Last Monday night I went with Ian to Kirishima for work. I really enjoy going down there with him on Mondays. It gives us a little more time together, and it keeps me from doing the same old, same old come-home-and-be-a-blob-for-the-rest-of-the-night routine. I think he enjoys me going with him as well because I keep him company along the way. Anyway, after I dropped him off at work, I went to this nice little walking/running trail that follows the river. As I started, I walked past a girl about my age who was just starting a run. I continued on my walk, but I heard a pitter-patter of feet behind me. The girl had jogged up to me. She asked in Japanese where I was from, and I said America. Then she asked me something else, and I muttered something in Japanese that showed just how little Japanese I know, so she said, “Do you speak English?” YES! LET’S COMMUNICATING IN ENGLISH! We had a great little chat. She said that she lived in Canada for a year and studied English. I told her that I live in Hitoyoshi (it’s much easier to say I live there because NO ONE outside of Kuma-gun knows where Yunomae is) and teach English. She said that she was from Yatsushiro, which is just up the road from Hitoyoshi!! She now works for Toyota in Kirishima. I told her that my husband teaches an eikaiwa class at the Sony factory, and I ride down with him on Monday nights. She said that she runs in that park quite often, so maybe we’d meet again. Awww, I made a friend! I love random encounters like that!
Once she jogged away, I continued my walk. Despite the fact that the sun had gone down, and it was pitch black I wasn’t concerned. I was a single woman walking alone in a deserted park at night. Would I ever do that in the States? NO!! However, I’m not scared in Japan because I know that nothing is going to happen to me. I’m REALLY going to miss that sense of security when we get back in August. Ian and I were joking the other day and said that we’re probably going to be robbed because we’ll forget to lock the front door, forget to lock the car doors, or simply just leave our purse/wallet sitting around where it shouldn’t be. Once you live in a place without problems for so long, your cautiousness tends to melt away.
After Ian got off of work, we went to this nice shabu shabu restaurant that Ian has been raving about for a date night. What’s shabu shabu, you ask? It’s a special Japanese dish. There’s a pot of spiced boiling salt water sitting in the middle of the table, and you let the meat/vegetables/noodles/whatever you order cook in the hot water for a few minutes before eating it. It was delicious! It was a bit expensive, but we haven’t had a date night in a while, and I’d never had shabu shabu, so it was worth the experience, I guess.
The next day, Tuesday, was quite the day! I woke up terribly congested but went to school anyway. Ian said that throughout the night I was coughing and sniffling. I had nursery schools that morning, and on my way I nearly hit a bird. It was in the middle of the road, and generally whenever you get close to birds, they fly away. I didn’t think anything of it as I continued to drive toward it until I was right up on it, and it didn’t move. I’m not sure if its wing was broken or what, but I had to swerve out of the way in order to avoid it.
As I was leaving my second nursery school, one of the really little kids was crying in the hallway and tugging on his teacher’s leg. I could tell that it was a fake cry and was just for attention. As soon as the kid looked at me, he stopped crying, stared at me, and gave me a WHAT-THE-HECK-ARE-YOU????? look. I guess white people are confusing for Japanese toddlers who have never seen a white person before! Ha, ha, ha. As soon as I walked away, he went back to crying and tugging on his teacher’s leg for attention.
Whenever I checked Facebook that morning, I had noticed several people posting things about Chinese smog floating to Japan and the air condition having a PM 2.5 rating. At first I ignored it, but I saw more and more messages about it, so when I got to my junior high school, I did a little more investigating and found out that it was a very serious condition. Smog from China had blown across the sea and was settling over our island of Kyushu. Yikes! While I didn’t think that it would affect us way out here in the middle of no where, I was wrong. For the past week, if I look off in the distance it is quite hazy. (However, it’s not as bad as it is in the city. People were saying that you could see a nasty yellow/gray cloud that was the smog hovering over the city. Gross!) Everyone has absolutely been freaking out. That Tuesday the teacher’s called an impromptu meeting before lunch to discuss the smog. I was getting ready to use the microwave to warm my lunch like I do every day when I noticed all of the teachers sitting down at their desks. I thought maybe I’ll wait on warming this soup….. The media has been warning people to stay inside (not like it’s going to matter because Japanese houses are quite drafty) and to wear face masks if going outside (not like that’s going to help because the tiny air particles can still get through those masks). The Japanese hate the Chinese, so this is just one more reason for them to do so.
Since I was so congested and coughing/sniffling so much, both on Tuesday while I was at my JHS and on Wednesday when I was at the ES I got asked if China had gotten me sick. Ha! I told them no, but time after time I was told that it was probably China’s fault. ……..either that or hay fever. It was as if there was no other reason to be sick other than those two things.
On Tuesday I was randomly on Kayak and looking at ticket prices for different flights. Ian and I are still tossing around the notion of going to Cambodia over Golden Week, so I checked prices for that. Then I whimsically looked into flight prices for when we go to Tokyo in August. While we have booked our big international flight home, we hadn’t booked from this area to Tokyo yet. I played around with the airports near us—Kagoshima, Kumamoto, and Fukuoka only to find a SUPER cheap flight leaving from Fukuoka for only $54 through Air Asia!!! Originally my supervisor told me that she would take us to the Kagoshima Airport since it’s the closest to our area and to book a flight from there. However, I emailed her the link to the website showing the $54 ticket and asked if it would be okay to take the bus to Fukuoka and leave from there. She basically said, “For $54 you can do whatever your little heart desires.” While it doesn’t really matter how much my ticket is since the BOE is paying for it, that means that we only had to spend $54 on Ian’s ticket, bringing the total price of the ticket home up to $1,916.04. While that sounds like a lot, you have to consider that we spent about that much for one ticket last summer when we came home, and that was a direct flight that didn’t have a three day layover in Honolulu. Hurray!
I’ll stop here, but I’m far from being finished. It’s a slow process, but I’m catching up!
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