Whee! The business cards are here! I feel so...official. I wonder how long it will take me to get rid of all of them, including the ones I am going to hand out to friends all "check me out! Business carded! Woot!"? I'm guessing something close to "the rest of my life".

Another three teenagers absent with the flu today. All the ones who showed up were named Yuko, so clearly the name is some sort of magical protection against swine flu. Just a thought for anybody trying to name a baby girl in the near future.

One of the Yukos is going on a homestay to New Zealand in a month. She'll only be there for something like two weeks, maybe less. I think I'm almost as excited as she is. Possibly more, because after I told her that New Zealand accents and idioms are nothing like the Canadian version, she seemed a bit alarmed.

Turns out Liam was spot-on about not letting Masami wear her mask yesterday. It's actually kind of terrifying.

Also, it appears I need a new battery for the laptop. I brought it to school today to show this video to my older classes. First I gave them a modified transcript of the first bit of it, up until "Why? Why? Whyyyyy?" with the "I am a pumpkin" taken out and some easier words substituted for the more difficult ones. They had to read it and try to guess what was going on, and then we'd watch the video and they'd be all relieved that it was a story about a pumpkin and not a slasher picture. However, during the first viewing, after I'd had my computer on for all of 10 minutes, it died right at the end of the story and I had to go home and fetch the cable. A 10 minute battery life? What good does that do anyone?

Day one of Halloween Week is over. It went about as expected...the toddler class was adorable chaos (with Liam spending the first few minutes crying about how he wanted to go home and not allowing Masami to put on her skeleton mask), although everybody settled into it once we started making lollipop spiders. We saved the snack part until last, since previous experience has told us that once three year olds get their hands on a bag full of candy, they are not doing anything else, no matter how much you cajole.

The junior high classes were flu-decimated, though. (Decimated in the figurative sense. I don't have the math skillz to figure out actual decimation numbers.) Hitomi, my Monday co-teacher, was out sick, one kid out of three showed up for the 6:20 class, and only two kids came for the last class. I fed them eyeball cupcakes and we played games, including one 25 minute game of Twister.

I painted my nails black for the witch costume and I am reminded of why I can't be bothered to do my fingernails anymore. Sure, it looks nice, but it chips so fast. (My witch look, overall, is more "professor at Hogwarts" than traditional scary witch. I bet magical nail polish never chips.)

I certainly hope next weekend has better weather. The gray drizzly cold of the past few days was perfect for staying home and making cupcakes and reading, but would be rather less great for temple sightseeing. I got some economy shinkansen tickets to Kyoto, but I can't decide if that's a good thing or not, since the only available seats were in the smoking section. I guess I can always try to sit in the non-reserved section if there's anything available, and the money I saved on a return ticket is enough for at least one nice dinner or lunch for the entire trip.

This year in Halloween baking:

I feel like fall happened really quickly this year. September was dryer than usual, so we had a nice long spell of hot-but-not-humid weather, and up until two weeks ago I was still wearing mostly summer clothes and sleeping without a blanket. Since then things have rapidly gone to jeans and long sleeves and sleeping with two blankets and having to wear socks a lot more. Mostly this is good news, like the fact that the people down the road who sell mikans for cheap have already started (mmm, vitamin C), but there is a rather worrisome aspect to it, which is that flu season has started crazy early and is wiping out entire classes at the local schools. Last week I had three absences from kids who weren't actually sick, but who weren't allowed to leave their houses because so many kids in their class had gotten sick.

I also had an absent student today. Masami told me that her mother is quite worried on my behalf, and that when her daughter returns next week, not only will the kid be wearing a mask, but the mom wants me to wear one two. It is probably worth noting that Masami delivered this message in the tones of one who knows it won't be taken seriously, and indeed, I promised not to kiss the kid and take my chances maskless.

In other fall news, Halloween is almost here! Starting Monday I have a week of almost no education whatsoever. I've already sorted out all the candy into days and just have some pumpkins to laminate and I'm good. I wasn't struck by any inspiration costume-wise this year, so I will be a witch. Black skirt, black shirt, some sweet new over-the-knee black socks with silver stars...I'm set. Unfortunately the school witch hat is a bit past its sell-by date. The wire holding the brim in shape has been knocked about a bit and as a result, there is a rather rakish dip. I sort of like it, but I'm not sure I can wear it for the entire time. I'll keep an eye out for the very twee tiny hats on a headband so popular here.

After Halloween we have a rare long weekend, and I am doing something different and heading to Kyoto instead of Tokyo. It's been about eight years since my one and only trip to Kyoto, which is just a shame. Sadly, I couldn't get a room for the Saturday night (unless I either wanted to pay a lot of money for an overpriced room or else go really cheap and share a dorm, and while there are certain circumstances I can see myself sharing a dorm room again in, Halloween in Kyoto is NOT one of them.), so I'll be there from Sunday to Tuesday. Here's hoping I'm in time to see the beautiful autumn foliage the city is famed for at this time of year, although I do have a tendency to miss these sorts of things by about a week.

Call me crazy, but I don't think that Acid Milk is the best name for a company that delivers dairy products to kindergartens.

I saw the most amazing outfit today. Sadly, I couldn't surruptitiously snap a photo, so I'll have to try to use my words. I hope I can get the visual across.

The overall effect was that this young man belonged in a Tim Burton movie. All in black, with the shirt and the jacket being layered and sort of billowy. And the pants...my word, the pants. Each leg had a strap attached to it. And each strap was then attached to the other leg of the pants. It was like...well, you know if someone is wearing overalls, but they've let the bib part hang down, and you can see the X shape made by the suspenders flapping around their legs? Like that, but attaching the legs to each other. I so very desperately wanted to come up with a reason to make him run, just to see what would happen.

See, I will never be fashionable. I do like certain trendy things, but I do not like ALL trendy things just because someone said I should. And for me, function and comfort generally win out over looking like I stepped off a magazine cover. That said, I am almost a little bit sad that my outfits will always be prosaic.

In other news, I am all visa-ed up. Got my re-entry permit and everything. But then when I stopped by city hall to change the info on my gaijin card, I found out I now have to travel to the middle of nowhere to do this, since they've divided it up by wards now. Fortunately, I happen to work in the middle of nowhere on Wednesday mornings, so with any luck I can find the place tomorrow after work and finally be done with the whole process.

Sometimes Japanese efficiency can be a little TOO efficient. Masami brought me out to a second hand shop to buy a new (to me) gas range today, where we discovered that as of October, they can no longer actually sell them (or at least display them? Or something?) due to problems with old gas ranges in the past, but we still bought one anyway, so maybe mine is black market? I really don't know. Anyhow, I needed someone to come disconnect the old one for me, since I'd tried and that hose was not going anywhere. We figured that since it's a long weekend, the soonest they could come out would be Tuesday. Just before I headed to the gym today, Masami let me know she was going to call them to set up the appointment. No sooner had I walked into the locker room than she mailed me to let me know he'd be here in 30 minutes. The look on the face of the lady who was working the front desk of the gym was very "Um?" as I hightailed it out of there no more than five minutes after arriving.

And he just showed up, and everything is in place. He didn't seem concerned by the fact that it was a used range, although he did mention that the right burner was a bit close to the wall and that I should use the left one more, a point he made by pointing to them both several times and saying "Main. Sub. Main. Sub." while I nodded.

So now do I head back to the gym? Or do I hit up the grocery stores instead?

(On the yay side of efficiency, my visa is already processed and ready to pick up on Tuesday. One step down, two more to go!)

Typhoon'd!

So it turns out that while drifting off to sleep in a storm is all cozy and nice, drifting off in a typhoon is rather more difficult. That was some crazy loud wind last night. Plus it kept shaking my apartment, and while my mind was all "it's just wind", my body would go "Ah! Earthquake!" So not very relaxing.

It appears to be over now, though. The wind is still strong but at a reasonable level, the rain stopped hours ago, and the clouds are even breaking up.

The news is full of pictures of broken stuff. No clue so far how badly Hamamatsu was hit, but so far it hasn't been featured, so I'm guessing nothing exciting happened here.

Mmf. Stupid early mornings. How do you people get up before nine am on a regular basis? It ain't natural.

I started the visa process today. I got up early and went down there and spent all of 10 minutes waiting. I was pretty shocked...I mean, it didn't look busy, but I still settled in with a book and was not prepared to hear my name called before I was at least halfway through. So now I'm just waiting to get the postcard that will tell me to come back and get the visa. Hopefully today was a sign of positive changes and I will get this whole process with over quickly.

Sunday was such a beautiful day. High twenties, low humidity, perfect. I was hanging out near the beach, dressed in summer clothes, enjoying a bbq and hoping I wasn't going to end up with my first sunburn of the year in October. Today was rainy and chilly and I wore tights with my dress. Ah, fall.

Apparently the current bad weather is caused by an approaching typhoon. I think that might be the first one to hit our area so far this year. Unfortunately, it's a big one, and the news reports say things like "Melor, which means jasmine in Malay, may make landfall on Kii Peninsula in western Honshu on Thursday and rip through the archipelago on a course similar to a 1959 killer typhoon that left thousands dead in Japan", although it then hastens to mention that building standards have gone up since then. Eh. This may be the biggest typhoon to threaten Japan since 1959, but until/unless it actually makes landfall and sweeps my plants from the balcony, I'm expecting a day of heavy rain and nothing more. That said, I think I'm going to lay in foodstuffs for Thursday tomorrow, so that I don't find myself having to go grocery shopping in the middle of a typhoon.

The photocopier is broken. Again. Some more. Masami and I are about ready to start beating Andrew with it until he actually gets his ass in gear and buys a new one. My returnee girls tonight, though, greeted this news with cheers, because that means I was unable to photocopy (BORING!!) stuff from a textbook and instead we pretty much had to play games for the entire lesson. Hah, fooled them, though. I made it educational.

There is this card game I absolutely love for teaching. You can make it as non-educational as you want (as on Halloween, when we play for candy), or you can make them ask each other questions. The way to play is fairly simple: if there are four people, you choose four cards from a deck. Say, the 4, the ace, the queen, the 7. Doesn't matter. You make sure you have all four of each card, shuffle, then deal so that everyone playing has four cards. The object of the game is to collect all four of one kind. You do this by choosing one card to pass to the player on your left. It's a fast paced game. You pick up the card you are given, glance at it, decide to keep it or pass it on, and go. The game is over when one player collects all four cards, at which point they throw them down and reach for whatever is in the middle of the table, be it candy or question cards. The key is to always have less stuff in the middle than there are players. So, say, three questions to four players. Once that first player has grabbed something, it's a free for all among the remaining players to see who will be left out. In this case, the person who doesn't manage to grab a card has to answer all the questions that the other players got.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to making any question cards yet, so I've been using the ones that Andrew made for his adult students. The girls enjoyed most of them (although "Do you think the government should be helping the poor?" got an incredulous "I don't care!!". Ah, the children are our future.), but I decided that they should write down some questions of their own for future games. I told them they could either write safe questions that they wouldn't mind answering ("What's your favourite subject?"), or for more fun, questions that THEY wouldn't want to answer but thought would be highly amusing to ask their classmates ("What kind of boys do you like?")

So they were all "giggle tee hee" and I was all "Smirk, smirk, look at you, using your English", and we ended up with a bunch of questions, most of which I will be able to use. Among the ones I probably won't use, however, are "Draw a map of the world!", "What are you, crazy?" and "What are you looking at??", although please believe me when I tell you that I'm tempted. There was also one "I think you should study science hard. And politics.", which I rather liked. Maybe I should mix some life lessons in with the questions? "Drink 8 glasses of water a day!" "Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables!"

It's here! It's here! Oh, fraptious day! It is October, at long long last!

Why October, you ask? Well, it's not quite fall (girls in fur boots and woolen toques nonewithstanding, it is still in the high twenties and the night time lows are in the low twenties, so there's not exactly a chill to the air), but it is most emphatically not summer. You can tell by how I am sitting here wearing long pants without the fan on.

Although September was pretty great this year, too. The humidity left pretty early and so it's been mostly warm and Canada-summery for a few weeks now. Except this week. This week has been overcast and rainy, except for today, and it is supposed to start up again. Needless to say, I did a bunch of laundry as soon as I woke up this morning.

The visa renewal process plods on. I went to City Hall today and got my tax forms, so now I just need a contract from Andrew (I spend most of my time contractless. After the first year, we just mutually agreed that I wouldn't up and quit and they wouldn't up and fire me. So far so good.) and some other papers from Masami, and then I get to go start the actual application process.

Andrew gave me beer and TimTams for my birthday. Does he know me or what? Unfortunately, this means that I am now sitting here sternly telling myself that I do NOT need another TimTam tonight, since the damned things have about six gazillion calories per biscuit. Although I DID spend some time tossing Ewan into the air this afternoon. He's 10 kg now. Surely that counts as some sort of workout?