-
Thursday, September 16
Mmmm, steak and a baked potato for dinner tonight!
After a few cool, fall-like days last week, summer is back. It's been quite hot this
week. But it's starting to LOOK like fall. Trees are losing their leaves a bit and
plants/flowers aren't as "full" looking or green.
There were a couple really good skaters at the rink today, here from Hiroshima. The
boy was doing triple lutzes and loops! I was impressed. I wasn't nearly as impressive as
them, but I did complete a few real layback spins this week and last, the first
true ones I've ever done.
I'm trying to plan my New Year's vacation. Air tickets go fast here, so I need to book
soon.I'm thinking about Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Honolulu.
Proof that I am a published author! :-)
I have three articles and three photos in the current (Oct.) edition of Blades on Ice magazine.
Friday, September 10
Tomorrow is September 11. I'm sure there will be articles in the newspaper and
there's a TV program about it scheduled tomorrow evening, but I won't talk about
it with my students. Most of them are too young to understand and/or don't have
enough English ability to talk about it.
Yesterday at Okayama Station, there was a kiosk selling cat and dog calendars. I went
to take a look and found a black cat calendar. I must have been grinning like a fool
while looking at it, because the worker/owner commented on my smile and said I must
really like black cats! He proceeded to show me some black cat stuffed animals and
puppets and talked to me a bit - he was much more impressed with my Japanese than I ever
am. I decided I couldn't live without the calendar (a few of the cats looked like Snarfy)
so I bought it. The guy either was so impressed with my Japanese or thought it was so cute
that I liked cats so much that he ended up giving me a free cat notepad/magnet (worth over
$10, I think!) as a present! That was nice.
It was much cooler outside today and definitely felt like fall. I was almost chilly in
my T-shirt and sandals. It felt good in a way, but I hope summer comes back for a little
bit! It is nice not to have to use the air conditioning all the time, though.
Wednesday, September 8
I put up some pictures from Obon vacation.
The weather and earth continue to act up in Japan. Another strong typhoon swept
through the area yesterday, and our school closed again. Another day off, but I
wasn't thrilled because I know I have to make it up soon, along with the day I
had off August 30. The winds were certainly strong yesterday and it was pissing
down rain for a while, but there was no damage that I could tell other than the
row of bikes at the apartment being knocked over.
Scarier, though, were the two earthquakes on Sunday night. I heard that two of that
magnitude had never happened so close together before - lucky us. The epicenters
were both about 100km off the Kii Peninsula, south of Wakayama and Mie prefectures
(kinda south of Nagoya, since I'm assuming most people don't know where Wakayama and
Mie are). Their magnitudes were 6.9 and 7.3, both of which are huge. The magnitudes
felt in Okayama were around 3-4, but they were still unsettling. I was at school for
the first one at 7:07PM, and I could literally feel the floor moving under my feet,
which was really weird. I was at home for the second one at 11:55PM. My sliding
doors were rattling and the hanging light in my kitchen was swinging around more
crazily than I would have expected. Both quakes were pretty long, too, at least a
minute. If there was that much movement with just a 3-4 magnitude quake, I certainly
don't want to know what a 7+ quake feels like.
In much better news, two of my articles have been published in Blades on Ice
magazine! Both of them (on Alexei Yagudin and on Anissina/Peizerat) are even promoted
on the cover! Woo-hoo! I haven't actually seen them yet (and I assume some of my
photos were published, too) 'cause the issue is still in the mail, but I'm so excited to!
It's the October issue, go check it out!