Hello people. There is a marathon going on in the street in front of my apartment this afternoon. People are lined up and cheering. Last night my friends and I went out near Nagoya station (the train/subway station). It was an interesting night. We ended it with karaoke which is completely crazy here. They give you light up tambourines, maracas and a room for 3 hours with two echo microphones. The places are all open 24 hours too so it's easy to stay out really late in here. The karaoke places all have a lot of American music.

Last Friday (my day off) I walked around the city. This is a pretty big shrine just in the middle of the city.

It's also practically attached to a giant shopping area. That place was kind of overwhelming. Also the Japanese are really into flannel plaid right now. I'm not sure about this fashion choice, but my theory is they think westerners wear it all the time so they think it's cool. The stores that have the most plaid are all named things like "western style" or something like that.

In other news I just got my new schedule for the year. I have two substitute days which is fine, but unfortunately one is Saturday. That's kind of annoying because I'll never know what time I have to be up and out on Saturdays. It'll depend on if I have to sub for someone, which will happen much more frequently when we start the new schedules since there won't be so many subs. I have 4 kids classes and 2 junior high classes. The rest are mostly 40 min. free time lessons which is what I mostly teach now. The other day a middle aged fireman in my class gave me a CD after class. It was a little surprising, and the music was bad British pop. I don't know where he got his hands on it. My favorite student so far has been the little old man who used to be a professional magician. He shows me magic tricks every time we see each other. He's really good at them too. In my new schedule I have Tuesdays off which is pretty exciting. National holidays fall on Mondays here so when that happens I'll have Sun. Mon. and Tues. off all in a row. Also my best friend here has the same days off as me so we'll probably get to travel together on our long weekends.

A lot of people I've met here are interested in going to China since we're so close (relatively speaking) so they all get excited that I can speak a little Chinese (emphasis on the little). So maybe I'll get to go back to China while I'm here. I'd like to go to Shanghai and Hong Kong. I didn't get there while I was studying abroad.

I'm afraid my computer may be about to die the death. It has weird lines all through the screen and nothing I've tried to do to fix it has worked. Hopefully it will think about its actions and decide to work properly again.