THIS MORNING

I arrived back in Yamagata on the night bus at 5.10a.m. and got this far on I don't know what but there's a point when you break through fatigue and then can't see the next horizon until you realize it's already enveloped you and it's just a question of time bef

Tonight we welcomed the new teachers to Nanachu. The Head teacher changed. Out went Yoshida Kocho Sensei, prolific smoker, ex-baseball coach, in came Harada Kocho Sensei, ex-music teacher, prolific smoker, soba master. This last autumn and the one before he taught me and a bunch of other ALTs how to make soba. The year before last, me and he exchanged a bit of banter, as I thought him soba master drafted in for the day nothing more and he him me nothing, probably. We fingered flour and water together and trampelled and trammelled dough 'neath pin between board and all worked out specially well, more for the fact that I'd been paired with a teacher who aspired to retire and set-up soba shop than more for anything else. That was last year not the one before.

And then he ends up at the school I happen to be teaching at. Happy days, pink pinkety views of bulbs silently plucking darkness from the night sky one dot by eye by dot at a time, and we all roll on to the next venue with Abe Sensei leading the charge to I don't know what, he and I were both a a little drunk.

The station, I stopped to say hello to Tsutomu, who I hadn't seen in maybe 5 months. I try to catch up, too late.