In the latest news, “the gang” will be sundered soon. After months of waffling and wondering, Yumi took the plunge and got her work visa; she’s leaving for Australia at the end of November, planning to stay a while with her host family from a previous homestay before moving on to Melbourne. Martin gave notice at work; he’s quitting at the end of December, and will probably leave Matsue. And Cody abruptly quit last week when his manager, after telling him he could have two weeks off in October, changed her tune when he actually applied for the time, saying he could only take two days off. Well, Cody’s going to China with his brother, and his brother had already bought a plane ticket, so Cody quit. He said it was the final straw. Both Cody and Martin were pretty disillusioned with their work at ‘Peppy Kids English School.’ Cody is looking for work in Matsue, because he and Reiko are going out now, and he doesn’t want to leave her. They both seem happy, though Reiko told Yumi once that communication was exhausting – she speaks just a little English, and he speaks even less Japanese. It’s really challenging for them.

So what am I to do in January? I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to spend all my time with Seiji – that way lies trouble – and I don’t feel that close to anyone else. ARGO is closed now, so a major social outlet has disappeared, and I have yet to find a way to fill that void. Cleve and Jennifer are busy with the new ARGO English School, so I haven’t seen them much. I’m feeling a little lonely. I want to meet more people, and practice my Japanese too. I get the opportunity to speak Japanese at aikido, drum practice and shigin (although at shigin, Kanda-sensei is often clearly frustrated by my inability to understand what he’s trying to teach me. I don’t mind it so much, cause I’m a “show me” learner; I learn best by watching. But my progress is slower because of the language barrier.) I’m open to a relationship, but there are so few interesting guys out there, and I’m very aware of the time ticking away until July.

After a long period of doing very little besides working, I suddenly have had a period of cultural and artistic opportunity. I saw Noh at the castle, then a great Canadian play – subtitled – at the Kenminkaikan (Prefectual Hall), and an amazing drum festival last week. In a week and a half, I’ll be taking part in the Do-Gyo-Retsu drum festival in Matsue, as part of the Doyukai (“Drum Friends Party”) group. I’ve been to two practices, and will attend one more before the festival. My jogging is sporadic, especially this week, when I’ve been battling a head cold, but I’m still at it. My aikido practice has suffered the most, but after the drum festival I’ve promised myself to attend more often. The biggest challenge I’ve taken on this fall is to write the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in Hiroshima on December 7. Trying to prepare for it reminds me that I’m a very lazy student. It is extremely difficult to make time to study. And I feel deficient in all areas except kanji (Chinese characters), where I note definite progress. I find kanji the most interesting of all aspects of Japanese, but they are not as useful as conversational Japanese, so I really need to concentrate on – groan – grammar. I sympathize immensely with my students these days.

Another six months have rolled by, and at the beginning of October I started another term. A few students left, but I gained even more. This time, I was ready for the change, and even excited by the prospect of it. Some students are repeating the same grammar class, because they haven’t improved enough to move up. For them, I try to make new exercises so they won’t feel everything is exactly the same and lose motivation (motivation is a very important word in a language school like ours – students who lose motivation quit, or don’t renew their contracts. Student satisfaction is also very important) Other students have moved to a new level, and are very excited or nervous about the new classes. I have students in my Take Off class who are being taught by a foreign teacher for the first time – for some of them, it’s a very daunting experience. So despite my head cold, I’ve been throwing a lot of energy into making the classes exciting and welcoming.

Masaya was one of the students who left. He’s a high school student in his last year at Kita High, the most prestigious school in Matsue. It’s very hard to get into. Students in the last year of high school spend the bulk of their time preparing for the all-important entrance exams to Japanese universities. Masaya has refused to name the university he wants to get into, I think because he’s afraid to jinx it. It took me a long time to like Masaya; he’s always tired when he comes, and spends his few minutes in the lobby before class hastily scribbling out his homework. He often shows up in a rumpled school uniform, with the sleeves rolled up. He’s a little awkward, and arrogant too – an interesting combination – and said once he spends any free time sleeping and that his favorite place in Matsue was the pen section of Imai bookstore (strange though this is, I understand it; I’ve always enjoyed the stationery sections of stores – all that unspent potential…). His one big passion is the oboe. He plays in the wind instrument club at Kita High. I went to one of his concerts once, and he looked rapt, totally absorbed in the music, as he played a solo. He was so embarrassed that I came, and said it was a terrible concert! But I watched his English improve over the year that I taught him, and goaded him to make full sentences and give more information than a “Yes” or “No” answer, and grew to like him and laugh with him and see him relax a little. Now his younger sister Machi is in my class. She is delicate and doe-like, with a shy smile full of shiny braces, and Masaya is very protective of her. But compared with last year, when I taught her for a while, she is already a little more outgoing and confident. The Take Off class she is in contains my youngest student (Machi is 16) and my oldest. Masami is a gentle soul who just retired from a lifetime career with the Ministry of Transport last April. In his youth, he was quite active, and enjoyed climbing mountains. Now his greatest dream is to travel to Europe to see Renaissance art. But his wife was in a terrible car accident about seven years ago and needs a lot of care, so he takes care of her on the weekends. He studies really hard, more than any other student, but his progress is painfully slow.

This week the office has been a little – goofy, for lack of a better word. On Tuesday, Mayumi-sensei went to Tokyo for a big company meeting. She was telling Miyuki that it was strange because EVERYBODY LOOKED THE SAME. I imagined a big conference room full of Mayumi-sensei clones, all moving as one. Miyuki said “Kowai!” (scary). She’s been decorating for Halloween; plastic jack o’lanterns have popped up in all the classrooms. Sam sent me a Halloween magazine and Mayumi-sensei is fascinated by the pictures.

When I came back to work from lunch today, a prospective student was in the interview room with Miyuki, but Mayumi-sensei seemed blas about it. “We think she’s a spy,” she told me. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but it’s well known that all of the eikaiwas (English conversation schools) spy on each other. We’ve sent out spies, too. I ran into the assistant manager from our school in Yonago on her way to GEOS last spring, before we knew it would close. Usually the spies are neatly dressed young women, the managers or assistant managers from other schools and towns. Machiko thought she saw this girl handing out Kleenex packages with NOVA ads on them in front of the station. NOVA has partly recovered from its disastrous collapse last year and opened a new school just on the other side of the station, a five-minute walk away. I don’t know where they got the teachers. I actually suggested that Cody apply there, though with great reservations.

MY STREET

I should tell you a little bit about my neighbourhood. I live in 園南(Gakuenminami, or University Park South). The various neighbourhoods in Matsue are called towns. My street doesn’t seem to have a name. It is just three and a half short blocks from the looming modern architural colossus that is the Kunibiki Messe, a convention centre that seems half-empty most of the time.  My apartment, NT 202, is a shoebox-shaped box with only four apartments. Directly below me is Honant, a German professor teaching at the university. I have met him a few times in the driveway, and although he seems quite pleasant, he looks like a stereotypical serial killer. Across the hall from me is a pretty girl in her mid-twenties who speaks no English. The longest contact I have had with her is when I (apparently) accidentally left my door open and ajar – la, la, la… – on my way out one Saturday evening. Well, a grisly murder in Tokyo had recently been splashed across the headlines, so my thoughtful neighbour imagined the worst and called the cops. When I arrived home, two young policemen were there waiting, and questioned me in extremely broken English, wondering if my place had been broken into. I apologized profusely to them and to her – “Sumimasen, sumimasen, gomen nasai!” I felt like an idiot. Finally, in the bottom left apartment is a crochety, grim woman in her late fifties, who muttered ‘konnichiwa’ in an unfriendly way to me once when I saw her on her bicycle. Her bicycle has sort of handwarmer bags on the handles; most people take them off in summer, but she doesn’t. I suspect she’s a witch; she seems to have a cast a spell to keep the spiders away from the building this year. I kind of miss them. I see my neighbours very rarely.

My street is usually very quiet. There are a few family homes occupied by aging couples, and a cluster of prefab apartments. Just to the east, my street ends at a small canal. Across the canal and over a little bridge is the busy Ichbata bus terminal, meaning that though there is little traffic on my street, I have a significantly higher chance of being hit by a bus than the average Joe or Yoshi. Next to the bus terminal is an elementary school, flanked on two sides by canals and as secure as a prison. These days, I sometimes hear the students practicing on (presumably small-sized) taiko drums in the mornings, or singing songs to a tinkling piano. Sometimes I see the kids on an outing, led by their teachers, clinging to a rope and all wearing the same bright yellow caps. Cute.

Back to the west, following the road towards downtown Matsue, is a paint store, an upscale appliance store, a church with a parking lot where a few local children ride their bikes and scooters, a cluster of the ubiquitous vending machines that light up the night and a small warehouse for processing newly-caught shijimi clams. These tiny, tiny shellfish are considered a delicacy in the area. Close to that is Peace Boat, a stylish little hair salon that opened last spring, then a small shed smelling sweetly of straw where an older man manufactures tatami mats, and finally a modern little caf in progress called Scarab 136; it will open sometime this month, and is advertising for staff now. The good businesspeople of Matsue do seem to believe that you can never have enough hair salons or coffee shops. Finally there is Kita Park on my right, and the Kunibiki Messe on my left. I usually zip through the Messe parking lot on my way to work, evading the schoolkids riding their bikes like bullets home for lunch – especially the boys. I love crossing the bridge, although I often have to fight the wind on my way. I drive awfully fast, if there aren’t many people on the bridge; it’s a thrill to feel the wind in my hair. That same wind, however, is problematic if I decide to wear a skirt to work; this is why I usually wear slacks.

The street continues past the intersection onto the Kunibiki Bridge, but it doesn’t feel like my street anymore. On the north side, surrounded by a chain link fence overgrown with shrubs and weeds, are the abandoned outdoor pools. Seiji remembers playing there when he was a child, but for some reason it was closed. The high dive platforms rise high above the empty concrete basins. In the winter, herons made their nests in the tall grass safe within the fence. I sometimes paused in my jogging to watch them, almost invisible, standing like statues near the pools, the curve of their necks mimicking the curve of the ladders in the pool.

There’s an excellent little bakery a little further along, where the road follows one of the bigger canals.