I talked to Sally and Chris yesterday; they are home from the hospital after a trying start with baby Joey (or Joey-chan, as I want to call him). Sally had to have a Caesarian section, so the week was very uncomfortable for her. She’s pretty tough-minded, but used to being in control, so I think she was thrown for a loop. And Joey had jaundice, so he had to be kept under special lights in another room for the first few days. Mum and Jim went to visit them, but they both had colds, so wore masks and washed thoroughly so Joey wouldn’t catch their colds. Jim told me he and Mum had to wash up when they were leaving the hospital too. He didn’t understand the purpose. Sally said it was hospital policy, and he said, “Oh yeah. I wouldn’t want to catch a baby.” Sally didn’t appreciate the joke. Chris has been ‘a superstar’, Mum said – like we didn’t know he’d be a good dad, too. Anyway, they sound tired but happy now.

I’m keeping track of the ACTRA strike from home, and I’m pretty upset about it. I don’t understand why the producers have taken this moment to play hardball with our livelihoods, unless they have taken it upon themselves to try to break the actors’ union at what seems an advantageous moment. If that is so, I hope we can effectively stand up to them. They seem remarkably unreasonable in their demands.

Last week, I went to a nabe party at Kaya. Kaya was closed to the public, as it was a private party, and the sign was dark. I was the second to arrive, and chatted with Seiji and one of his previous students (he sometimes teaches English at Shimane University) while we waited for more people to arrive. The two large tables had been turned sideways to become banqueting tables. Each featured a large pot of water and a burner and was surrounded by the makings of nabe, a Japanese stew (originally Chinese, I am given to understand, as many Japanese customs are…). The tables held bowls of mushrooms (shiitake and another kind), negi (a cross between green onions and leeks), carrots and hakusai (Chinese cabbage). As people started to arrive, the pots were heated and pork, scallops and fish were added to the water to make a simmering broth. Salty miso paste was also added and then the vegetables were thrown in. One pot also received a generous dollop of kim chee (hot Korean pickles), for the adventurous eaters. I had four helpings (hey, they were very small bowls!), and a few beer. Stephen, the older English teacher I met before New Year’s, Reiko, Kei and Yukiko and Yoshi also came. I also talked to Kaoru, who I had met at Kei and Reiko’s party, and her friend, for a while. I also chatted with Seiji and he patiently listened while I puzzled out what the menu said. I’m beginning to (slowly and painfully) read things in Japanese. Yukiko told me the Tiffany Museum would be a good place to go (and free to residents of Matsue in the winter). I went home early, feeling pretty tired and smelling strongly of nabe – I’m afraid the smell kind of sticks to clothes and hair.

On Monday, Seiji took me to the Tiffany museum and accompanying English-style gardens. The gardens are nice, with beautiful hedges and greenhouses full of tropical plants, but not at their best in January. The Tiffany museum is almost unbelievable. Oh. My. God. Spectacular is the first word that comes to mind. It is unfortunately closing in March; the city of Matsue didn’t come through with the things it promised the museum, namely a high-speed ferry from the nearest airport and a high-class restaurant. Such a shame.

The entrance to the museum, all of marble swathed in vines, tells the visitor that he is stepping into a different world. The foyer is a large, marble room with whisper-quiet female attendants. It smells warmly of the accompanying French bakery. A room of Japanese artwork known to have influenced Tiffany and the art nouveau movement preceded the museum. The room included among its other treasures a tall, cream-coloured vase with a gorgeously stylised winter landscape and a collection of “manga” by a famous Japanese artist. “Manga” now means the ubiquitous Japanese comic books (not just for children, and often soft-core porn), but this collection of 17 volumes included exquisite drawings of animals, fish and flowers. Western artists etched his images on dinnerware. Beautiful.

The next part of the museum showed some early jewellery and oil paintings by Tiffany. There were some rooms of art nouveau furniture; a little over the top, but beautiful to look at. His paintings were pleasant enough – pictures of the seashore and Italy in the 1920’s – but nothing special. It was his other works that would make him famous. The stained glass is fantastic. Peacocks, deer, forests, wisteria, eggplants (?), fish; all are incredibly rendered in colour. I was riveted by a lamp depicting autumn leaves (near lamps portraying cobwebs and bats; I joked that it was Tiffany’s Hallowe’en collection). And I’m not a big jewellery person, but the necklaces and brooches displayed in the museum were amazing; huge opals, sapphires, amethysts and other stones displayed in curlicued gold, silver and enamel. It is a remarkable display. Why is all of this in Matsue? Because of all Japan, Matsue is considered one of the cities least prone to earthquakes (this makes me feel much safer…). Don’t put irreplacable stained glass in a place prone to earthquakes. Why is this collection in Japan? I couldn’t tell you, since I couldn’t read the signs.

After the museum, Seiji and I grabbed supper at a mawaru-sushi place. This is one of those places with a conveyer belt of food, where you can just grab your dinner at random from the belt. They tally the cost of the meal by counting your plates and noting their colour (some plates cost more than others, but it’s a cheap way to try a lot of different sushi). I finally tried natto here. Natto is a dish of fermented soybeans, often mixed with soy sauce and eaten for breakfast with rice, but it is notoriously evil smelling; although it is cheap and very healthy for you, a lot of Japanese people won’t touch it. I actually didn’t mind it, but I can’t imagine myself ever saying, “Umm! Yummy natto!”

This week was good at work. Last week, I felt like I spent the whole week playing catch-up with my class preparation, but this week I got caught up and got some work done on next week’s classes as well. I’m now regularly teaching about twenty 50-minute classes a week. If one of the reasons I came here is to overcome my natural reserve, I think it’s working. I’ll never be as energetic and outgoing as Melanie, but walking into class and keeping “the balls in the air” forces me to be engaging and involved and active. The old showman’s adage “never let them see you sweat” comes to mind.

I have some favourites in my classes. One of them is Masaki, a tennis coach in his late forties or early fifties who comes for a private lesson once or twice a week. He’s gaunt and hollow-cheeked and weathered a dark brown by years of sun, with sharp cynical eyes that sometimes flash with humour. He is notoriously reticent, but I’ve been making some inroads. Unlike my group lessons, where it is sometimes easier to put on a bright persona and “bully” people into participating with Mary Poppins-esque cheer, Masaki responds best to directness. He can talk for ages about tennis. I also like Takako, a ruddy-cheeked, slightly plump and vivacious university student at Shimadai (Shimane University) who works split shifts at a bakery near the castle. She comes for her lessons between her morning shift and afternoon shift and leaves me a journal to correct and respond to every week. I like my Interchange class of two: Tomohiro is a young, round-ish, bespectacled man studying education at Shimadai who gets into the lessons and enjoys putting on a falsetto to read the women’s parts in class dialogues, while Hironobu is a very good-looking but frequently late fireman with a dry sense of humour. The two of them together make for a very fun class. I also like my Encounter group lesson class on Thursday nights (Yoshio, Naoko, Noriko, Keiko, Naomi and Tetsuke); they really get into the class and ask a lot of questions, which I like. We laugh a lot.

We got a fax from Tokyo in the office the other day; seven teachers at NOVA, our biggest rival among the English schools, were arrested for trafficking pot and cocaine. Drugs are a serious taboo here; even offences involving small amounts of marijuana are dealt with very harshly. So when I joked that I guessed I would have to stop growing weed in my apartment, Ryoko-san was not amused. “Sa-RAH…” she lamented. I was unapologetic.

It finally snowed here; big, fat, wet flakes of snow that clung to clothes and hats and hair and eyelashes, and made the streets very treacherous. I stepped out of the office on Thursday night at 10pm into the back parking lot and admired the icing-sugar dusting of snow. Biking slowly home, I followed the single, broad black stripe of a fellow cyclist’s track through the slush. It showed all the next day, too; the island under the bridge was smudged, its outlines softened by the thick snow falling. With the smugness of one who didn’t have to drive in it, or commute very far, I enjoyed the gentle flakes. Going to Mister Donut to observe my coffee ritual, I looked into the Terrsa, a building of many uses near the station. In its large glass lobby, there is a huge television screen where I looked up at a sumo match. Sumo is very much alive, and more popular than I ever expected. The fleshy, powerful men in their elaborately tied loincloths and traditional hairstyles face off in stillness in a circle of earth for long seconds, then there is a swift flurry of limbs and one has been driven from the circle and the victor remains, with his long face (it is considered rude to show delight at winning a sumo match; sympathy for the loser is more appropriate). There are apparently over seventy official techniques to employ in throwing your opponent from the ring.

That evening, there was another Nihonglish at Kaya, but it was very quiet because of the weather. One of my students, Naoko, came with her sister and cousin, and we chatted for a while. I showed pictures of my nephew to everyone I knew. I also talked with Colin, one of the organizers. Congratulations were in order; he just proposed to his girlfriend of six years, and is getting married this summer. I also got locked into conversation with Adam, an American Marine who is looking for work after moving to Matsue with his Japanese wife. He has stereotypical American Marine views, including the strong belief that going into Iraq has stopped terrorist activity against the States because the world is sufficiently cowed to avoid angering the sleeping giant. Colin and I (politely, being Canadians and all) begged to differ. But it was mostly pleasant. Things are gearing up for next week, when “The Disco” will be help at Hydro Reaction, one of the clubs across the river. Kaya will be closed, because Seiji is one of the DJs (by name of BANGKOK, although he gets embarrassed when asked the reason), as are Aki (AKI-CHAN) and Reiko (REYKO), who I met before New Year’s, and Cleve from Chicago (who just goes by CLEVE). There’s one other DJ, but I haven’t met him yet. I’m looking forward to getting out and dancing; should be a fun night!

On Saturday, I left right after work and cycled as quickly as I could to the budokan for my aikido class. I’m looking forward to warmer days, when my bare feet don’t freeze as I make my way to the gym on the second floor. This time I made it for 7:30 and had a moment to warm up before a booming drum signalled the beginning of practice for all the classes. I resolutely ignored the kendo practice on the left of the hall, though I could hear occasional shouts and the clatter and clash of wooden swords. But I was tired and hungry; not ideal conditions for practice. I felt very awkward and slow, and I felt my partners were graciously putting in some practice time with the clumsy Canadian just to be nice. We practiced some more nikyo techniques, then some familiar kote-gaeshi maneauvers which I still managed to suck at, and lots of rolling (I kicked my partner). The sensei had a particular student to come up and demonstrate each maneuver, and I thought wryly (and not for the first time) that it is a mixed blessing to be the sensei’s punching-bag (though in aikido, throwing-bag might be a more accurate term). I met Yamamoto (brave soul, he practiced twice with me!) and Midori, a tiny young woman who has been practicing for five years. They’re really nice people. I feel that because my technique is still rough, I’m rougher than I should be, throwing people just a little harder than I need to, and my footwork is confused and difficult. I’m being hard on myself, and I know some stuff I’m progressing well at, but I really wish I could practice more than once a week!