Exam Day

Well, this was a fairly uneventful week. I got an email yesterday asking what day towards the end of the month would be convenient to meet and talk about my contract and so forth. So, hopefully they will be able to meet on a weekend sometime, otherwise I may have to wait until the 25th to actually sign anything. No word back from them today. I'll be sure to write about that when I know more.

Regardless, I will need a car unless something goes horribly wrong with this job, and have been mostly working on that this week. In Japan, they have three or four classes of automobiles based on size. The smallest cars, apparently the second class after scooters, are called K-cars. They're all under 660 cc. They're a little cheaper than normal sized cars to buy and to have the shaken (biannual government inspection) done. Additionally, the taxes are about $200 less. However, one guy I talked to warned me that a K-car might be a tight fit for someone 184 cm tall like myself.

The car itself plus taxes and shaken will probably add up to around $3000, and I'm not sure about insurance yet. It will be a pain, but also a necessity as I'll be working at several schools that are apparently not within biking distance of any central location. So I've been looking into getting a K-car but have to wait until I can actually talk about my contract and what not to actually make a decision.

In other news, yesterday was my last third year class and today was the Ibaraki Prefecture high school entrance exam. The third years were all out taking their tests at various high schools. For the past five school days preceding today, I had a last class with one class or another and I was given flowers by 4 of the 5 classes. The one that didn't give me any seemed unaware that that was our last class until the end, as they also had the shortest thank you speech in English for me. I'm pretty sure it was just, "Thank you for teaching us English." If only some College Presidents made their end of year speeches as to the point...

The lower grades were also taking some year end exams today, so I had no classes. With the exception of the two class periods that I was helping grade papers, I was largely left to my own devices. A light day tomorrow as well as we'll just be going over the tests in most classes, and now each day will be one class lighter.

Well that's all the news this week. It's been colder recently and it rained for the first half of the week. On Monday, it rained until 9:00 AM, snowed until 11:00 AM, and then switched back to rain. I found that odd. Until next time.