November 15, 2007 - Thursday

Torrential rain, clearing at night.

I'm writing this on the morning of the 16th because I was too tired to write last night. I have had a couple of late nights in a row and I decided that I'd rather sleep than blog. Usually it's the other way around, but I don't really want a repeat of this spring's pneumonia, so I decided to get some sleep.

Our visit with James and Taeko was great. Taeko was my ex-manager at l'Eikaiwa and James is her husband. He was a teacher for the same company, but I didn't really get to meet him until they were married. On Wednesday, they came around 1 pm and we met for lunch. After lunch we took them to the school. That was where they stayed. I had the brainwave to put them up there one day when I was writing an email to them. They had wanted to stay with us at our apartment, but we don't have much space for them. We do, but we would have had to clean our apartment for a couple of weeks straight, and get rid of the tatami smell problem. The school is clean, comfortable and it is an apartment too!

We chatted at the school for a few hours then went out to Shimi's restaurant for dinner. We had quite a party there, staying there for hours, and then went to an izakaya for "one last drink". We were supposed to leave that place at 12:30, but of course it was 1:30 before we left. We use the "drive your car for you" service and dropped off Taeko and James at the school.

On the 15th, Fumihiko got up a bit before me, then I dragged myself out of bed. We went to Gusto for breakfast, then went over to the school to meet up with James and Taeko. We realized that Fumihiko was going most of the way that we were, so we decided to follow him.

I was in the car with James and Taeko and we had great conversations. The rain was really bad, and it was quite windy so James had to really concentrate on driving. We went to Churen-ji, a temple up in the mountains of Yamagata. It was very interesting. It has one of the most famous mummys in Japan. We spent an hour in the temple. The Priest gave us a very guided tour. It really is an interesting place. There are some interesting paintings on the ceiling too. In one area of the temple there are paintings on the ceiling of The Beatles, Prince, Vincent Van Gogh and Picasso. That was quite interesting! The rain was so heavy that the temple started leaking when we were there. The Priest didn't do anything about it, but a woman working there did put a bucket under the leak!

After we left the temple I noticed that the entrance to the Mount Gassan Dam was across the road, so we drove up to the dam. It was still raining very very hard, so all of us went into the visitor center at the dam. James went for a bit of a walk and then Taeko and I borrowed a couple of umbrellas from the dam and we wandered along the dam a bit. It was fun, but wet!

We had a quick lunch at a roadside diner, and then James had another hike while Taeko and I had ice cream! Taeko had a macha-mix cone and I had dadacha-ma ice cream. It was surprisingly good.

They drove me back to Tsuruoka and dropped me off at my school. They drove off after that. It was really sad to see them go. I get so few visitors up here, and Taeko and I were so very close that it's always sad to say goodbye to her.

I went into the school and cleaned up. They hadn't left a mess really, but I had to find places to put the futons and the quilts until Fumihiko can take them back. Sadly, he couldn't do it yesterday. I put away as much as possible, then went to the drugstore to get a bit of food.

My class happened and went quite well. We had a nice time. I'm not sure if the student got the point of my lesson, but I hope so. After she left, I got a message from Fumihiko that he was still in his meeting in Yamagata, and there was no end in sight. I decided to finish up and walk home.

I got home around 10 and just relaxed for a while. I watched the last half of The Accused and then Extras at midnight. Just after 12 I got a call from my husband saying that he was finally done his meeting and would come home now. He also said that there was snow in the mountains so he might not be home until 2:30 am. Ack!

He made it home around 2. He said that the weather in the mountains wasn't that bad, so he made good time. We were both hungry so we went out for something to eat. The first restaurant we went to was closed...they were cleaning the carpets or something, so we had to go to a much further place. We had an okay meal, then came home. It was around 3:30 before we went to bed.

So that was it...my last two days. Got to go! Night.