Top Of The League!!!

As if my weekend hadn't had enough pains and lack of sleep, I've just listened to easily the most stressful football match I've ever listened to, EVER.

1-0 to Blues lead to manic screaming which may or may not have upset/worried the neighbours. 1-1 sent me to the pits of despair, and upset me so much I marched off to do my ironing. While I was gone Wolves scored to make it 2-1. But five minutes later Nic Bendtner scored to make it 2-2, and send me into hysteric celebrations which probably further upset the neighbours.

And on the 88th minute Blues scored to make it 3-2!! I went absolutely crazy. But in stoppage time Wolves were awarded a penalty. But Doyley saved it!!!!!

3-2!!!! Top of the League!!!!!

Congratulations Christopher and Sarah!

This is long overdue, but first and foremost Congratulations to Christopher and Sarah! on the birth of their son, Ezra James, absolutely wonderful news.

The first half of this weekend was a bit of a blur. On Friday I went out drinking with Kawahara sensei and Kagawa sensei. Kawahara was blinged up to the max with his Louis Vuitton wallet, Gucci watch, and a silver ring on a chain around his neck. He completed the look with a pair of Edgar Davids-esque sunglasses. We went to an izakaya in Kojima and had the requisite 2-hour nomihodie, as well as some really good food. It seems Kawahara is something of a regular at the place, and he was on fine form. Towards the end of the evening I was trying to teach him and most of the bar staff the difference between saying "belly", "berry" and "very", without much success. It was great to see Kagawa sensei again, I felt like bursting into song when I saw him but I restrained myself.

Saturday was painful. I spent the afternoon shopping at Aeon with Meghan, and managed to buy some clothes as well as eating the wonderful bukkake udon for dinner. This may be its first mention on the blog, but it is a firm favourite food and topic of conversation for me recently. In the evening I met Georgina, Miwa, Miwa's friend "Mehhh-chan", or "Lovely", and Lovely's boyfriend for drinks.

Sunday me and Miwa joined Chisato, Meghan, Georgina and 2 of Christopher's work colleagues in a visit to the hospital to see Christopher, Sarah and little Ezra. He's very cute! And I managed to hold him without dropping him. In fact even more impressive I managed to look fairly comfortable holding him in a photograph (despite the beads of sweat that suggest the contrary).

Back In The Groove II

Lessons are now fully underway, and I've gone from being the gaijin in the corner who doesn't do much to the foreign celebrity I used to be! The new students are a mixed bunch, but (and in particular the night students) once you break the ice with them they are really keen to talk.

It also helps that I can speak a lot more Japanese now. Whilst many people are warned against using Japanese in class, it seems to work wonders at Shonan and Seishi, where the students are of a very low level. Even the odd word or Japanese phrase makes them much more willing to talk to you in English, and it also means they feel they can chat outside of lessons to you as you'll often understand.

It was also great to see all the students from last year, especially my favourites from Takemoto sensei's class! Next week I have more lessons, as well as a "business trip" to Kurashiki and a health check which involves all kinds of invasive procedures apparently (nothing too bad I've been assured). Then its a week of holiday, hurrah!!

Back In The Groove

Yesterday and today saw me return to teaching at Seishi High School. Chisato's departure had left a big hole in the teaching line-up (yes we're back to football metaphors), however the new English teacher is doing a pretty good job of filling it. Aoyama sensei, a "very handsome man" as described by Sugihara sensei, is one of Okayama's teaching elite, and indeed is so "young salaryman" in his looks that he could easily appear on TV advertising Softbank or Georgia coffee (along with Bobby De Niro). He also happens to be an "English English" teacher who supports Ipswich (the team, not the town itself). Yesterday I taught 2 lessons with him, and today I was back to teaching with Sugihara sensei.

It was great to see my favourite students again, as well as the return of Michiye to school after having to drop out mid-way through last year (I asked her if she was still working at the same coffee shop, and she told me it had closed down because of her. Hmmm). Michiye, in case you don't remember, was the original founder of the Seishi Steve Fan Club, and was born on the exact same day as my sister. The student ranks have also been boosted by a motley crew of first years, complete with their "too cool for school" attitudes and scruffy clothes. It didn't take long for them to crack under the pressure of translating "I like udon, but I don't like cockroaches" though. Mwah ha ha.

Tomorrow lessons begin in ernest, and in every other sense, at Shonan. I have a class of 3 students, then a class of 5 students. Which should be a doddle compared to friday, when I have a class of 56 students, followed by one of 28.

End Of The Season Run In

Last night the Blues managed to beat Leicester, despite a typically nervy ending holding onto a one goal lead. Which leaves the table looking like this

Sunderland 82
Blues 80
Derby 78

Three games to go, and in case you didn't know the top two get automatically promoted!

The final three games are...

Wolves (a), Sun 22nd 8pm kick off (Japan time)
Sheffield Wednesday (h), Saturday 28th, 11pm kick off
Preston (a), Sunday 6th, 9pm kick off

If the Blues go up it means I'll be able to watch us battle against Chelsea and Man U, and thrash Villa on SkyPerfect TV. If we don't, it means more nights huddled around the radio listening to us grind out results against such teams as Preston and Grimsby...Come On Lads!

Steve's International Film Festival

I've been watching quite a few movies lately, from all over the globe. These include the Korean Welcome to Dongmakgol, the Japanese Tonari no tottoro, the Mexican/Spanish Pan's Labyrinth and the German/Turkish Head-On. So here are some thoughts on them...

I saw the first part of Welcome to Dongmakgol on the coach ride back from the Demilitarised Zone to Seoul. Set in the Korean War, its a story of two sets of soldiers, one from the north and one the south, who happen to meet in a village in the mountains. The villagers of "Dongmakgol" are totally removed from and unnaware of the war that's raging all around them, not even understanding the threats of guns and grenades. Its warm and slapstick openings make the sad and heroic ending even more poignant, and highlight the futality of war and common bonds of kinship and solidarity without shovelling on any moral lessons. Well worth seeing.

Tonari no tottoro, or "My Neighbour Tottoro", is one of Hayao Miyazaki's (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) most famous films. Its a story for children involving a bus that's a cat and three "Tottoros", cute creatures that like the sound of rain on umbrellas. I'm not a huge fan of manga, but this is such a nice story, very different from other Miyazaki epics like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa. Its short and simple, but completely enjoyable.

Less sweet and certainly not simple is Head-On, a story about two Turks living in Germany who marry each other for convenience and slowly start falling in love with each other. Its full of sex and violence, and has won lots of awards. I enjoyed it as much as I could understand it (we watched it in German with Japanese subtitles).

Finally, and best of all, is the amazingly fantastically wonderful Pan's Labyrinth. Anyone who listens to Mark Kermode's movie reviews will know how he raves about this film, and the praise is definately well founded. It's directed by Guillermo del Toro, and set in Spain a few years after the Spanish Civil War. The story revolves around the difficult life of a young girl, taken with her mother to live with her stepfather, Captain Vidal, who is hunting down a band of resistance fighters in the hills surrounding a small town. The horrors she experiences in real life are reflected in the fantasy world she creates, complete with ambiguous "monsters" and a powerful lessons about the need to question authority. Its a complex and gripping film that masterfully combines the real and imaginary. An absolute must-see.

In other news the Blues beat the Saints 2-1 to leave promotion in their own hands! Only 4 games to go...

Great News and the Madness of Japanese Timetabling

Hurrah! A while ago I posted about my new timetable for the next 12 months, and how I might have to work until 9pm every friday. The good news is, I don't! The class has been cancelled, to my great relief, due to low numbers of students choosing it.

In a perfect demonstration of the ridiculousness of Japanese scheduling though, "Oral Communication" (as the English course is called) is actually massively over-subscribed. While the 7.30-9.00pm class had way too few students, the 4.00-5.30pm class had a school-record number of students, 56, choosing it! Last year my combined night school classes had 8 students in, this year, 56! It has been put down to the excitement amongst the first-year students at seeing me working at the school :) But if they thought they'd get to spend time with me by all choosing the course, that plan has massively backfired. 56 is way too many for any of the classrooms, so the class will be split into 2 of 28 each, and I'll take one one week, and the other the next. Quite how we'll teach an Oral Communication course that way I have no idea. In fact I actually have no idea whatsoever, it appears a plan doomed to failure...

Change Is Afoot...

...and exciting change at that! In contrast to the dreary monotony that passes for my job at the moment, I'm going to be moving apartment in a couple of months to somewhere closer to restaurants, bars and beer vending machines. I'll be moving north to Kurashiki City, the exciting centre of, well, itself, as opposed to the inaka outskirts of Kurashiki- Kojima- where I currently live.

Unfortunately, moving apartment in Japan involves ridiculous start-up costs. First theres the "deposit", put in inverted commas as its hit-and-miss whether you'll see any of it again. This is usually 2-4 months rent. Then there's the "gratuity payment", a bizarre 1 months rent to say "thank you" for moving in, as if actually paying rent itself isn't thanks enough. In total this will be a payment of around 150,000 yen to move. My cunning plan is that if I find a place thats roughly 10,000 yen a month cheaper in rent, I'll be recouping most of the costs over the next year and 4 months. That means I can look for places around 48,000 yen a month (a low but manageable amount), and the Board of Education will pay 25,000 yen of this in subsidy (as they currently do for my 58,000/month place).

After the place is found and the huge downpayment is paid, all I'll need to do is relocate absolutely everything in my apartment a few miles north, so thats another 30,000 yen for a moving van (the BOE wants me to take everything in my current apartment, which will save me lots on furniture but also leave me with ridiculous amounts of stuff that I don't want and can't throw away. I may have to rent a "storage space" apparently)

There's a huge amount of stuff to be sorted out before I can move, and finding an apartment that meets my picky specifications (2nd floor, south facing, 2 rooms plus kitchen, air-con) will be tough. But, like Mao Tse-Dong and his really Long March, I won't rest until it's done.

In total I'll be spending about 60,000 yen or so to move, plus spending far more in Kurashiki living, and waking up an hour earlier 3 days a week. But it'll all be worth it to live in a thriving metropolis!

The search starts here...

Kyoto in Spring

With the cherry blossoms in full swing, last weekend was the perfect time to visit Kyoto again. Me and Miwa got the Shinkansen on friday night, and stayed till sunday. On Saturday we visited Sanzen-in in the north, but the weather was really rubbish so we cut short sightseeing and went shopping and eating instead. We went to a really cool bar with views across the river, and then to Miwa's friends' French restaurant. I had a carrot and jelly mousse that tasted like curry sauce, followed by excellant fois gras, and some grilled sea bass with baby octopus and Okinawa baby seaweed. After that I had roast duck, while Miwa had some strange mix of various cow organs that was surprisingly nice. For dessert we had avocado, lime and caramel ice cream, and an apple chibuste (a kind of apple creme brulee for those uniformed souls out there). After eating we went to Kiyomizudera; the temple is lit up at night, and the cherry blossoms around it were absolutely amazing (so hard to take good pictures though). Once we got back to the area where we were staying we went to an izakaya for more food and drinks. On Sunday the weather was really nice, so we went to Kyoto Gosho (Imperial Palace Park) for a picnic, and then up to Ginkaku-ji, and the Tetsugaku no michi (Philosopher's Path), which was lined with Cherry Blossom trees.

Farewell Enkai

On Wednesday night I attended the Shonan farewell enkai, a glorious excuse to eat and drink to my hearts content. There is always an element of luck as to how good the first part of the evening is, as there is a "seating lottery" to decide which table you are on. Luckily for me, I was on the same one as both Yoshida sensei and Yoden sensei. The speeches were a lot shorter than expected, during which me and Yoden sensei were eyeing the tasty treats laid out before us. We had all kinds of sashimi, raw squid, smoked salmon, pasta, dumplings, sushi, and steak!

As this was a farewell enkai, after the first few courses people moved around the room, eagerly filling up the glasses of teachers who are leaving, who are then obliged to drink what they are served. This led to queues of people trying to get the leaving teachers, including Ono sensei and Kagawa sensei, reeeally drunk. Not that any teachers needed encouragement for that, and the enkai soon descended into the drunken state that these things always do. At the end we all formed an arch with our hands for the leaving teachers to walk through, and then all 40 or so of us linked arms to sing the school song at the top of our voices!

After the official first party came the unofficial second party, which about 10 teachers went to. I was taught lots of Okayama "ben" (regional dialect) by Kawahara sensei and Kagawa sensei. There was also a drink called "very very very sour" (which Japanese people pronounce "berry berry berry sawaa" which everyone seemed to be drinking, even though it was terrible. Star of the show was Miyoshi sensei, the teacher who helped set-up Shonan High and is leaving after 4 years. He was unbelievably drunk- consistently- for about 2 hours, and at the second party was saying all kinds of outrageous things which had everyone in hysterics! After long, drawn-out farewells, 7 of us raced to get the midnight train back towards Kojima, and I said goodbye to Ono-sensei, then Kagawa-sensei.

It was a really nice evening, and there’s a great spirit among the Shonan teachers, especially many of the leaving teachers. The new bunch includes a lot of young teachers- Nishimura sensei, who’s the same age as me, Kawasaki sensei, who is the new English teacher and is 25, and a PE teacher who is 22. There are also three new female teachers who are all in their early 20s, but theres only so many names I can remember, especially when drunk.

Today I was once again at a loose end, so me and Yoshida sensei popped outside and played target golf, a ridiculous game involving golf balls which shuttlecock-bits attatched, and circular target nets. I was pretty rubbish, but it was good fun.

Sakura Sakimashita

Whilst life at school continues in its dreary monotonous tones, only punctuated by Yoshida sensei's highly inappopriate questions about my private life, Japan's famous cherry blossoms have finally bloomed. Luckily for me the steep driveway at Shonan (which usually causes me all kinds of pain at 8.30am) is lined with cherry trees. So here are some pics...

Change, Change, I Fear Change

(**Warning: This Post Contains Moaning**)

And the winds of change are certainly blowing. Today I made the dramatic shift about 5 metres south east to my new desk. Although I thought I was going to have Manabe sensei's desk, they've actually decided to put me right next to a big bin. Hmmm.

The new English teachers are nice-enough, Kawasaki sensei in particular seems like an alright bloke, but let's face it he's no Kagawa sensei. He definately doesn't have a "theme tune" vibe like Kagawa sensei did. Ah, Kagawa sensei...and Michishita sensei seems like a nice lady, but she lacks the English sense of humour, and fondness for Oasis and the Libertines that made Ono sensei a one-in-a-million Japanese English teacher. It could be worse- I know plenty of people who get stuck with nightmare teachers, and the two new teachers are clearly easy to get on with and should be fairly easy to teach with (even if they're not, I only have 2 of 5 lessons in my 3 days at Shonan with the new teachers, 2 others with Takemoto and 1 with Manabe). It's just annoying as I probably had 75% of my conversations with Ono, Kagawa and Yoden, and now only Yoden sensei is left (and despite his protestations, we aren't sitting next to each other).

What really bugged me today was that after the 2 hours of novelty at new faces and new views from my new desk wore off, there remained nothing for me to do, a bored ALT adrift in a sea of despair, moving from the downstairs teachers lounge to the upstairs staffroom to kill time. This will change in 2 weeks 2 days when lessons finally start, and hopefully from then on I'll regain the enthuasiasm for life that is usually so well noted about me by friends and family.

Until then I remain a disgruntled and, oftentimes (believe it or not) pessimistic teacher who has nothing to do 35 hours a week but learn kanji and write songs lamenting the loss of Kagawa sensei, the legend that was.