October 27-31st Warning: May Cause Drowsiness in 2016

I had one class with Tateishi on the 27th. Beyond that, I rotted my eyes with a computer screen. I then went to the doctor, went to Kitchen Inoue, and went home. I watched a bit of Archer and re-listened to some Yale Civil War lectures that I like. I then tried to listen to some music before bed (ASMR seems to have stopped working for me entirely), but that didn’t work, and I settled for ear plugs.
I have been waking up at the normal time, 6:15, then going back to sleep the first few mornings. That ends Monday, but I’m ashamed of it, so I’ll admit it here as a record. I came in to the BOE today to get my schedule for teaching at Eshin only to find out that I wouldn’t be teaching there. In fact, I wouldn’t be teaching. Today was a field trip or something for Eshin. I also didn’t get to go to the Miyachu culture festival, but, that’s more or less fine by me.
I ate a big lunch today, my last for a while. I tried to get out of eating school lunches, but the BOE is insistent that I eat school lunch. So, we’ll see what happens. Kumei said (I think) that he’s going to talk to the schools about actually giving me smaller portions instead of promising to and then not. The schools, not Eitoku. So, we’ll see how that goes.
My stomach hurts, but in a good way, from my big pasta lunch. I went to Primo Passo and got a giant, delicious, super spicy, lunch. Quite good.
I talked to Maria a lot today, which was nice. No worries, she won’t be one of my women. We met in China and hung out twice (she actually introduced me to Simona), but she lives in Estonia with her fiance. So don’t expect pining. She is, however, one of the sweetest and just . . . best people that I know. She drips goodness and happiness and smiles. She’s adorably, Kool-Aid-drinking-ly Catholic. She’s memorizing the Satanic calendar so that she can pray harder on their holidays and she and her mum perform rituals (including censers of incense and holy water) to keep their house safe. I can’t say that I agree with any of that, but, what can you do?
I had almost nothing to do at work today. I got a message asking me to do some formatting for the big JET event coming up. However, because I’m on an old version of Open Office and the thing was sent to me as an Excel file, my computer hates it and I can’t view most of it. I sent back what I could find only be to told that I hadn’t done most of it. I then found half of the data that they wanted, but I have no idea if it’s where it should be. That’s been fun.
(That entry was written the 21st and was incomplete. It is being continued now, the 31st. Hence tense changing.)
I never did end up hearing from the girl who’d sent me the JET work to do. I don’t know what happened. Probably she was busy with the Halloween party.
I didn’t sleep well on Friday night.
I woke up on Saturday and had the game. Armand showed up, which kind of put a spanner in the works. Especially as it was a day when we were going to introduce our new PC, Levi, and another PC, Matthew, was changing characters that day. So it was kind of a mess. Armand not being there would have been preferable. Also Dave wasn’t there. On account of having gotten drunk and laid the night before and waking up in Ibusuki. Not a bad Friday night.
Saturday, after the game, I talked to Matthew and then went to a cultural event at the Satsuma Children’s Library. I’d missed the morning stuff, but I bumped into Mrs. and Yuko Okadome, which was really nice. I feel bad that I keep seeing them without their present from the US. I also feel bad because I want to be friends with them, but I’m bad at it. They also live super far away. I also saw Kumei Sensei, which was great. His daughter is cute and she was so embarrassed. Gah! Adorable! So many cute kids! They were making chairs when I got there. Seriously. They were making little children’s chairs. Using power tools and everything. Obviously it was supervised, but I got to thinking how, in America, you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t have kids using power tools at a town sponsored event at a library. If I had kids, I’d want them here. There was also a balloon art guy, which I like in the US generally, but which I adore in Japan. They’re just so good at it here! Maybe I just remember things wrong, or, maybe I just never met a good one, but in the US, I remember hats, swords, doggies, and giraffes. Here. . . I got a Mickey Mouse arm bracelet without even asking. Multiple colors and everything. It’s just insane. Anyway, after that, I went home. I think that I ate ramen for dinner as I’ve got to start a serious diet and I wanted to enjoy a last gasp of freedom.
I slept worse Saturday night than Friday. And that was after taking the codeine medicine twice in 4 hours.
Sunday was a waste. I played games until evening. I then went shopping in Sendai. I gorged myself while there. I bought new shirts to hold my expanded girth, and I bought a floor guard for my chair. H also picked up more yogurt and breakfast bars. Then I went home, watched a bit of Archer, and, mercifully, crashed at around 9.
I woke up at the normal time and then went back to bed for the 30 minutes that my backup alarm gives me. An unfortunate habit that needs to end. I’m amazed at how tired I was this morning, considering how much I’d actually slept. I also went into dreams quite quickly. I know that I had quite a few, but I can’t remember any.
Today I’m with Tateishi. I remember how Matsumoto Sensei looked last year. Students have made some comments implying that they were reading something into my time with Matsumoto Sensei. Perhaps that’s why she stopped using me towards the end of her time at Miyachu. If so, that’s unfortunate. While she was attractive, fun to work with, and the best English teacher I’ve ever met, she was also 35 and married. So . . . nope. Well, I had two classes with him, and I was supposed to have a third, but that’s 6th period when I’ll be at Eikaiwa.
I don’t feel great today, but I’m pretty sure that’s mostly just from being miserable. Not a great deal to report beyond that.
I remember, this weekend, something profound. The weather was beautiful. I believe that it was on . . . Saturday . . . or so. I just sat in my chair with the windows open. It was something truly beautiful. I listened to a bit of ASMR. After that, nothing quite worked. But while I was there, and sleeping, and then awake and not trying to listen to anything, there was just such peace. It was the first day that really felt like fall. It was lovely.