Five-day weekends rock!

Apparently, teachers in Japan get three days' vacation time that can be taken anytime during August. Since I have neither a) a car, nor 2) my re-entry permit (allowing me to, say, take a ferry to Korea on a whim), I couldn't think of a particularly good time to take those days. So I ended up taking them this week.

Friday night I hung out with Evelyn, Aaron, and Rob, three of the veteran JETs on the island. Evelyn made the fixins for some temaki (手巻き), and we stuffed ourselves. After that, we played some Simpsons Road Rage. I had only played the singleplayer, which left me disappointed, so I was pleasantly surprised by the multiplayer. It's like Crazy Taxi, but you get to drive around Springfield.

Saturday night we tried to get all the Tsushima JETs together for dinner. This wound up a failure--of the eight or so we were hoping for, one was out of the country, and two were in Fukuoka. Refusing to give up, Evelyn, Aaron, and I met Mitch (from Maine) and Michael (from San Francisco), and walked to a yakitori restaurant in either Mie or Toyotama--I can't remember which. We had a great time, ate lots of food (none of which was horse), and then walked to Maruwa, the local drugstore. Mitch and Michael were both English majors, and Mitch apparently speaks practically zero Japanese. This is compounded by the fact that his supervisor apparently speaks zero English. He lives in a standalone house with an amazing view, but he's apparently a half-hour's drive from the nearest supermarket. This means he essentially has to get a car, and until he does, he has to rely on the help of others to get his groceries and such. I really feel bad for the guy. It makes me appreciate just how amazing my setup is--five minutes' walk from a small grocery store, and a half-hour's walk from a mini-mall with a burger joint. He doesn't even have Internet in his house yet. That, coupled with his not speaking any Japanese, is really wearing on him.

Sunday night marked the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. Midnight was supposed to be the ideal time for viewing, so I packed a bag with my stargazing chart, a bottle of water, a beach towel, and a flashlight, and set off at around 20:00. Wanting to find the best place for viewing, but not having a car, I made the 20-minute hike up to the high school, which sits atop a mountain overlooking the town. The streets were absolutely empty and, except for the cicadas (which are going 24 hours a day here), completely silent. I got to the school, and made my way onto the sports field, which is about the size of the Myers quad, and has absolutely no grass. I found solace in this last fact, because while I know cicadas and roaches are ultimately harmless, I'd much rather not be visited by any of the island's centipedes or huge spiders, thank you very much.

I let out the towel, lay back, and realized that I was looking at the stars in Japan for the first time. "Freaking amazing" doesn't do it justice, but it comes close. Obscured somewhat by haze caused by humidity, and at times blocked out by the clouds passing by, there were nonetheless a whole pile of stars up there.

After a few minutes of relishing, I realized I haven't gotten my bearings here yet, and so I don't know which way is north. Not having anticipated this, I didn't bring a compass, and so I tried to navigate by the constellations. This turned into a complete disaster. I know precisely three constellations: the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and Orion's Belt. (Come to find out, those aren't even really constellations; they're asterisms.) It was too cloudy for me to make out Orion's Belt, and, after looking and swearing for twenty minutes, I realized that half of the Big Dipper was below the horizon. I therefore had no idea what was going on, and had to spend another half-hour poring over star charts before I decided I'd found the southern sky.

I eventually gave up on learning the constellations, and decided to watch for shooting stars. It was about 23:00, and I figured it was about to be awesome. The clouds parted for a while, leaving me a view of almost the entire sky. I did indeed see some shooting stars, but only one every two or three minutes. The ones I saw, however, were spectacular--easily the most stunning I've ever seen. One of them was huge, and streaked across the entire sky, from one side to the other.

I wanted to stay well past midnight, to give it a chance to pick up, but my mind started wandering, and I began imagining what this schoolyard would look like in a zombie movie/videogame. That, not surprisingly, led to my being creeped out, and after about a ten-minute meteor drought, I decided to call it a night. All in all, it was awesome--I can't wait until winter, when they tell me the sky will be a lot clearer.

Monday through Wednesday were spent mostly loafering around. I'm rereading the sixth Harry Potter (much more slowly than the first time), as well as Ishmael. In addition, I've adopted a new strategy to learning Japanese.

Instead of using my textbook, or just learning stuff arbitrarily, I've begun taking pictures of signs around town, stuff that I pass by every day on my way to and from work. I look up the kanji in those pictures, and try to understand the signs from that. So far, so good--I can read the sign for the police department (in case the parked police car outside isn't clear enough), and I know now that the quarry I explored the other day was clearly marked "off-limits" and "dangerous." The book I'm using for kanji reference is the same one we used in my high school Japanese class, and was given to me as a graduation present by my sensei there.

I officially cooked for the first time last night! I christened my Japanese kitchen by stir-frying pork with some onions. I almost added soy sauce, but it tasted mighty fine without it.

I've almost got Picasa up and running. There should be links to pictures soon. Honest.