After much deliberation, I believe spring has finally decided to return to this fair city of Masuda. It hasn't quite fully returned yet, but the signs are beginning to crop up. For instance, I have to start putting my drinks in the refrigerator again if I want them to be cold. Gone are the days when I could just leave a package of chicken breasts on a table for a week and not worry about them spoiling. It's inconvenient in a way, really, but I feel it's a fair trade-off, considering I don't feel like I'm going to freeze to death whenever I enter my kitchen now.
Animals are starting to move, too. I'm starting to see birds again, and just last week in Hikimi, I was witness to a herd (pack? flock? gaggle?) of monkeys, making its way along the mountainside, no doubt in search of a decent curry shop. I'm told there are bears out in Hikimi too, but I haven't had the luck of seeing one yet. I have seen a badger, which the school's math teacher told me was a “ground bear.” Have I told you about that already? In any case, the English teacher out there told me that in the spring, the school can be kind of like a zoo, which is bad. I'm assuming that when she said bad, what she really meant was “awesome.” Sometimes things get lost in translation.
The coming of spring also means that the road to Hikimi isn't covered in ice and snow anymore. Since about the beginning of January, I've been riding the bus to Hikimi. This has been both good and bad. Unfortunately, taking the bus to school meant that the earliest I could get there was by the beginning of third period. This can be inconvenient because I'm always the last one to get to work, and I miss any English classes that take place during first or second period. On the other hand, I didn't get to school until the beginning of third period. This gave me an extra two hours of sleep in the morning, since I didn't have to be at the bus stop until 9:10, when the first bus to Hikimi rolled into the station. Riding the bus also meant that I was free to eat breakfast during my trip to work. Every Friday, I had the luxury of stopping at a convenience store on the way to work and grabbing something to eat on the bus. This was a huge plus, since without breakfast I'm usually about to pass out by lunchtime.
Then there was the ride back. On the way home from Hikimi every Friday, I was joined on the bus by three of my students from Hikimi Elementary. This was either awesome or terrible, depending how tired I was. Regardless, I thought these kids were great.
There are three of them, a first grader, a second grader, and a third grader. All of their names are a mystery to me, but I know them well. The third grader seems to be the most collected of the group; I guess that kind of maturity just comes with the territory when you're all of nine years old. He's the one who talks to me the most, and he's really good about it, too. He has the patience that a lot of adults lack, and will use simple explanations to help me if I don't understand a particular word. During our conversations, I've learned that we share a love of the Super Mario Bros. He's excited about Super Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl, and he tells me he's hoping to get a Wii for his birthday. His birthday is in October.
The second grader seems to enjoy sitting up front and having “very adult conversations” with the bus driver. Every week, he sits at the driver's shoulder and asks what seems to be an endless string of questions. I usually have no idea what he's saying, but it's clear from the tone of his voice that what he's asking about is pretty serious business. I imagine that by the end of his tenure at Hikimi Elementary, he'll know more about the operation of city buses than anything he's been taught at school.
Then there's the first grader. From what I can gather, it seems as though the blood flowing through his veins was long ago replaced by Mountain Dew or some other suitably Xtreme fluid. He rarely stops talking, and he never stops moving. One day I got on the bus to find that all three children had large chunks of ice that they had probably confiscated from some rain gutter. While the other two had stored their ice chunks in their umbrellas for safekeeping, the first grader was wielding his like a sword. He's a cute kid, and I love him to death, but he frightens me, because deep down, I worry that his energy is going to fall into the wrong hands; I am certain that one of these days, someone is going to find a way to harness that energy and, when they do, they'll either use it as a clean power source for all of Japan or they'll destroy the Earth.
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