Spring summary.

Things are really heating up around here, both figuratively and literally. Definitely literally. Temperatures have gotten up to almost 90°F (32°C) lately. For now it's just been a dry heat, but rainy season and then the legendarily humid Kumamoto summer are just around the corner. How will a born-and-raised Californian girl handle the subtropical heat? Stay tuned to find out.

Moving day.

On March 25 I moved out of my temporary apartment and into my official J-3 lodgings. Compared to the extended-stay hotel kind of places I'd been in for five months, this apartment is palatial. It's on a bit of a busy street but the neighborhood is nice and there's a couple of lovely parks in the alley out back. All in all I'm just glad to be living in a place with a full kitchen and more than two chairs. One of these days I'm going to host some kind of gathering or movie night here. I can seat six or seven people now! And I can cook for them!

Our hanami view.

On March 27 Caroline, Morgan, and I decided to break in our new apartments with a hanami, or flower-viewing picnic, in one of the nearby parks. It's an annual tradition in Japan that families, friends, and coworkers will gather under blooming cherry trees and have a meal and drinks amongst the falling petals. I tried my hand at making hotteok, those Korean pancakes made of deliciousness, but it just wasn't the same as the ones from the Tokyo street vendors. Oh well. It was a nice afternoon, anyway.

I also had the chance to pay a visit to Kumamoto Castle on March 30, surrounded (naturally) by blooming cherry trees. The view from the top of the donjon is just spectacular. I appreciate that Kumamoto is a city where you can find just about anything but you can also see that nature is just a short distance away.

The donjon, framed by cherry trees.

View toward our apartments and Luther from the top of Kumamoto Castle.

Inside Kumamoto Castle.

On April 1 it was time to don a business suit for my first day of teaching English at Luther. Well, really it was my first day of staff entrance ceremonies and teacher meetings. But then a few more entrance and opening and welcoming ceremonies later (Japanese schools are waaay more formal than American ones), my teaching work really started. I teach about 200 students total (most of them high school first-years) and I have a Japanese partner teacher in every class. I enjoy it immensely, though it's quite exhausting.

On the way into the park.

Some of my favorite students are my junior-high second-years. In American terms, they'd be in eighth grade, and thus probably total punks, but in Japan they're still cute. I got to accompany them to a welcome event on April 26 at a park across town. We all boarded a train together, and then walked the rest of the way in a line. Katie and I brought up the rear.

Jump rope with the first-years.

Up until then I'd only seen the kids in their classroom wearing their formal suit-and-tie or sailor-outfit school uniforms and doing homework. But in their t-shirts and jeans, hanging out with their classmates at a park, it was much more like camp. I got to bond with some of my second-year girls over games of tag (I was instantly declared to be the oni, or It) and Screaming Toes, a camp game I was thrilled to be able to teach them in my halting Japanese. Bonds were forged that day. I'm going to love working with my junior high kids.

Another recent event was Sports Day on May 11, which is a much bigger deal in Japanese schools than in American ones. The entire school came out, even in the drizzly weather, and performed various exercises, races, and stunts. All of the high school boys did crazy gymnastic formations, concluding with human pyramids consisting of all the boys in each class year. It was fun to watch.

Left to right: yellow team, red team, purple team.

Second-year girls' Maypole dance.

Third-year boys doing gymnastic formations.

Third- and second-year human pyramids.

To keep the 1500-meter race entertaining, some of
the soccer (or maybe baseball?) players ran each lap in
a different costume. Here one is as Santa.

Purple team's ōendan. Literally "cheer squad," but much more
intimidating in practice. Check out their hakama outfits!

That about covers the major events up till now, I think. As you probably have guessed, my Internet access has thankfully, finally, been restored. My spare time, however... I don't think I'm going to see that again for a while. I do love my job, even with its six-day work weeks (school on weekdays, church on Sunday) and frequency of being at school past 6:00 in the evening. But the spring-themed stationery I bought purely to write letters to people just sits on my desk long after the real cherry blossoms outside have all disappeared. I still have a pile of emails to reply to, dating back to February. I'm planning to tackle those this week, but we'll see how school goes.

A couple of random fun notes before wrapping this up: on March 16, we made the local news. Apparently the criteria for being selected to march at the front of a St. Patrick's Day parade in Kumamoto are (1) wearing green, (2) looking sufficiently non-Japanese, and (3) standing outside a 7-11 near where the parade begins.

J-3s on parade... and on the evening news.

Also, on April 21 we were treated to basashi, the raw horse meat that Kumamoto is famous for, courtesy of a local pastor. Should I feel guilty that it's delicious? (It's delicious.) But it's also raw meat, and on top of that, raw horse meat, so I can only eat so much at a time before my brain stops me from consuming any more.

Basashi.

I'm really looking forward to the next two years in this city. Yes, there are bad days, and sometimes the weather or the pollution (it blows over here from China, and it is brutal) is extremely unfriendly. But I work with some amazing people, and some amazing students, too. In future posts I'll talk about school, church, and Caroline's and my recent trip to the nearby mountains of Aso. But for now, dinner. 

That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.
Ecclesiastes 3:13 (NIV)