Random thoughts

Whoa! I forgot I changed my blog layout. I went to the blog and was quite surprised by the color scheme. What do you think?

Just a few things today. I took Caspian on a walk earlier. He's developed a bit of a hacking, choking kind of cough lately that we were afraid was due to his collar choking him on walks so we got him one that hopefully will be better. He seems to like it. Here's a picture of it in action.



Here is another picture from the walk. I'm glad that after all this time I still love to just gaze at Mt. Fuji. It's better to do this when I'm walking Caspian than when I'm riding my bike home because of safety reasons. Unfortunately that limits my lighting. This picture is actually lighter than real life. It was pretty dark when I took this. It was 4:55pm. Such is the life of living in a country with no daylight savings time.



Speaking of this great country we live in, we recently got into a discussion of how great the train system is here. Especially the Shinkansen system. Did you know that people are looking into the idea of building a high-speed train line in Texas. It would connect Houston to Dallas, Houston to Austin, Houston to San Antonio, Dallas to Austin, and Austin to San Antonio. They're calling it the Texas T-Bone. Check out the website! I think this would be a great idea for many reasons. High speed public transportation is a great thing and very convenient. Plus, this system would create a lot of jobs for people to build it, run it and maintain it and jobs are we need right now. In addition to that, it would jump-start the economy in Texas by greatly increasing tourism. Just think how much more often people in Houston would visit Dallas and vice-versa if there was a convenient way to get there that would save them money on gasoline. They go to these other cities, spend money at stores, restaurants, bars, etc. and then see the prices at their own stores, restaurants, and bars drop because people from other cities are doing the same. If train lines like that could be built all over the country, the US could save extreme amounts of money on oil and usage of oil would slowly but surely be decreased assuring that we could have enough for the future and decreasing our dependency on oil from the Middle East. Plus tourist money would be spent all over improving our own economy. The public transportation industry needs to be improved in the US. We cannot keep depending solely on cars and airplanes to get us where we need to go. Trains are the answer. Sometimes to move forward, you need to look back and see what worked in the past. That's my opinion.

Finally for today, here is a picture of some coloring I did while I was bored at work today. It is a family tradition of my family to color Christmas pictures and then write the date, time and temperature. I don't have any coloring books so I printed off something from online and colored it. I think it was actually colder than what this picture says but this is what my Accuweather iPhone app said so that's what I went with. Enjoy!

Fun with finals and more!

It's finals week at school this week which is always great. It means a few days of no classes so a lot of time relaxing at the desk. Of course it also means having a lot of tests to grade. Tests this week have been good, bad, and some in between. The usual. My favorite part of any of the tests that I wrote this term was a section in our ichi-nensei International Course test. We taught them a lesson on Australian slang to prepare them for their trip to Australia next summer. So for the test I wrote a paragraph full of Australian slang words and had them translate it into "normal" English.

Here's the papargraph with the normal English words in parentheses:

G’day! (Hello!) How ya goin? (How are you?) This arvo (afternoon) I was having a barbie (barbecue) in Brizzie (Brisbane) with my mates (friends). I was eating some Roo (kangaroo) and a Sheila (woman) came up and asked me if she could have some tomato sauce (ketchup). I had put heaps (a lot) of tomato sauce (ketchup) on my tucker (food) so I didn’t have any more. I told her “sorry” and she told me, “No worries!” (It's ok!) Then she said she wants to have brekkie (breakfast) with me tomorrow. Crikey! (Whoa!) You don’t believe me? It’s Fair Dinkum! (true!)

The students did pretty good on it although I doubt many of them really got it. Oh well, I was entertained at least.

Here's a funny essay that a girl wrote in another class that is about to go to Australia in March. The question was, "What are you nervous or worried about for your trip to Australia?" I hope you can read it.

I like the end. "I think miss you my long hair." It'll grow back, I promise.

Last weekend after Kelly aced her GRE (!) we took advantage of being in Tokyo and ate at Outback Steakhouse. It was very much like the real thing. Not exactly but very close. The waiter spoke to us in English, and it's the first time since we've been here that we've paid our bill at the table. There was even a service charge (tip) which was kind of refreshing, not that I'm looking forward to going back to paying tips when we go home. Here's my meal:


That's definitely a Bloomin' Onion there. As greasy as always but oh so delicious. Outback special medium rare, garlic mashed potatoes, and cole slaw. A caesar salad preceded all of this.

Kelly about to devour her meal:


And here is the Santa Claus hanging out outside the restaurant. We thought he was funny so we took some pictures of his descent down the chimney.

Here Kelly tells him "Good luck!"


He goes down waving goodbye.


And down to make some little children very happy (or help out grilling steaks in the kitchen downstairs - one of the two.)


Finally, as with most places, the flu has been going around a lot lately. Many students have been out with it (regular - not swine.) Each day they write the names of the students out with the flu in blue chalk on the absent student board. Absent students without the flu are written in white chalk. And everyday in the daily information page we get on our desks there is some section reminding us that インフルエンザ (influenza) is still around so we should wash our hands and use rubbing alcohol constantly.

At the beginning of each month there is a section in the information sheet telling the average number of students that were absent, late, and left early per day for each month. This is what was in there today. For those not familiar with Japanese writing, 月 means month so ４月 means April and so on. The top line is absent, the middle is late, and the bottom is left early. Notice how the numbers have jumped the past few months.



That flu doesn't mess around. One thing I thought, however, is that those numbers are still a lot better than you would see at most American high schools. I mean, even in the month of November, 9.3 students were tardy each day. If a school in America had that number, imagine how ecstatic the principal would be. Hopefully things stay that way in Japan and improve in America.