Hi, Dad,

      Haven't talked with you in a while, so I just wanted to say, "hi." I won't be at home and awake at any hour that's reasonable in Florida until the weekend, so I won't be able to talk to you before then. I'm probably coming home early tomorrow (I'm going back to the elementary school, and they let me out early), in time to talk to Yoko in LA, but it will be three hours later in Florida. The odd thing is that it's 9 pm Monday here, and if I call Yoko tomorrow at 1 pm, it will be 9 pm Monday in LA then--in fact, it will be right now. I understand how this all works, but I still find it kind of amazing: tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to talk to Yoko tonight. Maybe this is a sign that I need to get to bed.
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      Nothing much is happening--work, sleep, food. Went out with 2 young teachers Thursday night--one of them is the beautiful young one who is leaving at the end of the month, the other is my friend the young English teacher.

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      The next day, I went with Beautiful-sensei to the Chrysanthemum Doll Festival (life-size samurai and royal court dolls with clothes made of chrysanthemums; it's as stupid and dull as it sounds, but it's Takefu's only claim to fame) to replace the rotting flowers on our school's dolls; we spent 2 1/2 hours together squatting barefoot in ankle-deep cold water sticking flowers into the damned things (under a big tent, but still outside and it was raining heavily), but our dolls were too far apart for us to talk much. My job description gets broader all the time--I go in the morning, and God only knows what I'll end up doing before I go home.

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