Today was my last day at the downtown school. It is just too ridiculous for me to keep coming downtown for one student for 30 minutes, so he has been moved to another time and I will be taking over the kids from Stuart up here next week. I had hoped to take advantage of this last "it's practically a day off!" by going out to Sanarudai lake and walking around the park for a bit, but I have managed to catch a cold that lost no time at all in setting up shop in my sinuses, so all I really had the energy for was biking there and home. No side trips, grrr.

Colds in summer are no fun. Salad and iced tea is a poor substitute for soup and hot lemon and bourbon.

Annoyingly, my new breadmaker does not make bread. All I get is flat hunks of something that might, if things had gone differently, been bread. The handy picture guide suggests that it is either a yeast problem or a mixer problem, and since my yeast is making quite tasty pizza dough just fine, I'm assuming it's the mixer. But I don't know exactly what the problem is or how to fix it. I shall have to quiz Andy when I am in Tokyo next month, as he has the same brand and is always producing perfect loaves.

I've decided to spend my birthday week in Tokyo. I might see if the Sasakis will be at home for the first weekend and go say hi. I'd like to get to Tokyo proper a few days before the start of the long weekend...Andy will be working but I figure I can have a salon day and get my yearly haircut. It is tempting to get myself some birthday colour for my hair (a figure of speech and not hair dyed to look like a party) but since I have zero interest in the upkeep, I will probably refrain. I figure the Friday and Saturday will be spent mostly getting drunk, and then I will spend the Sunday feeling like I've aged sixty years instead of just one. Also, if I'm lucky there will still be cheese, as he brought back 5 kg of various exotic Australian cheeses this time.

I'm still annoyed at the Japanese government for turning my birthday week into a national holiday and essentially pricing it out of my travel budget.

I made this cake again, for about the fifth time. Strawberry season has been over with for a while, but I had a peach that was a bit past its prime and also an apple that has been living in my crisper for rather longer than it should have, so I chopped those up and sprinkled some cinnamon and brown sugar on top and baked for an hour and lo! It is good. This cake is the fruit equivalent of the soup I make in winter that involves me going through the vegetable drawer and tossing everything that is still remotely edible in. Only with more sugar and butter.

The hot came back. Over the weekend the temperature dropped 10 degrees and it rained on and off (without even any typhoon to cause it) and lo, it was glorious. GLORIOUS. The other night I actually needed a blanket while I was sleeping. For about 10 minutes and then I kicked it off again, but still. Thankfully it is not anywhere near as hot as it was before the sudden break, but it is still squarely back to sweaty weather.

Hitomi commented last night that she felt like summer was over. The kids are heading back to school next week, most of our fun summer stuff has been done, fireworks are over, and then that lovely fall-like weather sort of clinched it. Of course now we will spend most of September fanning ourselves and pretending that it is not still mid-summer.

Saturday was baby Zuzu's first birthday party. She spent most of it looking rather bewildered. She liked the attention, and she really, REALLY liked being allowed to eat pocky (to the point of refusing birthday cake. You cannot take a piece of strawberry and whipped cream cake, melt it in your tiny pudgy hand, slobber on it, and then use the damp melted chocolate to draw on yourself. No contest.), but you could tell she was having one of the weirder nights of her short little life.

I also got my last professional pedicure of the season. Last year they extended the summer prices to September but she didn't mention that this year, so alas. I mean, I have plenty of shiny new colours to do my own with, but it is just not the same when I try to give myself a foot massage. Plus I can't draw pretty designs, even if they are pretty simple like the last two.





And so you don't go out with images of my toes, here is the birthday girl.

I have turned into some sort of nail polish fiend this summer. Well, I've always gone through phases of collecting colours but generally I stuck with stuff from the 100 yen store. Then I fell in love with some pricier brands (and the fact that the colours stayed put for more than 24 hours and didn't smudge 6 hours after first applying). THEN I discovered that brands like OPI are way more affordable in America AND that it costs less to, say, order three bottles of nail polish and pay international shipping than it does to take the bus downtown and buy one bottle from the one store that sells it. It doesn't help that the yen is trouncing the dollar right now.

Some students asked me the other week if I used crayons to colour my nails. Awww. No, my darlings, sensei is a grown up and can afford actual bottles of real grown up nail polish. Real grown up neon pink nail polish.

(Also, many of my students wonder aloud if I am wearing acrylic or gel nails and then try to find out by attempting to PRY MY NAILS OFF OF MY FINGERS. The hell?)

Game week is almost over. Tomorrow night I promised the girls some pictionary and my single junior high boy some Quiddler (I love it so much when kids demand the spelling-type games. Ha ha, joke's on you, you are being edumacated!) Unfortunately Stuart has a serious doctor lesson going on at the same time. The good news is that his lesson will start AFTER the hysterically laughing high school girls have finished, so it shouldn't be too bad.

The Skype lessons with Hirofumi are going well. We do have a tendency to go over the 30 minute limit, though, which you really start to notice when it is past 11 pm. It's nice having a super motivated student, and nice getting that extra money delivered straight to my bank account, and super awesome that his nearly-three-year-old son is often in the background humming the Imperial Death March.

It is Obon in Japan now, or as I like to call it, "Game Week". Half the students don't show up and the ones that do are kind of punchy from the holidays and heat and sort of can't believe they are being made to go to English class. And for myself, I feel the need to celebrate getting halfway through August once more, so I tell the kids to put away their textbooks and pull out the board games. It's still mildly educational if I explain the rules in English, right?

OH GOD SO HOT WHY.

The past few days my apartment has reached 37 and I don't know if it's gone under 31 at night. At least, it was still 31 when I checked the temperature at 1:30 last night. Good times. If you are wondering why I am still in the apartment and have not fled, it's because I do not have the energy to move.

It's not so bad if I can convince myself to go outside. Well, it's still hot, but if I'm doing something fun it's a little more distracting. On Tuesday I decided to go up to Hamanako, since I was finished work at 11 am and all. The lake itself was not so great, in the full force of the sun, but there is a little hilly area with some temples that is shaded by trees and that part was rather nice. Still humid as anything, but nice. I wandered around for a while before dehydration threatened to kick in and I caught the bus back downtown. I promptly froze the entire way as the AC was set too high and my shirt was completely soaked. Then I rode my bike home. Then I collapsed in the shower. It was a nice day but I couldn't help but think that I could have taken the bus fare, bought a couple of iced chai lattes from Starbucks, and spent the day in one of their comfy chairs with a book.

Masami still hasn't talked to the mother of my Tuesday student, but I am assuming she is going to try and change the schedule. If this happens, I won't be working downtown anymore and will instead take over some of Stu's Tuesday classes back here. I'm trying to take advantage of what essentially amounts to Tuesdays off at the moment (especially since on my actual days off I am rarely already downtown and ready to go by 11) but dear god, the heat. I want to do things like go exploring or ride my bike out to the beach but I'm worried about sunburn and heatstroke.

This weekend is probably mostly going to feature apathetic lounging in front of the fan, but on Sunday I am meeting a friend for beer. Ah, beer. It's hard to say which I love more in August, ice cream or beer. Luckily I don't usually have to choose.

It's been a pretty unusual summer, weather-wise, so I feel like I haven't really said this as much as usual yet: OH GOD SO HOT WHY.

Yesterday I rode downtown to get my train tickets to Aino for the fireworks well in advance and managed to get a sunburn. I was wearing sunscreen but evidently it was no match for the power of the sun. That, or I just sweated it right off. It's kind of amazing that this is the first time I've managed to burn the tops of my hands (but not my fingers, it's a really good look), considering that the bike is my main form of transport. Luckily it's just a mild burn and is already fading, but today is the beach clean/yoga event so things may take a turn for the worse.

The fireworks were great, I really missed them last year. I ended up going alone as everyone was either working or in Tokyo. Actually, Yuka ended up going with her boyfriend at the last moment but they went to Fukuroi station which meant they had to try and get on a train with the entire population of all the cities west of Fukuroi. I had managed to get back to Hamamatsu, stop for a burger, get home and shower by the time they made it back to Hamamatsu station.

The weather is looking very August-y for the rest of the week. I much preferred last week's abnormal weather. It was still hot but not as humid and the nights were downright pleasant. Ah well, at least it is not hitting the high 30s all the time like it was last summer.

I found a cheap flight to Naha in Okinawa. I'd have to stay for five full days, which according to everyone ever is too many days in Naha. All the nice beachy resorts require a car, though. Possibly I could go here for a few days, cycle around the tiny island, have a day of kayaking/snorkeling before going back to Naha for some sightseeing and returning home. The question is how much I want to spend. I am really leaning towards going to Thailand over the winter (elephants! sunny beaches! massages! incredibly cheap Thai food!) and I don't want to spend too much before then.

Tomorrow is time for the Fukuroi fireworks! They're back, hurrah! It looks like it at least won't be raining but the possibility of strong cloud cover looms.

Well, Thailand is not happening for next month. I was waiting to see if Andrew could work an extra day for me and the prices jumped 24 000 yen, which is more than I'm willing to spend for a mere week. (Especially since I will get two weeks for winter and definitely need to go somewhere then.) So what am I doing for that week in September? I suck at just staying home, I get bored and downright feral by the end of the week. But the Monday and the Friday both are national holidays here, which means tickets and hotel prices both soar and become very rare. I can probably talk Andy into doing something one long weekend, a fancy dinner out in Tokyo or something, but that still leaves the rest of the week. Hmph. Hmph, I say.

Not that I ever got truly blasé about earthquakes, but I am a lot quicker to run for the doorframe than I was pre-March.

Had a good weekend. It was raining on Saturday but rather mysteriously, the Abekawa fireworks weren't cancelled. It did stop raining about an hour into the show, which was when we ventured forth. Zuzu was curious about the shiny noisy things but eventually decided that falling asleep was more to her taste. This weekend will be the Fukuroi fireworks so I'm hoping the current nice weather holds. I just got my new rainy weather shoes today so I'm pretty optimistic that that means it will not rain again for the entire month.

We had the hardest time finding a movie theatre that was showing a subtitled (as opposed to dubbed) 2D version of the latest Harry Potter movie. There was nothing at all in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, or Shimizu. We finally found one in Fujieda, but it only had two showings, the earliest one starting at 6 pm. I was expecting the theatres to be all Harry, all the time, at least for a week or so after it opened. Mysterious!

I have a whopping 30 minutes of work tomorrow, so I'd best get to bed so I'm well rested.