For anyone who may have wondered, I haven't given up here. Just took a little bit of a break. In addition to the break, I started a Japanese blog for my students to use. Give it a look. There are probably loads of errors in my Japanese, but one thing I want to emphasize is that one can make some errors and still communicate. It's called Kirk's ブログ(Blog). My goals are to encourage students to write by example, and to encourage them to read extensively by adding comments, some useful vocabulary, and links to English articles of possible interest. I also hope that I get some writing practice myself.