Life and Work in Matsuyama

This is the lobby of the Ehime University Faculty Guesthouse.

Every morning a Japanese-language and an English-language newspaper are placed on the tables.  In the back are the French doors to the breakfast area; just to the left under the stores is the service counter.

This mysterious electric-powered object is sitting in the corner of the lobby:

I figured it must be some sort of typical Japanese machine, found in all hotel lobbies, but when my host came by he was as puzzled by it was I was.

The security system is non-existent.  When you leave your room, you place your key on the counter so that the manger knows that you are out.  When you come back, you walk up to the counter and take your key.

The whole setup is a burglar's dream come true. The main door to the guesthouse is unlocked from early in the morning until late at night.  Generally there is nobody behind the counter.  At a moment's glance you can tell which rooms have guests, and which guests are not there.  You can take a key, go into the room, steal whatever you want, and then put the key back so that nobody suspects a thing.  It would be even easier for a guest to steal from another guest.

I was a bit nervous about this whole system, since I had $6,000 in cash sitting in my room.  But nothing went amiss.

The walk to Ehime University campus from the guesthouse is about five minutes.  My host works in this college:

To a Chinese speaker that looks like the French Department--which confused me to no end for a long time--but in fact it's the College of Law and Humanities.

This is the office I worked in.  It was formerly a faculty office, but now serves three purposes: overflow storage for my host's books, a small library of humanities-related non-Japanese books, and a seminar classroom.  It was used as a classroom only a few hours a week, and the rest of the time was available for me.

I really liked having this little indicator on my office door:

Everybody in the building is quite meticulous about choosing the appropriate setting for their office door: in the room, away from the room, in a meeting, teaching a class, off-campus, away on business.

This is what the whiteboard looked like after one of my days of collaborative work with my host:

Unfortunately, once Erma arrived, I could no longer stay at the guesthouse, which had no free double rooms.  That meant no home-cooked breakfasts for Erma to try.  We had to move to a hotel, which was much more expensive and not as close to the university.  And although the hotel was somewhat more comfortable, the rooms in the guesthouse were actually more spacious.

It was nice to be here just long enough to settle into a bit of a routine.

Here, by the way, are the last two breakfasts I got in the guesthouse.  Unfortunately, they were not the elaborate traditional breakfasts I'd gotten used to.  This is fried rice:

That thing in the back is a potato kurokke コロッケ "croquette", something like a hash brown.

After breakfast I was gifted with these mango-flavored mochi with chocolate centers:

And this is curry rice:

Served with a fried egg: