As I mentioned before, the Japanese school system runs on a different schedule than the ones in the US.  They have a trimester system and their school year begins in April rather than September.

After graduation and some supplemental classes in the end of March, the students get a short vacation.  On the first of April, all hell breaks loose in the staffroom.  The teachers are given their new assignments.  Each year teachers are shuffled around.  Some will stay teaching the same classes they were last year, others will be switched to a new grade level, and still others will be transferred to a different school entirely.  Yeah, a different school.  Part of being a teacher in Japan means being flexible to be moved around according to where the higher-ups want you to work.  Sometimes you can request to go to a specific place, but in general I believe that it is mostly up to the Board of Education.  I found out from one of the teachers that they can ask you to move anywhere within the prefecture, but not outside it.  So if you teach in Toyama, you don’t have to worry about getting transfered to Hokkaido or something.

In Toyama High School this year we had a few changes.  One of the third year English teachers got promoted to go and work at the BoE, quite a big deal and a great thing for him.  One of the other English teachers is still out on maternity leave, so we got two new teachers to the school in April.

With all this changing around that happens, the staffroom has to be re-organized.  The teachers are grouped by section, first year – second year – third year.  And since many teachers switch grade levels there is now a new seating plan.  So April 1st everyone cleans out their desk and moves all their stuff to the new desk location.  I have heard that in some schools the entire desk gets moved instead of just personal belongings, but here the desks themselves stay put.

As the ALT, I was told that I would stay in the same location.  By the door.  Incidentally, the lower ranked you are as a teacher, the closer to the door you sit.  If you were wondering, I’m pretty much the first teacher kids see when they come in the room

Since I didn’t have to move, I got observe the amazing chaos that was moving day.  It’s a kind of ballet really.  Everyone is cleaning out their stuff and moving it to a new location.  So you run into this weird kind of dance.  You take out a drawer of your desk and carry it over to where your new desk will be.  Then you wait while they are moving one of their drawers of stuff to their new desk….where they have to wait for the person whose desk they are taking…and someone is waiting for you.  There is a *whole* lot of “sumimasen” and “gomen-nasai” -ing going on.

I offered to help out, you know, since I don’t have to move.  I was always told no thanks, except in the case of the music teacher.  She had an injury in her leg a short time ago and is still recovering.  So she had a small army of teachers (including me) moving her stuff for her.

Craziness and chaos and cleaning, and about 3 hours of listening to people cleaning their laptop computers with cans of compressed air.  But, the new staff room was sorted, everyone in their new seats and organizing their desks.

March 20-22

The fabulous excursion rep for the Toyama branch AJET (Association of JETs), Maddy, organized a trip to Osaka for the three day weekend in March. The sumo tournament was being held during that time, so the trip was planned out for us to go and watch the 8^th day of matches on Sunday.

In all there were 12 of us that made it into the trip. Maddy was awesome and set up rental cars, tickets and a great hostel for us to stay at.

The drive down to Osaka was interesting, we hit a big mess of traffic so it took probably 2 hours longer than the normal 4 it would usually take to get from Toyama to Osaka. But it was nice to take a trip in a car. Cars are one thing that I really miss. Public transportation in Japan is usually convenient and always on time, but it’s a bit more challenging to coordinate trains and buses than it is to just jump in a car.

The hostel was great. It was a nice little place very close to Namba Station. Which was made even better by the fact that it was only a 10 or 15 minute walk from the hostel to the sumo arena.

The first evening we all went out to dinner at an all-you-can eat pizza place, and explored the very crowded streets of Osaka. Karaoke and ice cream made for a very fun evening.

Sunday morning a group of 6 of us got our tickets from Maddy and arrived at the arena around 9:30. The sumo matches start around 8:30 I think, and they go nearly all day.

We went inside to be escorted to our seats. There are two kinds of seating that is available for a sumo match; box seats and arena seats. The box seats aren’t seats like you would see at a Western style event. They are simply cushions on risers that are divided into sections by metal poles.

If you want a box seat, you have to buy a whole square at one time, you can’t just buy one cushion in a square of four. It looked interesting, and more comfortable if there were only a few people in it, since there was enough room to kind of spread your things out and relax. The price for those seats is a bit expensive though. One seat usually costs around $95, and since you have to buy the whole box worth, it’ll end up costing around $380. A little too pricey for me. The arena seats are more like what I am used to; stadium seating, plastic chairs that have the seat covered with a thin cushion.

The thing I wasn’t used to was how narrow they were. But it makes sense, smaller seats = more people you can fit. I find it a little ironic how small the seats are for a sumo match though. The arena seats are a bit cheaper, ranging from $75 for the closer seats to $35 for the seats father back that we were in.



(trying to catch up on posts)

Japanese Graduation Ceremony

Nothing can be done properly in Japan without a good ceremony. Opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies, welcoming ceremonies, farewell ceremonies… The list goes on. Graduation is no different than anything else in the way it is made into a ceremony. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that graduations are extremely important. Especially graduation from high school. So it most certainly should be celebrated with plenty of ceremony. But Japanese graduation is a bit different from anything I experienced at home.

Toyama High School holds graduation in the gym. It’s really the only space big enough to hold everyone. The gym is decorated with red and white striped banners all along the sides, suspended from the railings above the floor. The treated gym floor is covered over with long plastic sheets to protect it; since students, teachers and visitors don’t change to indoor shoes when they come to school.

Opposite the entry, the stage is decorated with a large podium. Beside the podium is a table on top of which is placed a rather impressive looking bonsai tree. The Japanese flag is hung across the back of the stage.

All of the students at the high school participate in graduation. The first and second year students all bring their chairs down from their classrooms to set up in perfectly measured rows and columns. The day before graduation these younger students must go to the gym for graduation rehearsal. They spend time sorting out how the chairs will all be placed, how they will all stand and sit in unison, the proper way to bow (all together, with the bow being completed over a full 3 seconds….lots and lots of bowing practice) and singing the school song (which they apparently did not do correctly as they had to sing it 4 times).

There are metal folding chairs set up in carefully arranged sections for the third year students, as well as for the teachers, parents and education officials that will attend.

In the back corner of the gym the brass band club is set up in a very tight jumble of instruments and students. It looks cramped but at the same time they seem to spread out all over the back corner. When I entered the gym the band kids were already in their places with the 1^st and 2^nd year students filing in and taking their seats. There was a lot of chatting, and there seemed to be an excited buzz in the air.

Once all the students had been seated and the teachers were sitting in our own section, the parents of the graduates came in to sit on the other side of the gym. The conversations had died down a lot and the excitement was subdued by a level of decorum. A few of the mothers that came in were wearing kimonos, but much more common was the “Sunday Best” type of attire.

After the parents were seated, the education officials came in and were escorted by one of the vice prinicpals to their seats. A few announcements were made and then it was time for the 3^rd years to enter. The band starts up with “Pomp and Circumstance” and I was really surprised by that. I hadn’t given any thought to what they might play, it was very cool. As the students enter everyone starts clapping. The students are grouped by their homeroom, and each group is lead by their homeroom teacher. In Japanese schools, the homeroom teacher is essentially their school parent. So it’s very fitting for these surrogate parents to lead them to their graduation.

We only stop clapping after all the students are seated (my arms were getting tired). And then it’s time for speeches. I have no idea what they were about, so I can’t really tell you about them, other than the fact that there were a lot of them. And it was very boring. I’m certain that if you actually understand Japanese it wouldn’t be quite as boring, but I did see some of the kids fall asleep, so who knows.

After the speeches it was time to present the diplomas. Each student was called up to get their diploma from the principal. The students came up in their school uniforms (no cap and gown for Japanese schools) and their homeroom teacher would give the principal their diploma. 293 students, each one called up and presented with the diploma. Then the new graduates sang their school song for the last time with their underclassmen. The whole thing was done with impressive control of emotion, nearly everyone just…was. Only a few students looked teary eyed, and not many had more than a tiny smile on their faces.

Once the graduates, followed by everyone else, filed out of the auditorium it was time to set up for the big farewell. It has a Japanese name, but I don’t remember what it’s called. The underclassmen line the walkway out from the front door of the school. Then when the new grads walk out of the school for the last time as students, they are met with all the faces of their younger friends. Members of clubs rush out into the line to attack their sempai with hugs and small gifts. Many of the grads have tears in their eyes, and so do the younger students. This part of the ceremony felt far less forced, and the emotion that is so rarely shown came out.  Lots of pictures and hugs and screaming and crying.  It was nice to see them acting…well, like kids.

It was a good day, and according to some of the teachers nearly all of the students got into university. They did well, and I was glad to be involved in their graduation.

In Toyama there is a glass studio about 30 minutes by bus from Toyama Station.  They showcase a lot of local glass artists and there is a lot of beautiful work you can buy at the studio.  They also have an extremely cool touristy type option, you can sign up to make your own item at the studio!

How cool is that?  You get to actually work with molten glass and shape it into something you design.  Most options are either to make a paperweight or a goblet.  But since next week (March 3rd) is Hina Matsuri (the Doll Festival) they have a special option that you can make your very own hina dolls out of glass.

these are traditional hina dolls

Since my mom had been really interested in finding hina dolls to bring back home, and she wanted to try making something at the studio, I asked one of the teachers at school if they could call and see if we could make our own sets of hina dolls.

It worked out that if we went on a Friday morning we could both get the chance to make dolls.  So I took that day off from work, and on Friday morning we woke up around 7 to get ready and make it to the bus stop by 8.

The glass studio is about a 7-10 minute walk from the bus stop, so we got off the bus and walked the rest of the way.  Of course, since it is Toyama, it was raining.  Luckily we brought our umbrellas.

Inside the studio we had to fill out some paperwork and pay.  To make two dolls, one emperor and one empress, it costs 4,500 yen.  Around $47.

After paperwork and payments were handled we were met by one of the glass artists.  I was really nervous about trying to communicate, since my Japanese is nearly non-existent.   However, much to my surprise and delight, he spoke English really well!  As we found out later in the session, he studied glass works in Italy and the US.

Before we could get started he took us over to the display racks where there were a lot of different hina dolls.  Some had been made by the professional glass artists, but most of what we looked at were dolls made by other visitors.  He showed us the different shapes that we could make, the different styles of bubbles inside, the different color patterns all kinds of little tweaks and twists that we could put together however we wanted.  He asked us to think about what we wanted to make and sketch it out on a piece of paper.

my design

February 13th

“Soba (そば or 蕎麦?) is a type of thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour. It is served either chilled with a dipping sauce, or in hot broth as a noodle soup.” – wikipedia

Up in the mountains of Toyama is a little town called Toga.  On the weekend of February 13th they held their annual Soba Festival.  Now, since I had never been to a soba festival before, I was excited when one of the CIRs set up a bus trip to the festival.  My mom would be here and my brother arranged to come out for the weekend as well.  It would be a family outing to eat soba!

It takes about an hour on the train to get from Toyama to Fukumitsu, the town where we were going to meet up with the bus.  We all piled on the bus and started the climb up into the mountains toward the festival.  If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you will probably remember that I mentioned Japanese busses in my posts about Fuji.  This bus wasn’t much different.  The seats are really narrow, and there isn’t a lot of room.  But we made it to the festival without too much issue.

Stepping out of the bus was a relief.  It had been a little bit too warm, and since the road swerved back and forth in it’s climb up the mountains many people were a bit nauseous.  There was snow everywhere.  It had been cleared off the road, but everywhere else it was just packed down to walk on, or shoveled out leaving walls of snow taller than my waist.

We walked into the festival area and passed through a row of snow sculptures.  There was everything from anime characters to stylized Japanese houses carved into the blocks of snow.

The main festival square area was ringed by larger sculptures.  One really amazing temple was just stunning in the detail work.  They also had snow caves and slides that the kids were having a ball on.

At the one end of the square was a stage where a woman was reading off an announcement.  Taking a closer look I realized that the whole stage was made out of snow!  They had compacted such a huge amount of it and sculpted it into a stage!!

That was so incredibly cool (pun intended).  On that stage throughout the day would be a bunch of performances.  Little kids in traditional garb playing instruments and dancing, or adults performing intricately choreographed dances, or even a pop singer performance at one point.  All of these performers would be up on the snow stage, in the snow and the wind with little more than a cotton costume on, no coats.  I can’t imagine how cold they were.

There was also a long building down the one side of the square.  Inside the building there was a bit of heat (thankfully) and a whole row of vendors.  I think that this area is a camp in the summer, because this building had the distinct feel of “camper dining hall” to it.

It was long, and open down the middle.  The one wall was crammed with tables and benches or stools, while the other had various kinds of food you could buy.  There were of course several varieties of soba noodle soup.  Some was creamy and spicy, others were more of a tradional broth but in all there were about 5 or 6 varieties of soup to try.  In addition to the soup you could get a cup-full of fried soba noodles (which were pretty tasty), fried chicken pieces, sweet potato wedges coated in sugar, or even crepes.

We got to the festival around 2:30 and had plenty of time to walk around and explore before the log pull.  The log pull was really interesting.  They had a bunch of men dressed up in costume which included grass coats.  These men were sitting on a huge log and playing  big taiko drum while chanting something.

At the front of the log, two long ropes had been tied and were being pulled by dozens of people.  Mostly it seemed to be school aged children, with a smattering of parents, toddlers and a few older people.  Several ALTs (myself included) ran up to an empty spot on the rope and assisted in dragging the giant log with people on it around the square.  It was fun in a weird sort of way.

In order to give everyone the full experience of the day we got there early enough to see/do the log pull and the bus would leave after the fireworks show at 7:30.  Quite a long day!  Especially considering how cold it was there.  The snow came and went throughout the afternoon and when we got tired of wandering around in the cold we found a bench inside the cabin and huddled together to sit for awhile.  We found some outrageously huge cotton candy too!

The cotton candy came in like 6 varieties or flavor, so it was pretty neat.  I unfortunately got pink cotton candy drippings all over my leg, but it was still delicious.

Around 7pm we went back outside and got to see a recently married couple (I think they were married at the festival but I’m not sure) go up on the snow stage and have several speeches made about/to them.  The bride’s dress was really beautiful and she seemed to shimmer in the snow.  They also got to walk over to the chapel (a snow sculpture) to ring the bell, a tradition in Japanese weddings.

After the wedding the fireworks began.  They were set to music and I managed to get most of it on video with my ipod.  It’s hard to film fireworks, because I never seem to be looking in the right spot, but some of them were just spectacular.  That is one thing that I think I will miss when I go back home.  Truly amazing fireworks.

My mom got here around 6:45 on Tuesday evening.  As we were walking back to my apartment she was looking around and asked where the snow was.  It had been above freezing for a couple days and the temperature combined with the rain meant that there was no snow on the ground.

Being from New York, I’m used to snow sticking around until spring.  Sometimes it would get warm enough to melt down to the brown grass underneath, but most of the time there was snow.

I’m not complaining that most of the snow in Toyama city melted.  I  used to think getting around when it snowed was annoying when I had a car.  Now I will never take cars for granted again.  Biking and walking in the big fat wet snowflakes is miserable.  In the areas where it piles up, staying upright on the bike challenging.  It seems like my bike tires become ice skates and I end up slipping and sliding, trying not to dump off the bike into the 5 inch deep puddles of slush.

But as we pulled her suitcases, I was grateful that there was no snow.

When I woke up the next morning to go to my visiting school up in the mountains, I looked out the door and was greeted with nearly a foot of snow.  And….it was still coming down, without showing signs of stopping.

The snow that started Tuesday night continued for three days, dropping a total of at least three and a half feet of snow.

Where is the snow, mom?  I’m glad you asked. It’s right here.

Ken and I went home for Christmas and stayed through New Years. It was a great vacation. We got to eat all kinds of food that you can’t get here, or doesn’t taste quite the same. We also got to spend time with our parents and got to visit with a lot of our friends. It was great to see everyone!

After coming back to Japan on the 4th of January, things were busy and boring at the same time. During the weeks before vacation I had already planned out most of the lessons that I would be doing, so I just had to teach them.

On the 10th I went to Kanazawa to see the New Year Fireman display. It was cold and rainy, just above freezing, but the display was really cool. They have ladder teams and each team raises a bamboo ladder straight in the air. The ladders are probably 20 or 25 feet up.

One member of the team is the ladder acrobat. He climbs up the ladder and does a bunch of really amazing stunts. This tradition was started back in the Edo period in Kanazawa. They still continue to do it to keep the tradition going.

After the acrobatics they have a bunch of the firemen bring out the hoses. These guys wear nothing except a loin cloth and tabi socks. They were prepping for this part by spraying each other with sake. But even still, they must have been cold. Once all the hoses were out, they set off the sirens on the trucks and fired the hoses into the air. The water shot up and then began coming down, carried by the wind right into the crowd. I was able to record a video because my camera is waterproof. But I got completely drenched.

Being cold and wet for a few hours may have been part of the reason that I was horribly sick for the next week. Monday the 11th was a holiday, so all the clinics were closed. I heaved myself over to the hospital to get checked for influenza. I felt miserable, and the flu test (which involves sticking a swab WAY up your nose) took awhile to get the results.

I didn’t have the flu, but I did have one of the worst colds. I left school early on Tuesday after I finished teaching to go back to the hospital and get medicine. All week I felt like garbage and they sent me home from school because they didn’t want me to get everyone else sick.

The cold went away finally and it was back to business as usual. Yesterday (February 2nd) was my birthday. I got a whole bunch of great messages from friends which was awesome. My base school had their “yosenkai” which is kind of like a big talent show. The students from the chorus and dance clubs asked me and one of the JTLs to sing the rap section for “Joyful Joyful”. It was a lot of fun.

Then last night I got the mist awesome birthday present. My mom arrived in Toyama!!!  I met her at the airport, and unlike the last time she came to visit, we got back to my apartment at 7:30 instead of 2 in the morning. I’m so happy to have her here!  Happy birthday indeed.

If you have been following my photos on Picasa, I just uploaded a bunch of albums from the pictures I have been taking with my phone.

The albums are sorted by the date the pictures were taken, so make sure you go back through and check out some of the older ones!

So after my mom flew 14 hours on a plane to get here, what’s the first thing (after some sleep) that we do?  How about go to the hospital?  That sounds fun!

It wasn’t an emergency situation, no one was dying.  But I had been constantly sick since I’ve come to Japan and my asthma has been worse than it’s been in a long time.  Part of that is due to the vast amount of smokers in Japan.  It’s really prominent here, and very gross.  Another part of it is the new environment, Japan has all kinds of allergens that are different enough from home that they are driving my system nuts.  I take Zyrtec everyday and Benadryl at night, but even with those meds, it’s still difficult.

We went to the Red Cross Hospital in Toyama, which is about a 10 minute walk from my apartment (you can see it from my balcony).  We went in and up to the information/registration desk.  I handed them my insurance card and asked if they understood English.  No such luck.  Fortunately, one of the things my mom had brought from home was my new medical alert bracelet.  On on side it reads “ASTHMA” and on the other it has “ZENSOKU” the Japanese word for asthma.  I showed the desk clerk my bracelet and she nodded and had me fill out a form as best I could.

After the form was filled out she led me and my mom over to the waiting area for the general medicine doctors.  I was given a number (rather like the next in line stuff at the deli back home) and asked to sit and wait.  We sat down and waited for a bit.  A nurse came over and handed me a bigger form and asked if I could fill it out.  I shook my head, since I can’t read all (or any) of the kanji on it.  She nodded and left.

We waited for awhile longer, and then they brought out an assistant (not a nurse) who could speak English.  She was really helpful and her English was very good.  I explained that my asthma was bothering me a lot more than usual, and that whenever I got a cold it would stay for a long time.  She understood and asked me a bunch of questions and we filled out the forms together.

Then she took the forms back and we waited some more.  Maybe half an hour later the assistant came back and asked if I had the information for the doctors I had seen before coming to the hospital.  I gave her my cards for the two clinics and she let me know that the doctor was going to call the clinics and talk to them about my condition.

More waiting.

Then she came back and asked us to follow her.  She led us to a patient room, and again I was amazed at how cramped together everything is.  The room had a very small antechamber, with a chair and a basket.  The chair was to sit and change shoes into the slippers and the basket was for your bag, jacket and shirt.  They gave me a towel to wrap around my shoulders and asked me to sit on a stool next to the doctor’s desk.

The little space where the doctor sat had a desk with a computer on it, a bed, a bunch of medical instruments and was open to a central area in the back.  There was a curtain drawn across the opening so that it was private, but I think that it’s open to allow the doctors and nurses to move easily from one room to another without those pesky doors.

The doctor checked my lungs and with the help from the English speaking assistant and my mom, we explained the issues.  Having my mom there was really helpful.  Japanese people have a lot of respect for parents, so since she was there they were very attentive to the things she said.

After a bit of discussion and looking at my inhaler, they asked me to go back out into the waiting area.

More waiting.  By now we had spent nearly 4 hours in the hospital.

The assistant came back out and asked me to follow her to the medicine area.  It’s not the pharmacy, but the place where they actually give you the medicine right there.  Shots and other kinds of treatment that have to be administered by a nurse.  They sat me down in front a machine and poured a liquid into a small reservoir.  As soon as they flipped the machine on I recognized it.  A nebulizer.  When I first developed asthma back in high school I had needed to use a nebulizer at home.  From wiki – “Jet nebulizers are connected by tubing to a compressed air source that causes air or oxygen to blast at high velocity through a liquid medicine to turn it into an aerosol, which is then inhaled by the patient.”

So basically they turn liquid into mist so you can breathe the medicine in.  It really dries out your mouth though.  I sat and breathed in the medicine and when that was finished we were taken back out to the main hospital area, where we would wait for the bill and more medicine.

The medicine they prescribed was Advair, which was a relief to me because it was the same exact stuff that I was on in high school.  It really helped me to control my asthma when it was really bad.  Yay for American medicine!

In total we spent about 4 and half hours in the hospital, but the mission was accomplished.  The total cost for the visit plus the medicine was around $35 US.  Hurray for asthma medicine.

Tuesday started like any other.  I woke up, got dressed and went to school.  On Tuesdays I have two classes in the morning and then the rest of the day is free.  When I got to school I found out that today was a Wednesday schedule, since the school was scheduled to have sports events the next day.  Well that was a bonus for me, since I go to my visiting school on Wednesdays, so I thought I might not have classes.  But instead, they moved one of the classes so that I had one class to teach during third period.  They might have moved more classes, but I had asked to take paid leave after that class.

Why did I take part of the day off you ask?  Well, I had to go to Tokyo.

That’s a long trip, you say.  Why yes, yes it is.  But it is very worth it.  Because I’m picking my MOM up at the airport TODAY!!!!!!!!!!  YAAAAAAAY!!!!

Haha, so incredibly awesome.  She is coming to Japan.

I had bought the train tickets a few days ago, and as soon as I was finished with 3rd period I left school, heading for the train station.  It takes about 3 hours to get from Toyama to Tokyo.  And I only got a little bit lost on the way to the airport.  Some of the trains in Ueno were confusing, but I managed to get to the airport around 6pm.

Narita airport has trains that run right to the station.  So as soon as you step off the train, you go up and into the airport.  As you go up toward the gates there is a security center before you leave the train area.  There are metal tables set up with airport security workers waiting to check your id and possibly search your bag.  I was really freaked out, worrying that they wouldn’t let me into the airport since I didn’t have a plane ticket.  The security guard asked me for my passport and I shook my head and frowned.  I had stopped carrying my passport around when I got my alien registration card.  He then asked for an I.D. card, so I showed him my card.  He looked at it then gave it back to me and waived me through.

Phew!  I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t get through, because my mom didn’t have a phone to get in touch with me.

I went through the gate and looked at the signs.  One of the beautiful things about Narita, since it’s an international airport, all the signs have a bunch of different languages on them.  Including English

They had a North Arrival Lobby and a South Arrival Lobby.  I had no clue which one she would be at, so I went over to one of the monitors that displays flight information.  I was looking for Delta flights, and where they came in.  But…the board didn’t make sense to me, I am used to the listings showing the origin of the flight then the airline and time and the gate number or something like that.  The board I was looking at just showed either “ON TIME” or “ARRIVED” or “DELAYED”.  No times.  No gates.  No help.

So I took a guess and went down one of the corridors and made the circuit around the area.  Nope.  Well, I had to figure out how to get to the other side.  I found a connecting corridor and headed down it, looking for signs or monitors or anything.  Then near the doors headed out to the taxis and buses I saw her.  I ran the rest of the way.  I have never been so happy to see anyone in my whole life.

I found her.  She was safe, and she was here.  It was such a huge relief to hug her and just hold on.  I missed hugs, I missed her, but now she was here!  And she had luggage filled with stuff from home!

We found food at the airport (cause they don’t have Subway in Toyama) and then headed down to the trains to go to Toyama.  I had tickets for both of us to get all the way back to Toyama.  We left the airport around 7:30pm and got back into Toyama at 2:30am.  Yeah, it was a long trip back.  But the express trains stop running after a certain time.  I felt bad for my mom　that after a 14 hour flight it was another 7 hours on the trains until we got to my apartment.  But she made it, and we got to my apartment and crashed.

It was so great to see her and hug her.  Things got a whole lot better.