Day 20, April 2 (Tues)

The weather here bounces around. Yesterday was chilly, today was warm. This morning was sunny, the afternoon was cloudy, the evening it rained.

After breakfast (eggs with negi[green onion]), I walked to Nishiyama Koen [park]. I didn’t really know the way, but I knew the general direction. However, railroad tracks have few convenient crossing places, so I was forced to wander until I found one. As a result, I took the long way, and arrived at the park after close to an hour. The return trip took me about 30 min.

Nishiyama Koen has tons of sakura trees, and it was lovely.

The walkways are paved with white stones, so it seems as if I am walking on cherry blossoms.

There’s a small zoo at the top, with some cool tufty-eared pheasants, 

very vocal monkeys, and red pandas. They have FIVE ‘lesser pandas’. They were so cute. 

Did you know they use their paws to eat?

I walked to the top of the hill and got a nice aerial view of the city.

(That’s my apartment. Well. The building blocking the view of my apartment.)

Then I walked down, down, down, and saw that some of the food stalls were in business. Well hooray! But... so many choices. I don’t like takoyaki (octopus) but they always look so good. There was also yakitori, candy apples, and karaage [fried chicken]. I went for the chicken because they had a ‘small’ option for 300¥. So this was my lunch.

(That’s after I ate like 3 pieces of chicken. He filled it up past the brim :)

So I sat and ate my lunch, then began the walk back. By the time I arrived home I’d been gone 3 hours. Tsukareta (I’m beat). 

In the afternoon I went to the office to prepare my lessons, then I taught my first two classes. They went pretty well, though in the second I forgot about the workbook so we went a little over time. The first is two little boys who are really well-behaved, and one is super-enthusiastic so that helps. The second class are older students, they have a workbook, and are really quiet. 

With most of the classes, it’s hard to always tell if the students understand, because they’ll never say ‘wait, I don’t get it’ and they never ask questions. Maybe it’s because they are wary of speaking English like I am of speaking Japanese. That’s fair. 

After the lesson I took some notes and planned next week’s lessons, and went over the classes I have tomorrow. Finally I returned to my apartment, ate dinner, and wanted to go to bed at 9. But there’s stuff to do. Always.