Back to life...Back to reality

My first day back at Ichi-ko and I am late. I wobble through the doors and everyone does their surprised "I can't believe you came to work today even though I have been at school all week with nothing to do" face. I get that face a lot. These teachers need to take a quality vacation. I give them all the sweets that I promised them, MOMIJI manju (soft cake shaped like a maple leaf with sweet bean in them). Little do they know, the manju is a week past its expiration date. I realized that by taking a 2-plus week trip, I have destroyed the freshness of an omiyage that is meant for the typical 5 day vacation Japanese person. I'm a failure. I quickly reasoned the hardness of the cake being from the coldness of the weather...nice Juni. The teachers ate it with relish. But here I am, back at work, which I did miss a great deal while I was away. Not really the boring nothing to do quiet workroom, or getting up at 7 am, but I did truly miss my students. I guess that's a good sign. But here I am at work, doing nothing because there is nothing to do, so what do I do with my time? I start to plan my next trip, a 10 day vacation to Kyushu and Okinawa, which would make it the final lap of completing the Japan travel circuit. I feel a bit glutonous, planning for a vacation just after finishing another. I try to hide my guide book so that my English-speaking teachers won't see what I'm up to. I make a very showy deal when I do a little real work so that it qualifies me reading about the tropical beaches of the Okinawan Islands. And although Morioka is still not snowy, the coldness makes me look forward to tropical weather. So here I am sitting at work, dreading and counting down for my next class and wishing for warmer weather.