Back in Japan and avoiding the flu

I'm writing from my apartment in Kitakyushu, enjoying my first weekend back in Japan after taking a month break in Oregon and California. My summer vacation was more than I could have asked for. Spending lots of time with family and friends, plenty of time outdoors in Oregon, eating steak and delicous tacos, drinking beer that tastes beautiful, watching a buddy from grade school get married, taking a road trip to the coast with my parents and older bro, speaking lots of English - these are just a few highlights. But, it's also good to be back in Japan.

I had work this week, Monday through Friday. So far I'm actually feeling comfortable and more or less 'in the swing of things' again. It helped being welcomed back by a few friends, opening my apartment door to a (mostly) clean room, and going back to work and seeing lots of cheery, nice teachers and happy, bright-eyed students.

On Tuesday, all the students returned to Takasu Jr. High and were scheduled to have an opening ceremony for their last term of the school year. To my surprise, the formal ceremony wasn't held in the gym as planned but rather conducted through the P.A. system, as all the students sat at their desks in their respective classrooms. During the lunch break I asked a student why everyone didn't go to the gym. He replied that the teachers were concerned about influenza. He also told me that he didn't know of any student so far affected by influenza.

Two days later one of the English teachers told me that a few students had been affected by the virus. In addition she said one of the local elementary schools had been closed for a little while because of the flu. And, she said that if any teacher came down with the sickness they would have to stay home for a week. I'm still pretty unclear how serious the flu thing is around here, having not read up on local news for a while and only going off of what I hear. It does seem to be a hot topic at my school, because I've received a few handouts having something to do with it (but really hard to decipher) and I keep hearing the word 'in-fu-ren-za' spoken at the morning meetings.

With the school being as large as it is, 2 students being infected out of 800+ doesn't seem all that bad. Also, if the school policy for an infected teacher is just to stay home for a week, the virus itself doesn't sound all that scary (for adults, anyway). And everything else at the school is back to normal - classes, lunch, after school clubs, etc. Aside from curious happenings with influenza, the rhythm of daily life feels the same and it feels good not having to greatly adjust myself.