If you ever face a situation with seemingly insurmountable odds...

...hum the Indiana Jones theme to yourself. This advice comes to me courtesy of Evelyn, who learned it from David, my predecessor. Try it! It works!

After my grueling two-day work week, I had a great weekend. Saturday I met up with Aaron and Evelyn (both JET veterans who live ten minutes away from me), Mitch and Mike (new guys, like me, who live about a 40-minute drive away), and Patrick. Patrick was a JET back in 1990--the second year of the program's existence--and, from what I've gathered, has basically lived in Tsushima ever since. He still teaches English, though is in no way affiliated with the JET Program anymore. He came by to meet me Friday night, bringing the gift of unpowered dehumidifiers.

I don't know how these things work, exactly, so I'll attempt to describe them here, and post a picture later. Basically, it's a little clear plastic box with a hard plastic lid covering a thin layer of foam. The inside of the box is divided into two main chambers, with a third, smaller one on top. The bottom chamber is empty, while the middle chamber is full of what appear to be foam pellets. The plastic separating the pellets from the rest of the box has holes poked in it, that keep the pellets from falling through but still allow air to pass through. Finally, the foam seal on top looks like the little piece of paper/plastic/foam you have to pull off when you use a ketchup bottle for the first time.

Operating instructions: 1) Remove hard plastic lid. b) Place apparatus in area to be dried. iii) Make a sandwich, and watch TV.

That's all there is to it. Step iii is optional, even. By some bizarre magic, these little pellets will absorb the moisture in the air, letting it condense in the bottommost chamber. That chamber will eventually fill with water, at which point you discard the whole thing and buy another.

Five minutes of tireless research has taught me that the mystic pellet ingredient is known as a desiccant, and I conclude from such a foul-sounding name that there exists some amount of this material that will kill a man.

At any rate, they work amazingly well, and don't use a bit of power. Thus, my daily electricity consumption is still limited to my refrigerator, my AC (which is set on 28 degrees), my laptop, and one light. I don't have a dishwasher, and sitting indoors for most of the day in an environment decidedly not rife with the stench of yellow sauce means I don't have to wash clothes every three days--that keeps my water consumption down, too. I neither own nor have any need to own a car while I'm here, and so my oil consumption is limited to indirect sources: the oil consumed by the boats and trucks that delivered the food that I bought at the grocery store, plus the occasional carpool to the riv--...

Oh! River! Right! So I met all of those folks, and we drove to... a river whose name I can't remember. Its name means something along the lines of 'the place where a kind of fish lives.' I'm a failure at remembering place names here so far. The important part, however, is that we had a great time. There was swimming, and jumping into the river from a tree branch twenty feet in the air, and walking upstream while being gawked at by the gathered Japanese and Korean tourists. (I didn't do any of the jumping from trees, but I was sure to take a picture of it.)

After we swam a while, Aaron, Mike, and I talked baseball for what must have been an hour. It was a lot more fun than I first realized to find someone else to talk sports with. Aaron's from Philly, so he had some choice words to share with me regarding the parentage of Braves fans, but he readily conceded, admitting that Philadelphia as a town hasn't won anything related to professional sports in something like 30 years.

After that, Evelyn, Aaron, and I showed Mike and Mitch some of the shopping-related sights in Izuhara. We had supper at Roxy's, the "American" restaurant in town. They serve burgers, fries, pizza, fried chicken, steak, and A&W root beer floats. Aaron says he's never been a huge root beer fan, but ever since he came to the island, every time he goes to Roxy's, he winds up getting A&W.

Dinner was a lot of fun--we collectively bashed the pipe-in music, which apparently was an XM station specializing in pop, rap, and R&B set to a reggae beat. They weren't always just covers of the song--we all agreed that it was Usher singing "Yeah," just with a lot more of the drums than I remember being in the original.

We finished off the evening by playing Simpsons Road Rage at Evelyn's. I wish I'd brought some games like Taboo or Catch Phrase with me. Nobody in the group thus far has wanted to play spades, although there have been some riveting Egyptian Rat Screw matches.

Sunday was spent watching South Park episodes, downloading music, and reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I didn't realize how much I'd blazed through the book the first time around--I'd forgotten everything except for the very big ending.

So I've finally actually started tinkering with lesson plans for my classes. That's a good thing, because I'll be out there teaching in a little over a week. I'm surprisingly calm about it--I spent the better part of two years dealing with having to convey information on a daily basis to a group of 10-15 teenagers who didn't want to be there. This group doesn't have to clean tables, though, and they'll actually understand what the Japanese boss is yelling at everyone about.

Pictures! Pictures! As promised! Picasa rocks!