Nakano Coffee Shop

December 3: nothing happens

The trains still look pretty crowded as they pull into the station. My coffee is gone but I don't feel like ordering another one. It's not like this place is short on tables anyway. I walked around the area south of Nakano station for about 20 minutes looking for a place to drink a cheap beer--Pronto is another coffee shop that turns into a reasonably priced bar after hours--but there was nowhere to go for alcohol, and so I went for caffeine instead.

This place has a view of the eastern end of the platforms in the station. People milled around on them while the trains were stopped--another "human body accident" on the damn Chuo Line keeping tens of thousands from moving for a while--but they are empty now. The trains that roll in regularly once again are still sweaty-windowed nightmares, though. Not something to board, especially during winter when everyone has a down jacket and a scarf and lots of extra body heat to share.

So I am hanging out here for a while longer. I did homework for a while, but after grading about half of my papers for this week's class I decided to write this instead. I'm hapy with the early start I got on these corrections. usually most of this task waits for late Thursday night, and I rush through the comments on the students' papers during lunch on Friday so I can hand them back in class that evening. Budgeting my time more wisely each week would be a good thing. So would exercising and giving up beer and doing free translation for nonprofit charities, I guess . . .

I'm writing this on a computer without any pictures on it, so I have nothing visual to add to this entry. Maybe I'll dig something up later. Something snowy! Ski season is upon us again, and enchanting phrases like "Let's winter pals!" once again entice me. Soon I will be walking on packed snow, feet lurching in ill-remembered rhythms, and stretching my muscles to fling me down slopes that I try again to make steeper than the year before. I want to improve to the point where I can make my own runs on the mountains I choose to climb. Here we get back to the exercise and beer thing, though . . . being in better shape and lighter would let me climb higher and ski harder, with more gear on my back. This goal sounds like a much more enjoyable reason to budget my time wisely than grading translation papers, though.

* ponders running home to avoid crowded trains *

* goes to buy a can of beer and wait for a less crowded orange metal tube *

The pictures:

	Here's a shot of this wild animal that lives on the slopes of Yatsugatake, where Matt Staples and I used to play. We didn't get near enough to shoot a tranquilizer into it and throw it in a concrete enclosure for the rest of its life, though.
	Me at Appi, a nice ski area waaaay up north on Honshu. I hope to be there sometime this month and in early January, too. More pictures of this hill to follow.
	Even farther north, and another rare animal. After a beer-filled bus ride down the hill from Sapporo Kokusai ski area to town, James finds a comfortable wall in Sapporo station and makes a pillow of it. zzzzzzzz