Dazaifu, Day 20 - Back to school again

Today is back to a normal schedule, and I spend some time catching up on e-mail and other 'Net chores. I've got two days of blogging to upload and/or edit, and a whole bunch of pictures (I've managed to fill up our webspace, so I had to wait until brother william could upgrade the account - fortunately, that's an easy process with Netfirms).

Students start the day by coming in to the teachers' room and doing a quick cleaning - in two days, trash cans fill up pretty quickly - then they head for special home room classes to talk about their job experiences and write letters of thank you to the people who supervised their work. When I later asked Nakagawa-san whether his students liked their two days, he said that most of them seemed to enjoy the chance to do something very different from their usual schoolwork.

Lunch is with a 9th grade group, and again I am struck by the fact that these students really do show a lot of discipline and maturity as they prepare for high school and beyond.

My evening is spent first doing some shopping, and then trying a new eating place - something called American Son House, which advertises itself as a place to get 'traditional' American food, such as hamburgers and French fries, tacos, and American beer. The ALTs have told me that it's not bad, and I have a small craving for a taco, so I head inside.

As I check out the menu, I realize that there are indeed a lot of things that look (and sound familiar), but there are also some items that are just a bit different. There is pizza - Italian style, and something called American style, with sausage, cheese, and...squid? The taco looks good, and there is something called Mexican Rice that sounds interesting, so I order those, and a small glass of 'American' beer on tap, Budweiser. The beer arrives first - yes, it's Bud, all right, with the 'beechwood aging' taste (but I presume that this one came from one of their breweries here in Japan, rather than the home plant back where I live).

Then the taco - it's served in a freshly fried flour tortilla (rather than corn) and the meat filling has more tomato base in the sauce than I usually have, but it's quite good. There's lettuce and cheese on it, some salsa (very mild) on the side, and....pickles? Well, I suppose if you serve hamburgers with pickles on the side, it might make sense to serve them with tacos as well....

The Mexican Rice is...different, almost a taco salad served on a bed of rice. There is meat, cheese, lettuce, corn and salsa, with white rice underneath. I take a spoon and mix it all up, and it is actually quite good.

As I pay my check, the proprietor asks how I heard of the place; I explain that I am an American teacher here working in a junior high school, and that some of the American ALTs have told me this is a good place to get a hamburger or taco. He smiles and tells me thank you for coming, and I tell him that I enjoyed his cooking.

Then it's time to head for home. I am hoping to get to bed a little bit earlier tonight.

(ADDENDUM) I headed for bed early, and turned on the TV to check for a weather report for tomorrow, only to find that half of the NHK special channels were off the air. Hmmm.....

BS1 (which runs English-language news reports) then came on with a Japanese announcer saying something about going to BBC news, and suddenly I am confronted with something that I really don't want to see - live images of a double-decker bus in pieces in the central part of London, with English-speaking announcers saying that bombs have exploded in the London subway system and on a bus in central London.

A quick check of the other channels confirms the worst - they are all back on the air, but most are running the BBC feed non-stop, not even adding Japanese voice-overs or subtitles. The pictures tell the entire grim story. Shades of 9/11............

I end up watching news reports until the live feed cuts back to local news - even then most of the coverage is all about London. (When I begin to recognize katakana symbols in the headline lists, you know that the news is all about one place, and it's mostly bad.)

As I finally turn off the TV, I muse a bit on the feelings of anger and despair those pictures and news reports have generated. When 9/11 happened, I was at home with most of my family - I did not yet know what effect those terrorist acts would have on my life (and they were substantial, but in much more subtle ways), but I had the support of those close to me and could provide support to them. Now, I am many thousands of miles away, and must deal with a new reality on my own. (But I know that my family can get in touch with me, so that is a comfort.)

I say a prayer for safety for my loved ones, and comfort and aid to the victims and their families.