Sick again

I've been just being me since getting out of the hospital. But yesterday I started to feel shitty and became sick. It is has been awhile since Ive been sick. Ive had to take the two days off. And Ive been cooped up in this house.
But the past couple weekends have been a blast. First was a 5 day chilled trip to Seoul Korea where I visited the DMZ and eat some great kaibi and baby back ribs.
This past weekend I went and saw Nachi-san and the Nachi waterfall for the first time. It was great. I never expected to find all the temples and shrines at the top of the mountain. I always forget to bring my shrine/temple stamp book. I still only have the original stamp from when I bought it a Koya-san a couple of years ago.

World Trade Center

Osaka's WTC is in the port area off of the wangan highway. It is some 60 story building with a Wooly Mammoth exhibit at the top. A real head of one on display for only 1200 yen. I passed on that and instead went to a toy show in one of the hall's in the adjacent trade show building. Afterwards I went outside and noticed that there was a cosplay event going on and everyone around was dressed up in anime get-ups. But pass that group and further down the boardwalk was an radio controlled car tournament underway. Each heat had about 12 cars in it with maybe 25 laps. It was pretty cooold to watch. I've never seen anything like it before. Occasionally a car would smack into the wall and bits of plastic would fly every where. One collision resulted with one of the RC cars flying over another and into a wall further up the track. With every crash would come a cheer from all the onlooking kids. Found a Subway on the way out and grabbed a sandwich for the drive home. I was pretty tired since having been up till 5am at a camping party in nearby Nakatsu. I think it might have been the first party Ive been to where everyone was Japanese which put my Japanese to the test. It was a pretty mixed group with people from the immediate area and with people from Osaka.

Shaken

Yesterday I got my car back from having to 'shaken'. Shaken is the mandatory evaluation which every car must pass through every 2 years or so. Needed to replace the electronic harness in the steering wheel, but it seems everything else checked out ok. What I don't understand is why my shaken was only renewed for just one year and not two? Perhaps it has to do with my mileage which is over 120000k. I've put over 25000k on the car since I bought it last summer.

Typhoon 13, Shan Shan, was suppose to spoil this 3 day weekend.  Many people were ruling out doing anything, but alas the typhoon went straight north and only brought light rains to Wakayama ken.  I suppose to go Go-Karting today, but we cancelled it and I stayed up late last night and my friend then mailed me in the morning and said let's go, but I wasn't ready to go at all.  Plus the track is wet.    Also, it is still raining on and off here in Miyama.   The weathe can be completly different just 30 minutes away, because of all the mountains and that we live on a pennisula and all.   The winds were strong last night though.  I thought my 50 year old house was going to blow over.

Past few days I've been just trying to get back into the groove of teaching.    Summer break seemed so long.   Teaching last year seems like a distant memory almost.  But all in all it has been going smooth.   I feel a lot more comfortable than I have while living here though.  So comfortable infact that I it's so hard to get up in the morning.
     Last Friday I went to cut/harvest rice crop with the 4th and 5th grade classes at Kawaharago ES.  Good stuff.  I knew that it was going to happen at one point or another.  We only cleared out a small field.  So it wasn't too hard to do.    
  Otherwise most schools are getting ready for their undoukais.  I have been to a bunch in the past two years and am not really looking going to any this year, but it looks like I might be going to a few in the next few weeks. 

It was great to get kyuushoku again after the long month of eating from Lawson and random bentos.  Yesterday we bibimba.  It was good of course. 

Finished showing some of my students 'Ferris Beuller's Day Off'  which I think is a great movie.  And one of the teachers at one point told me that it was good because the Ss could connect with the school setting and wanting to ditch school.   I also showed it because the movie was filmed mostly in the area that I am from, the North Shore of Chicago.   Areas like Highland Park, Winnetka, Glencoe, Lake Forest, and Wilmette.    So it was a way to show how things are in the US, because it was an every day sort of movie, nothing too crazy happened.  Except that maybe you couldn't just sing a parade at anytime or toss a rare Ferrari out a window into a ravine.  

First day back at school after a long summer vacation.  Went to Sougawa today, which is way further in the mountains.  Bears roam the mountain sides in Sougawa.  A few bears have been spotted this year alone.  Japanese bears are small, but people take cuation.  So much caution that all the school children have small bells attached to their backpacks to help ward off the bears. I have yet to see one the bears.  But I've seen a lot of animals around in the past few months.  Foxes, tanuki, wild boar, monkeys, deer, and some huge hawks, but no bear.  Not sure that I want see one anyways.
    Miyama chuu tomorrow.  Should be a good day, but I will very tired by the end of the day.