It's a beautiful, pale yellow morning in Matsue, sunny and pleasant. I can hear children playing in nearby Kita Park, birds are chirping quietly outside my window, and there is a very faint hum of traffic from the bridge. It has been nice for a few days, contradicting my complaints about Matsue's changable weather and frequent rain.

I am recovering from a sudden flu that hit me hard on Monday night. I was sitting at home, working on my Japanese, and suddenly went "Oh, no..." I've been awfully smug about my Canadian-bred hardiness while everyone around me got sick, so it had to come sometime. On Tuesday, I sniffed and sneezed and apologized all day while my students watched me with a mix of pity and horror. I begged a ride home with Yuri, one of my fellow teachers, because the fever and chills had kicked in and there was no way I was riding a bike home. I got home, dosed myself with noodle soup heavily laced with garlic, ginger and wakame (a kind of seaweed, chock-full of vitamins), and went to bed shivering. My bed is very warm, though, so I quickly warmed up. I fought a battle that night, and had confused, disjointed dreams, but woke up victorious with no fever left. Yesterday I taught my first six-class day and was drained at the end of it. Now I have a cough, but otherwise feel all right.

On Monday afternoon (before the cold), Seiji and I went to the buke yashaki, or samurai house, near the castle. It is preserved from the 1700's, and is very simple but beautiful. We couldn't go into the house, but the way the house is built, with all the screen walls open, you can see the interior very well. The house is raised slightly off the ground, so that you have to step up on worn stone steps to enter. The floor of all the official areas of the house are covered with tatami mats. There is a small Shinto shrine in the entranceway. The garden around the house is beautiful, carefully designed to reflect aspects of nature. The ground of a Japanese garden represents water and is often raked so that it appears to have a current (cats ignore this convention, of course; I have seen more than one garden with cat tracks across the 'river'). Rocks in the garden represent islands or mountains. I guess trees represent trees... There is usually a basin or pool with water in it as well (real water, not sand). Some pools have large, brightly-coloured koi, or carp, that rise to the surface with their mouths open when you approach, hoping for lunch.