It felt really quite strange, waking up yesterdayin my freshly cleaned house. I really bottomed the place on Sunday, and it felt like I was living in a new house. Or at least, a different one, haha. It's certainly not new. The biggest changes I made were to get rid of the rugs and mats that were down around the house, and put a few small items (a bookshelf, a cane chair and a low lounge I never used) into the massive upstairs cupboard. Doing these things really opened the place up, especially getting rid of the horrible dust-encrusted red rug that was in my kitchen. I'd really like to get rid of the kitchen table and the chest of drawers/cupboard upstairs too, but figure I'd better leave a few things there for my predecessor. Just because I like a spartan house doesn't mean they won't want somewhere to store their clothes, haha.

I've been thinking about where I'm going to put my new computer, which is arriving today! One of my concerns with Japan is how dusty it is, although perhaps it is especially bad in Ako. In a short time after dusting, the whole house will be covered with a layer of dust/grit again. Naturally this isn't too friendly for computers, hehe. Aside from that, it's actually really hard to know where to put it. My downstairs tatami room would be a good candidate, but it's dark and with the lounge in it, it'd look really strange with a computer desk too. Upstairs I have another tatami room that hardly ever gets used, and there's definitely enough space in there. It's also dark though, and I'm not too sure about putting the computer on tatami. Not to mention that it's not convenient in terms of hooking it up to the phone line for ze Internet.

So looks like I'll be putting it downstairs on the kitchen table. It feels like it'll be an ok place, so long as I keep food and drink away from it :) It also saves me the trouble and expense of buying a computer desk, which, like most wood products, are ridiculously expensive here in Japan. We'll see. I have to actually get the computer first, before I worry about that. I'm really looking forward to building it!

In other random news, school is fully winding down for the year. The kids didn't come to school yesterday and won't be here again today for 'puraibashii' (privacy) reasons, as the school entrance examinations for junior high school students on Friday last week are still being dealt with. I don't quite understand this, but neh :) Nobody seems sure about how many students we'll end up with in the new ichi-nensai. I've heard estimates from 210 to 280. Regardless, there will still be 7 classes. It's quite interesting to see the drop off in student numbers. Even the difference between this year's ichi-nensai and san-nensai is marked. San-nensai has 8 classes of around 40 students while ichi-nensai had only 7. That's a fall of 40 students in just two years. Kind of really rams home the fact that the birth rate is falling and the society is aging here in Japan. Given that this school can support 11 classes per year, it kind of makes me wonder how much longer it'll be efficient to keep running it! Hopefully for the next 2 years or so, anyway, hehe.

Back to the end of the school year, the rest of the week is a bit of a joke in terms of students attendance. There's a public holiday on Thursday, so as far as I know the kids only have to come in on Wednesday and Friday before finishing up. Wednesday is just four 45 minute periods and Friday is basically just the closing ceremony, lucky buggers, haha. Apparently I have a 'fun' class with Ishino-sensei on Wednesday though, yippee! My first class in over a month, I think.

From there it's spring vacation, which should be sweet. Nothing to do at school so I imagine it'll be long lunches, studying Japanese and hopefully doing some exercise out in the playground. I want to practise my Ultimate Frisbee, so I'm planning to do some running training and throw a frisbee around for a few hours each day. Despite all the exercise I've been doing recently, I'm still not losing any weight! >:( Perhaps I'm eating more too, hehe. We'll see, anyway. I'm still thinking about going snowboarding, but spring has really hit like a sledgehammer now so I'm not sure if the snow will be any good, even in Nagano. Time will tell.

And finally, despite having so little money in Hyogo-ken (so little that some JETs have not been allowed to recontract) and apparently in Japan in general too (so little that some Japanese embassy staff overseas are rumoured to not be getting a pay rise this year), Hyogo-ken has entered its 'splurge the rest of the budget' period. This appears to be a very well known side effect of Japanese bureaucracy. Every year, each prefecture pushes for more money or at least the same amount as they got last year. They hardly ever spend all of this during the first 10 months or so of the financial year, so then splurge the rest of their budget on seemingly ridiculous things in the final two months. In Ako, this consists of ripping up and replacing one of the main roads.

In my opinion this is utterly inane because not only did this road appear perfectly fine, but it has had work done to it several times since August and there are other roads that need the attention a lot more. As irritated as the situation makes me, especially because everyone knows about it yet doesn't do anything to change it, there's nothing I can do about it. This is apparently just one of the quirks of life in Japan. Take the good with the bad, I suppose!