I had some time to kill at the train station last night waiting around for Kuniko, so I read through some of my website using my cellphone.

Holy crap, why didn’t you tell me how often I make typos?

I think almost every post has at least one bonehead typo. I have spell check on my computer – what the hell? It was a little embarrassing to go through and see some of my bloopers. I really can teach English, I swear.

I guess my only defense is that I write something every day, day in and day out, and I often don’t have a lot of time to really organize my thoughts. I’m not writing to entertain, and I’m certainly not writing for some journal or magazine.

Anyway, sorry about all the typos, and I hope you’ll see them as merely a person in a hurry rather than a person without a brain. I’ll do bettar I promiss.

On Friday I only have two classes – it’s my light day of the week. The students in the first class are all girls but one, and two girls in that class are always trying to break up the class and get themselves attention in the process.

One of the girls stopped acting out after her mother visited the class, but the other one, Sakura, is definitely a drama queen. Last week she kept her Japanese in check to earn a snack. This week she declared right away that she would rather speak Japanese during the class than have the snack. The other students looked at her like she had lost her mind.

So, she chatted and talked to other students right in the middle of the class, and just like before it took a lot of energy to get her to stay quiet like all the other students. She declared that she was going to talk to her mom and quit English. I was thinking to myself that it would probably end up being a great thing if she did. I felt a little guilty about thinking that, until the other students chimed in.

In what seemed like some kind of seven-year-old intervention, they told her that she’s always too noisy and maybe she should shut up and try to study instead. The other girls said that they liked English a lot, and if Sakura didn’t like it to go ahead and quit. The lone boy in the class told her that she shouldn’t be talking about this in the middle of class anyway – go home and talk about it with your mom and don’t bother us with it now.

Right on, guys.

I let them work it out until everyone was satisfied, and then I was able to finish up the lesson. I was personally kind of happy to hear that most of the students were enjoying the class and felt like I did about Sakura’s distracting behavior.

My second class is with some older students, and it’s my last class of the week so I think I’m always pretty relaxed in there. I joke around with one of the students all the time, and we take a really relaxed approach to the lesson. Something fun to look forward to every Friday.

After work I headed to Akashi and met Komori sensei at Donkey. We had a good time catching up and drinking beer. He’s still at the same school in Miki, and he’s been studying Chinese because his school has a Chinese language program. That’s a little unusual for public schools – usually it is just English.

Donkey was rocking pretty hard that night, with lots of people coming and going. While we were sitting around a guy came in and sat alone, and I didn’t pay much attention until the master said that he was from Hong Kong. Komori sensei and I struck up a conversation with him. He works at a factory for Mitsubishi, operating Caterpillar heavy equipment. He spoke Chinese, a little English, and a little bit more Japanese, so our three way conversations were really interesting because Komori sensei could speak some Chinese. The dialect was a little different, though, so mainly we stuck to Japanese and English.

One thing that we all shared was that we had Japanese wives. This guy showed us a picture of his wife and son, and they were both really cute. I’m not sure why this guy was out drinking alone, but he was glad for some company. We threw some darts and he told us all about how popular mahjong is in China. He sounded like he wanted to go out and play a little, but Komori sensei and I weren’t really up for that. We said goodbye and headed over to the sushi place for some dinner.

I really like the underground sushi place in Akashi. It’s expensive and tiny and mysterious and really a lot of fun to hang out in. If I had more money I’d go there more often. Komori sensei and I sat down and chatted with the master and three other regulars at the corner of the sushi bar. They were really drunk – one old guy was so sloshed he was holding his eye open to watch us eat, and if you can think about that image a little you might understand how creepy it was.

We caught up with the master and his wife, and we discussed how tough it was to pass the driver’s test for foreigners. In a first for me, I told my story of taking the driver’s test in Japanese, complete with funny side comments and even a punchline that had everyone in the sushi bar cracking up. I have found it really hard to make people laugh in Japanese – just ask Kuniko.

Komori sensei picked up the tab for dinner, which was pretty significant. I tried to pay half, but he wouldn’t let me, and even the sushi master was making motions to put away my wallet. In a really nice gesture Komori sensei had the sushi master make up a bento box to go for Kuniko, and so I had my hands full coming back home.

Ordinarily, the story would end about here with me crashing into bed, but Kuniko had let me know that she was out drinking with her boss and Ono sensei, and that she’d get home late. As it turned out the trains were delayed big time (80 minute delays) because of an accident (probably a suicide) on the tracks. I got to Okubo at around one o’clock. That’s usually the second to last train, but tonight the last train was going to come through after two o’clock. Kuniko got off her train at Nishi Akashi and took a taxi to the station, and I paid the driver and we walked home from there. It was a real mess late at night – she said the taxi line had about 50 people in it.

We had a really late night snack of fresh sushi, and then finally went to bed. It was a long day, and tomorrow Kuniko has to get up and go to school. We’re going to meet up afterwards for a wedding party for one of her friends, so I’m looking forward to trying my hand at bingo again…

Death from working too much. You haven’t seen peer pressure until you’ve been in Japan for a while.

The wind and rain were pretty heavy today, but through some miracle I was able to get to work and back without getting wet. My day went pretty well at work – the kids were in a pretty good mood today.

My “student of the day” was Yuki, a girl in my third class. She sits next to her friend who I predict will grow up to be a gossip-rap columnist. Yuki herself is a sweet girl that is afraid to speak out loud for fear of making a mistake. She does a great job, and she’s showing signs of coming out of her shell. Today she came in early, and she tried to talk to me a little bit when there were no other students around. I think she is a student that would benefit from one-on-one tutoring, but that tends to be expensive. Anyway, today she tried hard and I was proud of her.

Meanwhile, Yusuke sat across from her and made burping noises most of the class.

I got home before Kuniko tonight, so I made up a simple/healthy dinner of rice and pickled vegetables (from Kyoto). My favorite was the pickled daikon radish marinated with a basil leaves. Kuniko and I washed it down with a beer and watched the Hanshin Tigers lose a close one to the Hiroshima Carp.

Tomorrow I’m going to meet up with Komori sensei after work. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him last, so I’m looking forward to having a beer or two and catching up.

Lately I feel like all my posts have been about some crazy Japanese kid that is driving me up the wall. So today I’ll skip that description and tell you about other stuff going on these days.

This month I’m hoping to send off my application for graduate school. I’m a little worried about my chances of getting accepted. It’s no easy thing, but since it is with a university in Australia it is a little easier than going through the ritual in the United States. I’d like to work on a degree while living in Japan, so that limits my options significantly. Luckily I found a program that will work with my schedule.

Japanese study is progressing slowly. My new goal is to spend more time reading every day. I’d like to watch more TV every day, too. I’ve been focusing on vocab for a long time, and I think it’s time to put it into action.

Finally, although the weather was nice enough when I left for work today it was pouring when I came home. The weather should stay wet for the next couple of days, so I’ll be walking to and from work in the rain. Ugh.

Kuniko should be home in an hour or so, and I’m cooking some easy (and healthy) somen noodles and tofu on the side. It’ll be a late dinner tonight and I don’t want to eat a big greasy dinner and then go right to bed. Listen to Mr. Health Conscious over here.

I had a tough set of classes today. The students were really hard to get motivated, and it didn’t help that we had some of the more difficult subjects to teach. I was definitely doing some reflection after the day ended. Clearly the textbook that we’re using is too ambitious. Usually the students know less than 10% of what the textbook expects them to remember from the previous lessons.

I’m thinking that I need to base my lessons more on simple, fun activities than worry about the heavy duty English that the book expects. I think I’ll try to start tomorrow by teaching students some simple casual English that will be useful.

As for good news, the young kids managed to come out of the class unscathed. No blood this time, and Kento smiled at me a couple of times. I think he’s starting to feel more comfortable. His grandmother was there today, but she waited at the entrance inside the house instead of sitting with him in the classroom. That’s progress.

When I got home Kuniko was making dinner – teriyaki miso chicken. It was really good – I ate my share and a little more. After dinner I convinced her to walk with me to Saty to hit McDonald’s for a KitKat McFlurry. My lip has been sore since I bit it three times last Friday, and cold ice cream sounded like just the thing. Listen to me trying to explain my junk food habit with medical reasons.

On the way to work today I bumped into another one of my old students. She is also going to Hyogo University down the road from Nozaki sensei’s place. She was really brave to stop me and say hello, because I didn’t recognize her at all. She confused me a little because she said that she is studying nursing in Japanese, but then she added in English that she is studying dance. Not sure what the final answer is, maybe both?

I had one student acting up in my second class today, a little boy named Kohei. He was goofing off with one his friends – they were busy grabbing each others testicles and spanking each other. I didn’t want to delve into the psychology behind that, but I did want them to stop disrupting the class. I explained the “no snack” rule that Nozaki sensei implemented, but he didn’t seem to care. So, when everyone was diving into the snack bin I told that he didn’t get one, and looked startled that there were actually repercussions. We’ll see if it has any lasting effect next week.

After my classes ended I went to do a private lesson at a student’s house. Her mother had asked me if I would do it through Nozaki sensei, and I could use the money so I said sure. The mother picked me up and drove me there, and her daughter, a high school student, took me upstairs to her room and we set up to chat.

It wasn’t really much of a lesson, more of a way for her to get used to listening and communicating with native speakers of English. I enjoyed talking with her, and we stuck to English the whole time. At the end of the chat the mother came up with some cake and coffee, and we all talked and ate.

I was working on my cake during the conversation, and the bottom crust was all sticking together, so I decided that I’d have to gulp it in one swallow. I got it in my mouth, and just as it went in the conversation stopped. The mother asked me if I hadn’t just swallowed the paper on the bottom of the cake.

As it turned out it was paper that I had just eaten, but I had figured that it was better to go ahead and swallow it than to spit it back up on the plate in front of them. What would Miss Manners do?

Anyway, we got a good laugh out of that, and then they drove me back to the station and I went home from there. Kuniko and I had an easy dinner of cheese and crackers and then went to bed on the early side. I’m fighting off (another) cold, so the more rest the better nowadays.

Sunday Kuniko and I took the train into Kyoto to see an exposition of artwork by Georg Hallensleben from his “Gaspard and Lisa” books. Kuniko is crazy about the two characters from the books, and they have kind of taken Japan by storm. When she heard that there was an expo of art in Kyoto, we penciled it into our calendar – a can’t miss event.

We had a chance to meet up with Tomomi-chan and her husband Kouhei in Kyoto. Apparently she is a big fan of Gaspard and Lisa as well, so it worked out great. I like hanging out with them – they are really friendly and are patient with my broken Japanese.

Since we arrived earlier than they did (Tomomi-chan had a violin lesson in the morning) we decided to do some shopping. Kuniko agonized over a skirt in a shop under the station, we bought omiyage for our coworkers (in my case, I only have one so that simplifies things), and then met them for lunch.

We found an interesting Italian restaurant in one of the upper floors of the Isetan department store in Kyoto station, and talked over pizza and pasta. They had moved since we had seen them last, so we talked about their new place and finally made plans for them to come see our place.

As for the exhibit, it was everything we had hoped for and more. All of the art from all of the books was there in it’s original form (oil), and there was even a special book about Gaspard and Lisa’s adventures in Japan. The artwork was great, and it featured Gaspard and Lisa in various famous Japanese locations.

Of course it wouldn’t be a proper art show if they didn’t try to sell all kinds of merchandise at the end of it. Nobody from our party went crazy, but a lot of other people seemed to be. Gaspard and Lisa have a huge fan base in Japan, and I think most of them were there Sunday.

After the show we walked around Kyoto, and for once it wasn’t all that crowded. Once you got a block or two away from the station things quieted down big time. We walked the mainly empty streets until we found a little contemporary-styled tea house. I had an African tea, Kuniko had Royal Milk Almond Tea, Kouhei had Muscat tea, and Tomomi-chan had a Chinese tea that took everyone by surprise. Nobody was sure whether they liked it or not.

We spent an hour or so over tea and then headed back to the station and went our separate ways. It was great to see them again – and we’ll be having them over sometime next month for a taco party at our place.

When we arrived home Kuniko went to work cooking dinner (cold udon noodles with green onions) and I went downstairs to buy some flowers for Kuniko’s mom for mother’s day. I bought the flowers because whenever I go in there the florist always is happy to see me and he likes to try to speak English. He also gives me free flowers sometimes. When Kuniko goes in he doesn’t recognize her, and so no bonus flowers.

Today was busy with people buying mother’s day flowers. I ordered up 2000 yen worth of flowers, and the lady right after me did the same thing. When my flowers were ready the florist handed over a huge bouquet of beautiful flowers. He really went all out. I felt bad for the lady next to me – her bouquet was quite a bit smaller. I was waiting for her to shout out “discrimination!” but she kept quiet and accepted the smaller bouquet. It pays to be a regular sometimes.

Kuniko’s mom loved the flowers, and we spent just a little time over there after dinner. Kuniko’s mom was cooking dinner for everyone, and Kuniko told her dad to get out of his chair and help her out on Mother’s day. He said (almost proudly) that he never cooks, but we know differently. It was the first time that I had seen Kuniko give him a hard time about it. Times, they are a changin’.

Today I had another class with the crazy girls. They are the ones that are the most out of control. You might remember this class as the one that the mother visited and straightened out. I wasn’t sure how much work I’d have trying to keep them in line today, so I braced for the worst. As it turns out, they saw the sign on the board saying that anyone speaking too much Japanese would be deprived of their post-class snack. And that was enough.

I was surprised that the sign was so effective. They took it literally, and tried not to speak any Japanese at all. If someone let a word or two of Japanese slip out everyone else would look at me quickly to see what my reaction was. The class went better than I could have hoped, and I think we actually learned something today.

I met up with two ex-coworkers for dinner and drinks after work on Friday. In Akashi I met Yamamoto sensei and Maeda sensei from Takasago Minami high school. At an izakaya we exchanged stories about work and I got to hear all about the people I used to work with, and also about my successor Brenda. After dinner we went over to Donkey and had a Guinness while throwing some darts. It was the first time playing darts for them, and I think that Maeda sensei might be hooked. Yamamoto sensei had a tough time getting the darts to stick, but he still enjoyed it.

Not sure what the plan is this weekend. This is a chance that we’ll go to Kyoto this Sunday, but I won’t know until Saturday night whether or not we’re going.

Kuniko and I really slept in this morning. Kuniko had the day off, and since my job doesn’t start until the afternoon there was no reason not to just keep on sleeping. We woke up for breakfast around 7 in the morning, and then went back to bed soonafter. I don’t think we were conscious again until noon. We were both tired from getting back late the night before.

Kuniko went in to Sannomiya to do some shopping, and I headed to work refreshed and ready to take on one of my “noisy” classes. As it turned out they were on much better behavior today, but upon further reflection I realized that it would be pretty tough for them to be worse than last time.

Seriously, they did really well today, and I managed to keep them under control the whole time, and on task. I have to act a little more stern and make them do drill-type repetitions to get their attention. I feel like I’m invoking some ancient behavior of doing what the rest of the group does. It works, though.

I also had a junior high school lesson tonight, and once that was wrapped up I headed home. Kuniko was waiting at the station for me, and she walked me home and served up some gyudon and oyakodofu that she made for my dinner. It was a nice way to wrap up the day.

By far the most challenging class of my week is turning out to be the first class with the youngsters. Actually, all the students are good to go but one, Yuzuha. Yuzuha is only three, and she is pretty high maintenance.

Today we were doing shapes, and I had some shapes leftover from another class. They were laminated for their own protection. I showed the students the shapes and told them the English name, and then Yuzuha was trying to grab them out of my hands. I told her to wait, but she kept trying to grab them. After I finished with the shapes I gave one shape to each student. Yuzuha was trying to grab them from the other students right away. It was then that we noticed that one of the shapes looked a little dirty. When we examined it, it turned out to be a little bit of blood. We checked Yuzuha’s finger, and she had a tiny cut from grabbing the laminated shapes.

I wanted to savor the simple instant karma. I wanted to be able to see the logic click inside Yuzuha’s head that being greedy and grabbing things away from other people ended up being a bad thing for her (and her finger). But, alas, even though the instant karma was there, Yuzuha’s recognition of it wasn’t.

Yuzuha was looking around at the shapes and enjoying having so many for herself, and when we pointed out that her finger had some blood coming out, she started crying like someone had just cut her finger off. I took her into the bathroom to clean it up, but I couldn’t find any band-aids. We had to make do with some tissues as a temporary bandage. Yuzuha clung onto me as the nearest adult and held on tight, seeking comfort. Her sister was a big help and tried to comfort Yuzuha as well. She was out of action for the last ten minutes of class though.

While all this was going on the other students were sitting around watching idly, and not learning any English. They are troupers, though – they helped out a lot too. I wasn’t able to do what I wanted today in the lesson, but I think everyone will understand.

After class the mother of another one of the students was waiting outside to walk her daughter home, and she noticed the makeshift bandage on Yuzuha right away. I explained what happened and she was kind enough to walk with Yuzuha and her sister to make sure they got home all right.

So I went back inside and cleaned up the blood in the bathroom and on the shapes, and by then I already had the next class showing up.

What a way to start off the day.

The good news is that the next two classes are really good and after babying the younger students through a lesson, these ones were a breeze. In the evening I had a junior high school lesson, and that was a lot of fun, too. The students in the junior high school lesson are really comfortable with each other and because of that they are loose and ready to try speaking English.

Kuniko had a party this evening but she came home early, citing talkative middle aged part time coworkers as the reason the party sucked. I stayed up past midnight, Kuniko stayed up until around one, and then we crashed out. Kuniko has Wednesday off of work because of her school’s foundation day. Most schools have the date it first opened off, and tomorrow is her school’s foundation day. Lucky, lucky.

Today Kuniko and I went back to work after a relatively relaxing weekend. The students today were a lot more quiet and obedient, mainly because Nozaki sensei wrote a message on the whiteboard in Japanese telling them that if they spoke a lot of Japanese they wouldn’t get a snack at the end of the day. I didn’t explicitly point out the sign until some kids started acting up, and then that brought them back to earth. The real test will be on Friday with the hyperactive girl class.

So the classes today were a lot of fun, and I’m starting to settle into a groove and a pace that I’m comfortable with. Nozaki sensei has left it all up to me as far as what I teach, how close I stick to the textbook, and even if I use the textbook at all. The textbook is pretty high level for the students. The teacher’s manual says hilarious stuff like “have the students make groups and discuss what they did during Golden Week, what they wanted to do but couldn’t, and why they couldn’t do it.”

Yeah, right. Some of my students can’t even say “Saturday”.

However, with the flexibility I have I can adjust the lesson a little bit to suit the level of the students. The third class today was with some of my favorite students. Mana, the child genius, arrived early, so we sat and had a very smooth conversation in English about what she did during Golden Week. She politely answered my question and then politely asked about my Golden Week. Child genius, I tell you!

During their lesson we introduced a new word, “tacos”. I tried to explain them, but it is a tough concept to get. Instead I produced a bottle of Tapatio to smell. They were really excited that there was something unusual in the classroom. I passed it around and everyone smelled it. Everyone agreed that it smelled “dangerous”. I was surprised at the end of the class when they asked if they could put some of the sauce on their Umaibo snacks. I said sure, and I delivered one microscopic drop on each Umaibo stick. Ryu was saying “no problem, no problem” and then he flung himself to the floor crying out in exaggerated pain. The other students started complaining of the heat and visibly sweating. I thought it was turning out as a bad idea, but the students begged for more, and Ryu and Shota wanted to have some kind of competition about who could handle the most hot sauce. I cut off the experiment there, but the students asked me to bring it next week – they loved it.

I have noticed that Japan has been flirting with spicier foods over the past year or two, and maybe I am sort of doing some grassroots work myself to try to get more spicy foods on the market. Nowadays it’s not unusual to see Habanero and Jalapeno on the labels of snack foods in Japan, even though they aren’t nearly the spice level that I was used to in America. Good progress, though!

The last class of the night was for junior high school students. They are a quiet class and have a lot of work to do before they loosen up. It’s nothing that three beers each and a lot of gyoza wouldn’t solve, but that’s out of the question so instead I have to let the slow march of time relax them.

There were a lot of times where I felt like a comic bombing in Vegas – lots of students looking at me blankly hoping that I won’t ask them directly. Finally after plenty of uncomfortable silence I had to start calling on people. They answer in the quietest voices possible. The material is pretty tough, too. I think I may wander away from the textbook a little more in the future and play more games with them until they relax more. It was downright spooky how quiet they were tonight.

Kuniko and I arrived at the train station at the same time, and we walked home together. Interesting how before we would go to work together, now we’re coming home together. I had a huge headache so Kuniko cooked up some さやえんどうの卵とじ (sayaendou no tamago toji) which was a great way to use up the snap peas that we had gotten from Kuniko’s family. I crashed out early because of my headache – I hope it’s gone by tomorrow.

Not much to write about today, it was a day for downtime. Good timing, too – it was raining on and off all day long. Kuniko cleaned house, I studied and stayed out of her way.

We didn’t stay inside all day – we took a long walk to northern Okubo to drop off a letter for one of Kuniko’s students, and we also drove over to Ito Yokado to get some things we needed.

Since I’m not really writing anything interesting today, you should go check out somebody that is.

Since I hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time with Kuniko over the last week or so, she invited me to join her on a tour of the Amagasaki-Nishinomiya-Itami area to root on her tennis club students.

I kept Kuniko company on the drive there, and while she went into the tennis matches to talk to her students I stayed out in the car and studied and read books. I stayed on my own partly because I was looking for some time to study and partly because of decorum – I didn’t want to create a distraction for Kuniko while she did her job.

The first school was actually pretty close to Hamawaki Junior High in Nishinomiya, so we drove by the place where I used to commute to every day. Definitely 懐かしい. It took a long time for the tennis games to wrap up, and then we moved on to two other schools. At the last school we gave two giggling students a ride to their train station, and then we were free.

Since we were near Itami we stopped at Diamond City, a place we had been one time before. It’s kind of similar to an American mall, but all the shops are Japanese. We did find a Hawaiian fast food restaurant in the food court, but we were kind of between meals so we didn’t get anything. I’ll just have to wait until summer.

The last stop was a great one. In Amagasaki there is the last Carrefour in Japan. When Carrefour pulled out of Japan they sold their stores to a big Japanese supermarket company. That company, called Aeon, kept the Carrefour in Futami alive for a while but finally pulled the plug. Apparently this one in Amagasaki is still doing great. It was packed when we were there, and they had all our old favorites. I bought a six pack of Negra Modelo, we got lots of tortillas, a bottle of wine, Cholula hot sauce, and loads of cheese. We went hog wild in Carrefour, and after leaving I think maybe it is sort of a good thing that there isn’t one quite so close anymore.

By the time we got home we were pretty beat, but we persevered and went to catch a late show of Spiderman 3. The place was packed! I’m not sure why Spiderman is so popular in Asia. My review of the movie: not so great. Too Hollywood, I’d say.

We crashed out hard after that – so exhausted. Luckily there is nothing on the agenda for Sunday, so we can rest up.