It's about time I give an update

The biggest news, I’m staying another year.
After 6 weeks of indecision, suddenly it just seemed like the thing to do. The job’s not perfect, I sometimes feel guilty as I have loads of free time to study Japanese, browse the internet, or read. But my Japanese continues to improve. I’m a bit tired of forming 50-minute-long snaking paths through the desks in class. The lukewarm school lunch is depressing to think about. My favorite time of day is recess, where I play volleyball or basketball, sometimes teaching American games to varying success. And I really like elementary school now. I’ve gotten better at controlling the kids, and I just always play games, which we both enjoy.

Winter. Though I’m grateful for four years of California ‘winters’, where occasionally we played shirtless beach volleyball on January nights, they obscured the full unpleasantness of real winter. There’s little central heating and houses are poorly insulated to boot. I use a kerosene heater for my bed/living-room but the warmth dissipates through my Japanese sliding door into my tundra-like kitchen. Schools are even worse, but at least I don’t have to wear a skirt. I wear the same pair of long underwear night and day only taking them off to wash them or myself.

I'm really looking forward to winter ending. The fortune I pulled at Narita shrine agreed with this. It told me to expect lots of good fortune in spring and summer. I'm kinda screwed for autumn and winter, but until then.

Since coming back from Taiwan, I've been kind of stagnating/hibernating. Partially because of two changes of plans concerning my parents 10 day visit. I’ll blame it on winter, too. I never wrote about Taiwan, but here are two Taiwan photo albums with accompanied text. Taiwan was pretty awesome, despite two considerable travel errors. Coming back to cold, working man’s Japan after a two week vacation made the decision to stay harder.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062275&l=d71cc&id=13302886
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2062278&l=687a4&id=13302886


Our crew started a Friday tradition of dinner and drinking at a small izakaya (Japanese pub equivalent). It’s about 9$ for all you can drink for one hour. Not sure which variety of the scores of identical tasting Japanese beers it is. To complement a few pints, the four of us each get the set menu consisting of a plate of 4 types of raw meat and raw garlic to be grilled in the middle of our table, French fries, miso soup, white rice, and some radishes.