one.

First week in Imabari

Last night, I put Kelsey down for bed right before running to the store to check for deals. When I got back 20 minutes later, I checked to make sure she had gone to bed, and she was laying in the exact same position, fast asleep. Stef and I watched the last part of a movie, and then got ready for bed. Stef peeked in to check on Kelsey and groaned when she saw Kelsey's face covered in ink. It must have all happened in the 20 minutes that I was gone.

Today, I saw exactly how bad it was. Kelsey drew on her hands and face, and then stuffed eight felt-tipped markers inside her footed pajamas. She had a leaky diaper, and the combination of liquid, ink, and rolling around at night covered her whole body and pajamas in permanent ink. After an hour-and-a-half of scrubbing, she's still got ink all over. At least it's light enough that it shouldn't transfer to other things. And I got most of it off her face.

What a little stinker.

So, as I said before, Mia's home, and we're living in Imabari, where we used to go to church every week before Mia came early. I got transferred early, and I start work here on Monday. It's the beginning of a new school term, so a lot of the teachers will be new. In Japan, government employees transfer to new positions in new places after three years or so. People often have to work away from their families, and some even have to live on islands during the week and travel to see their families on weekends. Most just have to commute every day.

I have five schools that I visit--three elementary schools and two junior high schools. My main mode of transportation is a small ladies' bike with a basket in front. I haven't yet seen my schools, but I know that it takes between twenty-five and forty-five minutes to pedal to my different schools. I'm going to get a lot of exercise.

Mia is doing pretty well, though yesterday she started needing to be held all the time. She gets very upset if she's not lying up against our chest. When she is up against us, she sleeps. Before that, she really liked to sit vertically and just look around. So far we haven't taken a lot of pictures. I bought batteries for our camera, but they weren't even strong enough to keep the camera on for more than 2 seconds. I turned it on, the lens extended, and then the digital display flashed "battery depleted" and it shut off. We got some new batteries yesterday and took a few pictures. Mia wasn't in a picture-taking mood, so I snapped some of Kelsey. Those are the ones that we posted to facebook and Stef's blog.

At Mia's discharge meeting with the doctors, they showed us pictures of her MRI. They said that her left cerebral ventricle is a little larger than the right one, but that it wasn't really anything to worry about. She might experience some difficulty with motor skills, but most of the time, there aren't any problems. We'll be keeping an eye out for the first few years. Everything seems normal so far.

Stef has been getting between five and six hours of broken sleep every night, which is much better than when Kelsey was a newborn. I've been getting about 7 hours of broken sleep. So we're dealing with everything pretty well. It's a lot easier when you're sleeping.

Our place is pretty cozy. It's old and has sparkly corkboard walls and tatami floors, but it feels like home. Kelsey has her own room, we have a small living room with a couch, and we have a bigger kitchen. The fridge was much too small, so we had to buy another small one in order to have enough room for all our food. At Hard-Off (I kid you not), a second-hand shop that sells everything from video games to couches, we found a practically brand new fridge for $150. We also found a baby bath for about eight bucks. To keep Kelsey out of the fridge, we got some locking plastic belt-clips.

Even if our place in Uoshima was slightly larger, this place is much more convenient. We have a big shopping complex called Saty that's five minutes away on foot. Inside the three floor building, there's a nice 100 yen shop, a play area, a nice grocery store with great prices, an arcade, a clothing store, and much more. Within a half-mile or so of our apartment, we've got two or three other grocery stores, a full-size 100 yen shop, a two-story electronics store, Hard-Off, a video rental store, and a full-size McDonald's that serves breakfast.

We're looking forward to things getting back to normal, so we won't be tempted to go to McDonald's. It's hard sometimes to ignore the convenience. And Kelsey loves chicken nuggets. Back in Matsuyama, I took her to McDonald's and got her some nuggets. Stef also took her a few times during her grocery shopping trips. One time, she told Kelsey that she had to get money from the ATM, and then they'd go buy some nuggets. When we tell Kelsey that she's going to get to eat nuggets, she shouts, "Mommy get da money, Kelsey eat nunnets!" The other day, I mentioned that I had to get some money for the next day, and Kelsey Pavlovianly chirped, "Nunnets!" Awesome.

Kelsey's being a good big sister. She's occasionally too rough when she wants to hold or kiss Mia, so we have to keep a close eye on her.

We won't have internet access at home until the 23rd or so. I can walk out into the neighborhood an pick up an unsecured wireless network, which is enough to check e-mail and post to the blog. Last night, I was walking around with the laptop in my hand like a waiter holding a tray, watching the top of the screen to see how strong the connection was, when I walked across the street. Suddenly, I didn't feel the ground under me--I had stepped into the meter-deep gutter. I knew it wouldn't end well, so I tried to protect the computer. It flew up into the air and landed upside-down on my neck, and I grabbed it before it could fall off. I bruised my left leg just above the knee, but was lucky to not have suffered worse.

Things are great here, but I wouldn't recommend walking into meter-deep ditches.