I do realize I am a bit nuts sometimes.....

Sorry it's been so long. I've been concentrating on getting those photos up, so go ahead and take a couple minutes looking at them. It takes sooooo long to upload them and I'm way behind. It's also not as fun as other things, so it's not like I've spent all the time I should've on them. Alright, enough about that...me crazy!!

It's my day off....Paul went to an interview, yesterday and a sort of trial run today for both him and the school. It pays a lot more and it seems right now, a better place to work. I knitted and watched Gilmore Girls in the morning....heehee, and then just came back from shopping. now here's the crazy part. I walked about 3 or 4 miles to the grocery store instead of walking a couple blocks to a grocery store.

Over the years, I've lived a lot of places, with and without roommates, with and without car or bike, with money and with pennies, going through times of cooking every night or ordering out every other night....eating cereal the others....heehee I learned an important thing in those times.....the grocery store you live close to matters a lot. I have to confess, that's not an original thought, but it's so true.

If you've seen the photos blog, you've seen HAT Kobe. One of our roommates works there, so for weeks he's been boasting about the low cost of this Kansai Super. We shop at the Daiei, 'cause it's much closer--right in the city where we live, but I finally went. As I mentioned in the photo captions, HAT Kobe is a planned community. I hate to say it, but there's something very appealing. It's quite sickening that it's appealing. It's perfect and clean and convenient and new and cookie-cutter, but somehow since there're apartment buildings not identical houses, it's ok(?). The walk into town is so pleasent. You leave the busy metro area--Sannomiya--where we live, walk along this brick foot path through a graffiti-free tunnel, past a bustling Japanese style park (NO GRASS??!!!) for kids, past apartment building with gardens in front free to anyone to pick flowers and vegetables, and enter an equally busy, slightly, more residential area. I have recently heard rumors about the quality of the apartment buildings, which, there are plenty of, in HAT, as far as safety is concerned, but I don't believe it, yet. The name is even disturbing--Happy Active Town.

The grocery store isn't cheaper. It's not even very different....just as crowded. The walk, though, makes the difference. I can't even explain it.....I'm nuts.

They are not strange....

So, we've been enlightened..... All the things we may have told you in the past few weeks about the oddity of the people of this country may have to be taken back. As a co-worker of mine was giving her last lesson of the day the other night, the conversation turned to Nova-bashing. Now, this isn't too too common, but it does happen from time to time, upon which, you must ask the student and they must ask of you, "why are you here?" Well, my co-worker came out of the classroom whispering, "I've got to tell you something." Now, you must understand why we have to whisper, shhh....there are spies and traitors everywhere in the business.... She told me after we'd clocked out and walked a significant distance away from our workplace that her student was new to Nova. She'd told her that she was hesistant to go to Nova for English lessons, but that her work paid for it (it's pretty pricey), so she did it. What she said next started wheels turning to everyone who knows the news, now. She said, "Nova students are weird." She went on to describe how they treat it as some sort of religion. Now, I believe I've told you about the lifers....those who come every weekend, all weekend, and when asked about their hobbies, simply state, "Nova"....well, what she said began to make sense. You should see the commercials for Nova. One line of a current commercial is something like, 'when Japan falls into the ocean, you'll still have your English from Nova'.... Another co-worker of mine was telling me there was one where the actor says 'I can stay all day!'..... Now, I'm not bashing the desire to be good at something, and to work hard on it, but the lifers come, stay all day, everyday or weekend, and don't improve, because 1)their brain is mush by the time they learn eight different sets of vocabulary in one day, 2)beacuse they've just stayed all day somewhere, it's not like they're going to rush home and do some more, 3)they don't actually want to learn, they're just lonely.

This all makes perfect sense to us now. We all have friends outside of Nova, and haven't felt that they're terribly strange... Some of my co-workers have significant others who're Japanese who've stated many comments on the same line as this, but none hit it right on.... Okay, so don't tell my students...I don't want to hurt their feelings....I do like many of them even though they're odd.....