Stay classy, Kawachinagano

I finally received my school schedule as well as all of my uniforms. Yay!!! Here is me in my school uniform.

The suit-coats buttons have the Nagano High School seal on them which is an “N” of some sorts.

Along with the suit I will be wearing everyday came gym clothes. Included were a pair of green shorts, a white shirt with “Nagano High School” printed on it in green, green running pants, a green pull-over, a pair of green swim trunks, and white gym shoes with green stripes on them.

Each of the grades at Nagano High School has their own color associated with them that they use for all three years that they are at the school. The first years are green, the second years are blue, and the third years are a dark red. It’s an interesting way to separate everyone. As far as I can tell, there are no school colors, so what happens in sporting events I don’t know.

This last weekend I was invited to a piano concert at a hall that is owned by a Rotary Club member. The Man that invited me was Nishimoto-san, a piano tuner and Rotary Club member. It was a fantastic concert! There was only one piece played and that was Brahm’s Piano Sonata. The pianist was the piano teacher from the Osaka Music University. He was incredible!

The program.

The piano (a sweet-sounding Steinway).

The hall.

School is still going pretty well, although I can’t say I am not bored at times. The only classes I can really follow are chemistry, biology, English, and math (Thank you Mr. Bengston!). Speaking of school, here’s my schedule:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
First Hour (8:40-9:30)	Biology	Interculteral (English)	Japanese History	Calligraphy	Self Study (Japanese)
Second Hour (9:40-10:30)	Japanese B	Self Study (Japanese)	English A	Calligraphy	Math 1
Third Hour (10:40-11:30)	Physical Education	Japanese Geography	Japanese Geography	Salon (Private Japanese lessons)	English A
Fourth Hour (11:40-12:30)	Chemistry	Math 1	Math 1	Interculteral (English)	Physical Education
Lunch (12:30-1:15)	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Fifth Hour (1:15-2:05)	English B	English B	Physical Education	Self Study (Japanese)	Self Study (Japanese)
Sixth Hour (2:15-3:05)	Salon (Private Japanese lessons)	Japanese History	Japanese B	LHR (I have no idea…)	Chemistry
Seventh Hour (3:15-4:05)		Biology

I get to do this for the next year. Yay!!!! It will be interesting to see if I can actually begin to take in anything that isn’t said slowly and intermingled with English!

Last night Mama Akane, Mitsuki, Nanako, Yoshino, and I went out to a sushi restaurant. It wasn’t your average sushi/udon/ramen shop, though. The room was filled with booths and on the wall between two joining booths there was a track that carried sushi around the room. You just grabbed a plate off of the track and ate! It was fantastic! Above the continuously moving track there was a smaller one. Next to that was a touch-screen where we were able to order certain foods if we didn’t want to wait. The food can rushing out to us on a little cart on the second track. What service! We ate a ton. It was all very cheap too: ¥100 ($1) per plate. All together we ate 35 plates. Wow! When we finished five plates, Mitsuki would drop them into the return bin. When five plates went into it, a game started on the touch-screen. If you won, you received a small toy from a large bin above the screen. With 7 games, Mitsuki won once and gave me the toy. It was a small, plastic sushi! The food was fantastic. Some of the different things I had were onion rings, soup with small mollusks in it, roe sushi, cabbage sushi, salmon sushi, shrimp sushi, edamame, and a cream puff to finish it off.

Mikun next to the sushi train!

Yummy!!

Touch screen

Nanako eating sushi

What to choose...

Creampuff

This morning I went for a run around the reservoir that Kawachinagano uses. It was beautiful! I went our before anyone was on their way to work and there was no rain. At the end of a bridge, I discovered a bunch of centipedes (correct me if I’m wrong, mom!) that appeared to be mating. It was fascinating because it at first looked like very tall centipedes until I found that there were two on top of each other for every mound. At that early hour, there were clouds hanging low and mist still coming out of the forest. It was also very quiet. The cicadas weren’t even making noise!

As I’m typing this, it is raining outside. We’ve had rain on and off for the past week and I’m really enjoying it! There is very little wind, so all the windows in the house can be open while it is pouring. I also don’t have to be in school today or tomorrow because there is testing that my grade has to do. Mama Akane will be teaching me how to ride the buses. Yay! Public transportation!

Weather update: The typhoon is still moving closer but there hasn’t really been much concern about it so I think that it has died down. On the other end, though, there was a tornado somewhere in Japan. I think it was towards Tokyo. It appears that the damage was pretty local and I don’t believe anyone was hurt.

Congrats to my parents for 24 years and to my cousin Dorian for this upcoming wedding!

またね！

Wes