First, a semi-late announcement: I have a car! A beauteous.. cough… white, soccer mom friendly Toppo BJ. Uh, that stands for “Big Joy” for all the easily amused out there (which includes me. *snicker*). In honor of Alejandro Jodorowsky, I call it El Toppo. This actually works perfectly with the Japanese mispronunciation of the spelling.



Soon after the car, I bought myself a plug-in radio device for my iPod, so El Toppo has officially become a fully equipped roadtrip vehicle. I christened it on its first day with a 2 hour drive (at 50km/hour mind you) to Izumo City to see some Afro-Japanese drumming,

and then two weekends ago to Hiroshima for the Sake Festival in Saijo. More fun and shenanigans to mention in depth later on.

Just yesterday, I was listening to the radio during my drive on the way back from Masuda, the southern neighboring city in Shimane prefecture, and I tuned into one of the only two stations I’m able to get. Luckily, I caught a public radio-type interview with a French accordian player. The music in his segment was dubbed “French cafe music” and sounded very much like the stuff you hear in Amelie or in French music compilation CDs you buy for your mom during Christmas. Anyway, I liked his stuff. What I liked better was listening to the dialogue in French and Japanese with the guy speaking in French while one of the Japanese ladies translated and discussed his comments with the other two DJs. No bragging of any sort on my own language abilities, but it’s amazing how much you can piece together from fragments of multiple languages. I guess it also doesn’t hurt that English has invaded so much of both, at least in terms of music. Le Francais can’t get too snobby ’bout that one. Kind of cool to realize that much comprehension could happen.

I’ve also been Halloween lesson planning these past weeks, raiding the local Trial (think Nihon no Walmart) and hyakuen shops (think dollar store but WAY better) for potential Halloweeny goods. Normally I’m talking the death out of the holiday like two months in advanced, but I really haven’t had much time to think about it this year. What?! Horrors and sadness! Damned this general busy-ness and work-related fatigue! It’s really not the most outstanding holiday in this part of the world, to be sure, but we do teach it to the little kiddies as part of their English education. So at least lesson plans keeps my beloved #2 holiday within my realm of things to do, even if I’m not plotting my own costume with the same intensity. Thus, I still get to mention it here. A couple of group-related themes are in the talks with other JETs, though. Might not be too late for me. I’ll keep you posted.