Barely Treading Water

Sorry its been so long since my last post... Things have been really busy. We have our new term up and running, now, though. The first two weeks are over and we have been absolutely swamped with students in the English office . This is great, but its almost impossible for teachers to get any prep done during the day. Many of us have resorted to staying late at night and working on the weekends just to get our classes ready.

I was home early last night (7pm) but by 8pm I couldn't keep my eyes open. Russell found me curled up on the floor when he came home at 9pm. The plan is to sleep in tomorrow (Saturday).

In the meantime, I have more pictures to share from Dad's visit:

Unfortunately, Dad's visit was plagued with bad weather. On the first rainy day, we decided to go check out the Kobe Maritime Museum, but unfortunately, it was closed on the day we happened to choose. This was especially disappointing because it was kind of away from anything else we might want to do. Before we started back to town, though, we decided to stop in at Fish cafe. I had walked by Fish cafe early in our stay and noted that it looked just like a Geary sculpture. Turns out, it was! At first I thought the cafe was inside the fish, but it isn't. The fish is attached to the outside. The cafe was okay, but I could take it or leave it. It was a welcome break from the rain, though, I must say. They also did latte art, which was fun.
The next day, we went into Osaka. Dad had spotted the Sky Building from the train and was quite taken with it. I did some research and found out that tourists can walk around the top of the building. We decided to try it out. Sky Building is one of the more recognizable sky scrapers of the Osaka skyline. It consists of two towers with a circular opening at the top and a pair of diagonal escalators towards the top to get into the circular "garden." I took a picture of dad on the escalator. The view was great from Sky Building (though the weather was cloudy and awfully gray. We did see a stand on one floor of the garden that was selling personally engraved, heart-shaped lockets. Then, when we went outside on the deck above, we discovered a corner where couples could lock their locket. There were thousands of little engraved hearts hanging from the railing. Aha.

To round out our drizzly day, we went to the Osaka Aquarium. It is one of the biggest in Japan (though there are maybe two that are bigger). Its pretty darn awesome. I love it. Dad was a little tentative about going (having never seen an aquarium on this scale). He soon realized his error. IN the first mini-exhibit (a walk through tunnel right in the beginning) he took a ton of pictures. It just got better from there. We had a really good time.

After the aquarium we went to my friend's cafe and had decadent coffees and cake. It was a nice finish to the day. On the way home, though, we had one more spectacle to take in. A huge crowd had gathered around an enormous TV screen in the Hankyu Train station. What was playing? The national Sumo championships. They were taking place across town. The crowd was rapt.