it takes 72 muscles to smile and say good morning

Yeah, I made that fact up. But, this Tuesday, although I was scheduled to work at a school, I instead had to show up bright and early at the train station in the middle of town for a "aisatsu undou" aka exercising greetings. This basically consisted of me wearing a smart little red sash and white armband, both proclaiming my allegiance to my town's Board of Education, and giving an enthusiastic "good morning!" (in Japanese of course) to everyone that passed by the train station entrance for a good 45 minutes. It was pretty hot for 8 AM, and the sun was in my eyes the entire time, but I still kind of enjoyed myself, certainly more than I would have if I had to teach that day. (I still love my main school.) That afternoon I got to go watch the tail end of the basketball tournament for all of Takahagi, and I got to see my kids beat up on another school. That was literally the entirety of my job duties for that day. Say hello to a hundred or so people in the morning, then watch some 15 year olds play basketball in the afternoon. It's great. I feel guilty that I don't help out more with basketball though. The old basketball coach got transfered to elementary school (which is hilarious, this guy does not seem like he is well suited to dealing with 10 year olds at all) and the new coach is one of the Japanese Teachers of English, who asked me to help her with the team, but I've been shirking that responsibility way too much. Luckily the boys basketball team is ridiculously strong (they beat every other team by at least 30 points) so they will be moving on to the northern prefectural tournament without my help.

Despite my only going to basketball practice 3 or 4 times in the past 2 months, I was still invited to the victory drinking party just now. My main school actually did really well, ending up as the champion for boys basketball, soccer, baseball, table tennis, and a bunch of others. I'm proud of my kids! These days I am getting something out of my job that I never really thought about before, when I was having so much trouble deciding whether or not to continue working in Takahagi. I really feel connected, like I am part of a group, when I go to Takachu. Just now at the drinking party, there were a bunch of speeches given by each sport's coach. Despite my limited involvement they still wanted me to speak. And then we all stood in a circle and put our arms around each other's shoulders and sang the first verse of the school's anthem. Enkai over. Good times.