Diamond, and some Morbid Cookies.

"But ah, to be such a  man as he, and walk so pure between the Earth and the sea"
                                                - Neil Diamond, Captain Sunshine 

Um, I think the next stop is Hofu.......

Hofu's eki is cool, it's inside annnnnd it's on the second floor of the station. You have a really pretty view of the city as you come in (provided it's light out of course). Oh, by the way, editing is always a good idea. This picture was completely dark and I just slid the the slider thing over and, Bam! Kind of acceptable photograph. Sadly, this is the best picture I have of Hofu. Maybe I'll post one of the videos later.....

                            Today is a Tuesday, but I didn't do my usual Tuesday things. I stayed here in Ube and went to a concert. A nard concert. It was a church thing, and pretty fun, but also a little sad for me because it is another thing that I know I failed at. I know I didn't put any effort into finding out about the concert even after I knew I was going, and I didn't even try to invite my students, which is a shame because we really do a lot together and I think they would've enjoyed this (and it was very evangelical, which makes it even worse). 

                             So when I came home today it was only 2:30, and I usually get home at 6:30 on Tuesdays, so I thought "gee, I have all this time and I really didn't do anything yesterday, I guess I should do something useful." We have our English Kid's Classes' Christmas Party next week (meaning tomorrow is my last kid's class. Thrum-thrum) and during delegation (Ms. Tailor and I sat down and talked) I was given the task of baking the cookies for them to ice. So that's what I did. I made Alton Brown's sugar cookies (because they were one of the first five links google gave me) and cut them into stars, trees, bells, and snowmen. I had no problem with the recipe (for those interested, I added vanilla) but I did have trouble rolling out the dough. I'm used to this in general, but this time instead of not being able to roll it thin enough I kept rolling it slightly too thin. This is the price I pay for going to the Pastor's house yesterday and spending two hours rolling out little tortillas and remarkably thin giyoza (or pot sticker) wrappings. My first batch of cookies, mostly trees, burned. The rest of the batches suffered various injuries, especially the snowmen. I ate their heads and put their bodies away for later. It was hard to compromise even that much. It was even harder remembering I was not making them for myself, my family, or the family that gave my family chicken pox* ( in other words, I wasn't allowed to lick the spoon).

             Sometime around four o'clock my back started hurting. Statistically this is not surprising. My back usually hurts on Tuesdays, something about the two hour commute. But, as I already told you, I didn't even go near a train today. I have three theories for why my back hurts anyway  

•  The table I used to make and roll the cookies on was too low 
• My body is in shock from having to do semi-physical labour
•  My body is so used to being tired on Tuesday that it started complaining out of habit (This one seems the most probable, if the lest likely). 
  

Whichever of these is the actual answer, the result has been that, despite how productive I sound in this post, I really did a lot less than I should've. I even listened to music, which is a big no-no. I have two online classes which I'm working on and no business listening to anything but their lectures. Still, it was nice to just listen. Especially to Neil Diamond. I think I'm really starting to like him, as opposed to listening to him because that's what I was raised on.  This has all kinds of scary implications about my taste in music, but we'll have to leave them for another day. 

                                                                   (Taken at Tokiwa Eki, looking out at the Japan sea)

*Am I really that tired or is this word weird? Chicken pox, chicken poxs, chicken poxes......

** Oh, sorry, I just realized this post has nothing "nihon-teki"  (japanese) in it at all. Actually, it sounds rather whiney. Sorry, maybe I'll do a post on mochi next time.....