It's been a long time again since I e-mailed.  It's still pretty hot
and humid in Japan.  For a little while it seemed like the humidity
was going away, but it definately isn't.  I'm starting to finally get
used to using Celcius for temperatures.  Before I could think about it
in my head and get the rough idea, but now someone can say a
temperature and I know what it means right away, its nice.  And I know
my body temperature in celcius.  Japanese people are one degree colder
by the way.  I'm not sure if that is true for most Asian people or
not, but for most Japanese people the standard body temperature is 36
which is like 96.8 degrees.  I had a whole special class on
temperature the other day.  It sounds boring, but it was pretty funny.
 Its one of the first times I've seen Japanese people all just touch
each other even if they don't know each other very well.  Also I
learned about old Japanese bedwarmers.  They used to use a metal box
filled with asbestos for insulation, with a piece of coal inside for
heat, wrapped in a blanket so it wouldn't burn you.  This was mainly
for kids about 40 years ago.  I know it's probably not that bad
because of the time frame, but I thought it sounded way too dangerous.
 Nova is in a really bad situation, so I might not have a job soon.
Because of numerous scandals in Japan, NOVA has been forced into a
tough situation by the Japanese government, where because of a long
term signing system, many students have already paid NOVA for years of
lessons, but NOVA can only sign students short term now and NOVA was
forced to pay a lot of students a lot of money back.  In this
situation, I agree with NOVA and not the government, but I think the
way NOVA does business is by deciet so they deserve it.  What happened
was they would tell students things that made NOVA sound really good,
things like you can book a lesson anytime, which is true, but if there
are no teachers you can't book a lesson anytime.  And then they would
sell students points they could use to book a lesson for like 3 years.
 Students often buy a lot of points because it's cheaper.  But then
students would find it difficult to use all their points in time, or
they would decide that learning english was not so fun, because it is
actually hard and they would want to quit.  So what NOVA would do was
calculate how much they would have been charged had they bought points
for how many lessons they took only and then refund them their money.
This is not so bad, but the problem probably lies in what the contract
the students sign says, because it makes sensse to me.  If I were a
Japanese student, I would buy the large package everytime, then take
less classes and ask for a refund, so I could get my lessons
discounted without having to buy a whole lot of classes.  So NOVA is
not allowed to operate on this system any more, but in addition to
that, NOVA had to refund students their money from even years ago,
pretty much any students that wanted it, so right now NOVA is on the
verge of going bankrupt.  They are definitely taking loans to stay
afloat.  And in addition, some company (this may just be the world of
rumor here) offered to buy NOVA on one condition, that the president
step down, but he wouldn't.  So I may or may not have a job pretty
soon.  But right now I'm working on moving out of my apartment, which
is paid for by NOVA, still hoping that NOVA comes through with my VISA
renewal in the next couple of weeks, because I need a job and a
company to sponsor my renewal and then after that I can start to look
for another job.  But I think that NOVA is such a large company it
would be hard for it to go under, plus they are still hiring more
teachers, because even though they are cutting back the number of
schools,  NOVA in general has been short teachers pretty much since I
got here.  So I'm a little unsure of whats going to happen, but I am
hoping they stay in business, because I saved some vacation time, so I
could come back to the US for a little longer and if I get another
job, maybe I won't be able to get vacation for a few years (probably
not though).  Anyway, some of my Japanese friends said they would help
me if NOVA goes under, so I will probably be okay.  And also if they
do I can collect Japanese unemployment which is 80% of paycheck for 3
months.  Not bad huh.  And I can collect it even though I'm a
foreigner, which is pretty cool.  Hopefully I explained that well, my
english has been suffering lately, because I've been speaking Japanese
more and sometimes I'm with people who barely speak english and its
easier to speak a broken version of japanese english to them, because
they understand it really easily.  In fact, I've had this happen in
lessons before.  One student asks what a word means and the other
students says they know, so I have them teach the other student, but I
can't understand (I mean at all) what they say to the other student
(it is English though) and the other student understands and then I
test them and they do both understand the word.  It's completely
bizzare.  The same thing happens for me in Japanese.  I used a
Japanese grammatical word the other day with someone.  Keyoshiii.  I
kept repeating it and finally they said, oh Keyoshhhhh.  It's spelled
the same, its just the way some words are pronounced, but I thought my
teacher tought me the other way, so I said Keyoshhh to my teacher and
she had no idea what I was saying and both these people are from Kobe,
its so frustrating.  But in Japanese if you just speak quickly these
little differences fade away.  They both become keyosh.  I finally
went to Tokyo also, its awesome, but its also a really crazy place.
Lets see, in Tokyo I ate both the most expensive dinner and most
expensive lunch I've ever paid for and unfortunately for me I told my
girlfriend I would pay for her, because she called and made
reservations and asked for directions for me, so I could go to these
restaurants even though she didn't really care.  Of course, she ended
up liking the food and it was expensive for me, but in Japan (this is
not a custom) I've always split bills with every girl I've taken on a
date 50/50.  I think that they think foreigners don't pay for women,
so they get excited to do something unique and pay for themselves, but
I'm not sure, because I enjoy not having to pay and I don't want to
ruin that for any reason, even extreme curiosity.  Anyway the reason I
wanted to go to these restaurants is because they are also Iron Chef
resaurants.  So now I've been to each of the main Iron Chef's
restaurants.  I won't tell you all the details, but at Iron chef
Japanese Rokusaburo Michiba's restaurant, I ate Abalone, which we're
not allowed to eat in the US.  I think it's basically a giant clam,
but I'm not sure.  It's pretty good though.  It reminded me of Sea
Scallops.  I also had two dishes with Matsutake mushrooms, its a
famous mushroom in Japan (especially famous for its aromatic
qualities).  One dish was a basic soup, but they couldn't add meat.
By the way, they just told the chef I was vegetarian and I would eat
fish and they changed all the courses with meat for me on the spot.
So instead of meat they added Hammo.  Hammo is a kind of small fish
that looks a little like eel especially because it has sharp teeth.
It's really hard to cook, because it has a ton of little bones in it
and it has a pretty light flavor, but its not bad.  I ate this at my
girlfriends house.  Her grandma and aunt made me a special Nabe (nabe
is like a soup, or usually directly translated as hotpot.  At its most
basic, its just a bunch of boiled ingredients that are boiled in
water, then you dip them in a sauce, but her family made a broth, it
was tasty) using hammo because her dad is the chef at a good Japanese
restaurant, so they stole from there for me.  I get treated pretty
nice sometimes.  Anyway back to the iron chef, the other matsutake
dish was perhaps the most famous dish.  I knew this dish in the US.
It's basically rice cooked with the mushrooms so the rice absorbs the
aroma.  It makes Japanese rice the tastiest rice in the world and it
could probably only be done with rice as bland as Japanese rice.  By
the way after living off only Japanese rice for one year (not that I
only eat Japanese rice, but it's all I can get in Japan and it is
pretty much served with every meal) I actually like it a lot and don't
think its bland anymore, it has a subtle (I just spelled that suddle,
because I write things in pronunciation form so much now) sweet
flavor.  This is pretty much what a Japanese person will tell you when
you tell them Japanese rice sucks, so it's pretty strange coming from
me, but don't worry I still hate  mayonaise, even though I am forced
to eat it at least 3 times a week.  Back to the Iron Chef's
restaurant, I also ate Uni, sea urchin roe, which also has a subtle
sweat flavor.  It's pretty goodd and expensive though.  All in all it
was an excellent meal.  The other place we went was Iron chef Kobe
Masahiko's (the italian chef) restaurant.  He's the only one who
actually works in his restaurant and for this reason I believe he only
owns one restaurant and it is really small, only like 10 tables, but
it is very good.  Here we only had lunch, so it was much cheaper.
Here I had many good things, but the most notable 2 were the antipasto
and my second pasta.  The antipasto was some kind of fish carpaccio
wrapped around a pickled eggplant.  It was really good.  And the other
was cocoa tagliettelle with a giant grilled shrimp.  The sauce and the
pasto both had cocoa, but it wasn't sweetened, it was bitter, but with
the shrimp which was the second best shrimp I've had in my life (it
was really sweet) it was like perfect harmony.  That's probably enough
for food in Tokyo.  I also went to the cafe Zoka in tokyo.  It was the
first time I've had a cappucino in months because they always just use
machines not people in Japan.  Okay, that's enough for food.  I also
checked out Ginza, Akehabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Roppongi, and
Harajuku.  These I believe are the most famous areas of Tokyo besides
maybe a couple others.  ginza is famous for being a rich area.  This
is where I bought that expensive dinner.  There is also crazy shopping
and the cost of land is probably the highest in the world.  Even
though the shops in Ginza charge a lot of money a lot of them actually
lose money because of rent, but they make up for it in fame from
having one store in Ginza.  This was cool just to see some really
expensive stuff and people.  Akehabara is nerdville.  It's really
dorky.  I could become a huge nerd and spend the rest of my life
there.  They had massive amounts of electronics (I mean parts you can
build electronics with) everywhere and there're so many shops its
really cheap.  They also have all kinds of collectible stuff, like any
kind of anime character or anything really.  It's ridiculous.  It's
also home to maid cafe's.  I don't know if you all have heard of
these.  It's basically a place where all the girls are dressed like
traditional maids and they treat you with the highest level of
service, speaking the ultra polite japanese that I usually don't hear
and they even will give you a massage.  Of course, I didn't really
like it because to me, these girls have the worst job in the entire
world and to top it off everyone wants to take pictures of them,
because they're so cute looking, but they don't want to allow it.
It's a bit ridiculous, especially when you consider there's no tipping
in Japan.  Akehabara, by the way, is one of the areas of Tokyo that's
famous for Cosplay (costume play), which is dressing up like famous
characters from animes or stuff like that.

To be continued.  This one is too long already.

Dan