And that's why it's been nearly 2 months since we've put anything in here. Also, I'm counting our November update as the facebook album of our Yamagata prefecture trip, since there's something like 100 captioned pictures.
We still don't have a whole lot to say. I've been able to get in touch with my adviser so I finally have a decent idea of what I should be working on (research, while a good thing to work on, was a touch vague. It's nice to know where to focus and also what reports and meetings I should be preparing for!). We both did a pretty bad job of keeping in touch this semester, but now that we've been using Skype, e-mail and google wave, I have better hopes because that's a lot more opportunities for contact.
Maria just took her Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Level 3 on the 6th of December. Maria didn't think she did so well, which might as well be a theme for her. Admittedly, it's not worth a whole lot if she passes, only if someone passes Level 2 or Level 1 (the two highest levels) does it mean much. In that case, they could get a job in Tokyo and get hired by some Japanese company. Since this isn't really in our plans, she's not too concerned about it. It would look nice on a resume and eventually she'll work on taking and passing Level 2 down the road, though maybe not for a few years. It's been great that she's finally done with it, since she's finally something approximating a normal human being and not sitting in front of her computer working on Kanji, grammar, or vocab all night every night.
School is going well for her, except for horribly behaving 9th grade Japanese boys who like to touch her butt (there's been 2). That's all better now, they were made to apologize in a way that at least made one of them too ashamed to look at her. Unfortunately, the "forced apology" is pretty much the highest form of Japanese school discipline so that's about all that they could ever do. On a much better note, at the end of November I went with Maria for a day to Kamikaifu Elementary, which is a little ways up the coast and right on the sea. I went to an enkai (a party) with the teachers from this school and they invited me to come visit for a day. The kids and teachers there are a whole lot of fun, the kids are really well behaved and just about everyone seems to get along. In between lessons, I played 2 sessions of 'tag' with the kids and some basketball with the 5th and 6th graders (the school is so small that they combined 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th grades). I think I mentioned on facebook that I really understand how that's Maria's favorite school. I'm definitely not going to any of the other ones so I'll pretend that they're all that fun and the kids are all that engaged when it comes to English lessons.
That's about all that's news. Life has been pretty dull here. We're going to be back in the US from about the 23rd to the 4th, and we're looking forward to that. We're already pretty busy almost every day from shopping (okay, not as much of that for me), appointments, parties, holidays and so on, and it should be pretty fun. We miss our dog, strange as that may sound. I really would love to take her on a walk sometime! It used to be a great way to start the day! That's about all for now, and I suppose the question in the title of this post is answerable. I suspect the answer is a little bit of "no" but I suppose that'll have to do.
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