So I just wrote a really nice blog about my day, and it got erased!!!!!  My tiny computer is cute and compact, but is such a pain to type things on!!!!!!!!!  I will have to re-write it, but not now.  I am too tired and upset!  :-(

I did have a nice day though!  I love Saturday!  <3

They say that you can't appreciate the sun without the rain.  I'd like to add that you can't appreciate the weekend until you have worked every possible second of the weekday. 

Japan changes on the weekends.  From Monday to Friday it's suit and tie 'til ya die, but Saturday morning is always so peaceful and fresh.  Even the sun seems to shine brighter.  It's like springtime, once a week.  One of my favorite things about Saturday is that I meet with a friend who is tutoring me in Japanese.  Around 5 p.m. I catch the train from Hon-Atsugi Station, actually find a seat on the usually sardine-can packed Shinjuku express, and head a few stops away to Machida.  I usually try to arrive early to take in the sights before meeting with my friend.  I sit outside the station, in this open square, and it feels like I am back in Spain in the Plaza Mayor.  The sun is beginning to set, and everything looks softer.  The tall buildings surrounding me, glowing orange in the setting sun, start to cast their long shadows on the streets below.  The guy working at the pharmacy shouts to the crowd about his superior, and lower-priced goods, while women in dark, skinny jeans and impossible heels clip by, in rhythm with the tinkling of a million cellphone charms dangling from back pockets.  A group of older women in kimonos shuffle past and hurry into the station, while the policeman looks on from the doorway of his security booth.  A guy in his twenties smokes a cigarette while texting a friend and chatting with another.  He adjusts his Louis Vuitton fanny pack, which he is wearing backwards so as not to obscure the enormous "D&G" logo on his belt.  His patchwork jeans are tucked into lace-up red leather boots.  Finished with his cigarette and his texting, he and his friend gallop away to begin their night on the town.  A train appears a block away and pulls into the station.  Some people quicken their pace to make a connecting train, while others try to duck out of the way.  Shortly after my friend arrives, breathlessly apologizing for making me wait.  I smile.  Trust me, I say,  It was my pleasure. 

So I went to Yokohama last Sunday, and am finally getting around to uploading the pictures!

Yokohama:  China Town

Today we took the kiddos to Zoorasia (sounds like "Jurassic"), near Yokohama.  It was an optional trip for the students, and so just two of my students came, Maki and Masataka.  We had a really nice time walking around, looking at the animals, and taking many silly pictures (see below!).  The weather was unexpectedly nice, considering rainy season "started" on June 10th.  To be honest though, the weather has been nicer during rainy season than before it's carefully scheduled arrival.  I think it's really funny that the start of rainy season was assigned an exact day on which to start.  It's like people in Pennsylvania saying, "Ok, the snow is going to arrive on November 13th".  To be honest though, I half expected the weather to follow it's meticulously planned Japanese schedule.  I feel a little cheated.  I think the weather system owes me a free train pass to make up for the delay...

Anyway, the strange animal with the long tongue in pictures 4 and 5 is an Okapi, the pride and joy of this particular zoo.  It looks like it's half horse, half zebra, but it's actually related to the giraffe (hence the long tongue).   The picture of the penguin is for my brother Adam, for all those times I forced his toy penguins to commit suicide by hanging themselves with Kiki, and leaving them for him to find, lifeless and cold, in his bedroom closet.  Look closely and you will see a penguin laying on his belly, like he's ready to go down a slide.  So cute!

Nice weather and my camera finally coincided at the university I teach at, so I can at long last post some pictures of the campus.

I have never been on a campus with so much water, so many waterfalls and so many koi/carp!  It really is beautiful.  Notice the pictures of animals on the front of one of the buildings.  That is the animal taxidermy museum.  That is also where I teach!  Yep, sometimes on my breaks I check out whale skeletons and stuffed lions.  It's pretty cool... and kinda creepy. 

In the second to last photo, notice what may or may not be Mt. Fuji in the background. I was told that one could see Fuji-san from the top of this university building, and as that was the only mountain I could see, I decided it was Mt. Fuji and took lots of pictures.  Enjoy!

As requested by a certain someone who will not be mentioned, but whose name rhymes with the French word 'toucher', I have decided to upload a few photos.  There are a lot more I still want to add, but these are the most recent, and the most interesting.   I bought a yukata in Kyoto for only 2500 yen (I'll call that 25USD), and so on Saturday I went over to my friend's house and she showed me how to put it on.  They also showed me how to make mochi, a Japanese sweet made of a rice flour dough and a sweet adzuki (not atsugi!) bean paste.  I say 'not atsugi' because the first time my students asked if I knew what adzuki was, I said, "Yes!  It's where I live!  Atsugi City!"  They thought this was a riot.  I love making my students laugh. 

Anyway, the yukata is like the sumer kimono.  Unfortunately, I was very hot wearing it as I hadn't remembered to bring a tank top or shorts, so I basically had on two layers of clothing. 

This experience also taught me a very valuable lesson.  The past few weeks in Japan, something had been bothering me.  I guess it's normal when you move to a new place for certain things to start irritating you early on, and for me, it was people's feet.  It wasn't the smell at all, it was actually more the gait.  Perhaps it was the hours I spent climbing the subway stairs, staring at the fifty pairs of feet at eye level, but I started to notice that many people had mild to serious orthopedic problems, and were not wearing proper footwear.  Some had a rolled ankle and were sporting high heels, others had serious blisters festering around straps that obviously served no purpose other than fashion, and then there were the pigeon-toes.  It seemed that an unusually high number of people were pigeon-toed, including children, and I did not understand why this was not corrected or even addressed.  I know this seems so arbitrary, but I thought about it every time I was in a crowded place, which here happens at least twice a day. 
So, on the day that I tried on my yukata, I slipped the Japanese style wooden slippers onto my feet, and stood up.  The women helping me took one look at my feet and said, "turn your toes in.  You'll lose your balance in those shoes if you walk like that."  Suddenly, every picture of every woman wearing a kimono that I had ever seen flashed in my head: hands folded in front, toes pointed in.  I stood there, pidgeon toed, with my foot in my mouth.

Enjoy the pictures!