Yep, the cherry blossoms are out. It seems to me they’re earlier this year, but a lot of April and May of last year is a blur to me. I had kind of a tough time getting adjusted.

One thing for sure, it’s darker and colder this year. I took some nice sakura pictures on campus on days with bright blue skies this time last year. Recently, we’ve had a few nice days, but generally it’s gray and rainy. The blossoms still look nice, but it’s not the same.

The Japanese have cherry-blossom-viewing parties/picnics every spring and they’re still taking place this year, but I just saw one just the other day where the participants looked more like they were ready to go skiing.

Along with the cherry blossoms, new classes are springing up at the university. The school year here starts in April and last week was the first week of the new semester. I have a new experience to get used to. One of my Oral English classes has 90 students. 90 students! At my former school, the University of California, Riverside Extension Center, 17 students was considered a big class.

The students are now shopping for electives so there’s a possibility that the numbers will go down. There’s also the possibility that they’ll go up. Oh, well. After the first 40 or 50, it doesn’t matter much... at least not until it comes to grading. I usually give a quiz every week. I may have to rethink that. I have about 160 students so far with three classes yet to meet for the first time. We won’t know exactly how many students per class we’ll have for a couple of weeks yet.

I got a little of the gaijin treatment from the big class. After the first lesson, several of the students wanted to have their pictures taken with me. It seems to me that that’s usually reserved for the last class, not the first one. This particular class is for freshmen, ichinensei, so I guess I may be something of a novelty for them. Actually, a lot of people, Japanese or not, say I’m a novelty or words to that effect, but that’s another subject.

We had the graduation ceremony for last year’s seniors, yonensei, a couple of weeks ago. What I’ll remember most about it is all of the girls in kimono (no plurals in Japanese). Very, very colorful. Very, very pretty. Of course, I’ve seen women in kimono before, but not that many at one time. It was very Japanese. Nice experience.

Every once in a while, there’ll be a woman wearing a kimono on the train or walking down the street, but mostly, of course, it’s western-style clothing, although often with a Japanese style to it. The hooker-look of last April is back - short skirts and black stockings - and there’s always the logo/slogan clothes. My new favorite is one that I saw on a young mother with two small children at McDonald’s. Yes, I go to McDonald’s in Japan occasionally, which is weird because I never do when I’m in the U.S. I’ll have to think about that. Anyway, she was wearing a mommy sweatshirt with cute little fuzzy teddy bears all over it. Then she turned around and on the back it said, “Everybody must get stoned.”

So, anyway, I’m now looking forward to a new year of classes, for the most part, and cultural experiences, also for the most part.

I just tried to order an exercise bike from a department store in Tokyo and after filling out all the forms and arranging for delivery, I was informed that the company won’t deliver to the fifth floor. Can’t blame them a bit for that. I don't want to go up to the fifth floor, either.

I had to cancel the order until I can arrange for help in getting the machine up to my apartment. Of course, I could just get my exercise walking up and down the stairs and I wouldn’t need the exercise bike in the first place. The thing is, I've been doing that for a year now and will be doing it for at least another year and I really hate those stairs.