And we begin again

Kody arrived September 1, which means that I'm no longer a lonely, lonely girl. :) His job is about a 45 minute drive, and while I won't make it everyday (due to gas expenses and keeping my life in order), I'll definitely get to see him 2 or 3 times a week I think. He doesn't have a car, but I do, and that's going to make this year a lot easier all around.

This summer was a breath, and now it's gone. I went to Tokyo twice on JET business. My hotel room looked out on the Notre-Dame-inspired Tokyo City Office, or “Tochyou” as they say in Japanese. It was quite fun. And the beach, the beach in Tokushima is wonderful. I must have gone swimming over 10 times this summer, sometimes several times a week. We can still swim because of the heat, but there's an increasing risk of jelly-fish stings, which curtails my enthusiasm.

And now September is here and we have record heat. It's been in the 90s all week, if not over 100, and though today it says 87, the humidity is probably through the roof judging from the cloud cover outside. This is when I bless my car. Last year at this time, I was putting on slacks and nice shirts and getting nice dark freckles due to the 8 am sun that greeted me on the way to work. I don't have pimples, except in Japan, where I sweat like an overexcited puppy.

One year changes a lot. Everything comes in stride now. The stress is gone. Frustration remains at times, but the stress has ebbed. I have a favorite bakery where I buy my favorite bread. I know the cheapest place to buy shredded cheese and ground beef and chicken. I know how to use my japanese microwave oven to make banana bread, and I've learned the secret to keeping my apartment cool without topping $100 in electricity fees. I can bumble my way through buying almost anything, and I no longer squirm when I spend $12 on ingredients to make dinner or $4 on a 12 ounce jar of pasta sauce. I eat sashimi as if it were cheese, and rice as if it were bread. My coffee addiction is worse. Notice how almost all of these have to do with food: Japan has forced me to cook – for a lack of anything else to do.

I've also learned how to use my extra time at work. Novels, Japanese, GRE books, writing, and budgeting fill the black whole that is free time. Goodbye yahoo news and celebrity gossip. Oh dear those were the dark ages. Okay, so I sometimes play Settlers of Catan online, but only sometimes. ;) I'm still struggling to tame the wild beast that is evenings alone at home, but I think I'm getting better. The cooking has helped with this a lot. And I'm sure that having Kody so close will help as well. I'll have fewer evenings to myself, which means I'll have to be more careful with them.

In a week and a half, I'm off to visit ReBekha in Okinawa! It will be the first time I've been, even though I promised her long ago that I would come visit. It will be really nice, after just having gotten back into school, to just run off for over a week. I'm wonderfully excited. Though I might come home and be more discontent than ever. I hear she has great cafes. Hmmmmm. I'm hoping to convince Kody to go to Kyoto with me in October or November for my birthday. As always, it's difficult because it's so ridiculously expensive to travel in Japan, and Kyoto might even be worse than Tokyo. However, it's also one of the most famous and beautiful places, so we have to go.

I'm going to end this now. (That sounds like I'm breaking-up with this blog – ha) I'm afraid this might be terribly boring, but oh well. My writer ego is not so strong anymore.