Jose's fifteen stitches

Poor Jose! Yesterday while apparently giving a piggy back to a rich, thin Korean girl with big boobs, he fell flat on his face, whereby the glass broke and cut his face.

He is lucky! That is damn close to his eye!

Another job!

Well, as well as my job teaching English to little kids, now I am also teaching piano to a 5 year old Korean girl named Min.

She's adorably cute - really affectionate! Every time she sees me she just runs up and hugs my leg - today she was kissing my hand! hahaha

Best part is, it's mega easy and her mother is paying me 2500 yen per 30 min class, once a week! Awesome!

Monja street

Went to a place called Tsukishima today, a place famous for its Monja-yaki (which is like okonomiyaki but not so much pancake, more like stirfry vegetables i guess) with Jose, and some Taiwanese friends of his from his school. It was OK and mega el cheapo! Only 1300 yen for enough food to fill me + a big jockey of beer!

It was pretty fun I guess. Anyway the real purpose of this blog entry is just so I can deposit these photos here.

So, enjoy, and excuse my weird looking hair.

久しぶり！

Met up with my long-time friend Shiori tonight! This is the girl that I have known longest and still keep in contact with. 9 years! I met her when I was 15!

We (me, her, her friend Asuka and Asuka's friend Mr Endo) went to Shinjuku to eat Okinawan food, which, I soon discovered, is basically anything as long as it's topped with copious amounts of ゴーヤー (go-ya-), a.k.a. "bitter melon". It was OK, I guess.

Anyway it's always funny hanging out with Shiori because it seems that no matter where I go in the world, she comes there within a year or so of my arriving there. First I meet her in 1998 in Okayama, then when I lived in Nara in 2001, she was at uni in Kyoto. Then I go back to Canberra and sure enough, she gets a job at the Japanese embassy in Canberra in 2005. Now I am in Tokyo and she's applying for jobs in Tokyo! I told her that she should stop following me and she smirked and punched me in the arm.

Anyhow, it was a fun day!

Babel

Watched this movie the other night. Pretty good! Lots of drama, and a real fly-on-the-wall feel about it.

Then again, that may have just been me. When I watched it, I didn't realise at the time but there were supposed to be subtitles. Half of the movie is set in the Moroccan desert, and I thought that the point was that you DIDN'T understand what they were saying, thus giving it that "watching people" kind of feel. The rest of the movie was in Japanese and English, and I had no trouble understanding that. I thought it was quite a stroke of genius - make the words unintelligible so one has to actually think about what one is seeing in order to make sense of the movie, instead of just reading what they're saying. This, combined with the story of the deaf Japanese girl all seemed to make sense...

Or so I thought! Thinking it was just a bit suspiscious, after watching in sans subtitles in Quicktime I thought I'd have a quick look at running it in VLC and sure enough, SUBTITLES. And I missed them all.

Still, I guess it at least somewhat demonstrates that it was a good movie by the fact that even though I had no clue what these Moroccan sand monkeys were talking about, I still understood what the hell was going on.

My rating: 7/10

Complaint??

This morning I was phoned up by my boss, who told me that one of the students' mother's had complained about my teaching style. She said that I was "skipping over" exercises, using the teacher's guide during the class (apparently I should have memorised it? News to me.), and not encouraging enough speaking. Riiiiight.

I really don't understand this! In each of my classes we progress through the textbook and activity book - it is usually listening, reading, speaking and writing. Because of the number of classes we have and the number of pages in the textbook, we can make sufficient progress just by doing one double-page spread per class. The rest of the class I fill with English related games - Hangman, English Karuta, Bingo etc.

So here's what I have to say to whichever mother complained:

FUCK YOU BITCH, you got something to say? Say it to my mothafuckin' face.

i-Unit!

Look what I got to see in real life today at the Ikebukuro Toyota Building!

the i-Unit!



Almost makes up for not going to the Aichi World Expo...

Pictures of my place

By request, I took some photos of the place I'm living in...

Looking from the front door - to the left you can see a little of the doorway to the common room (i.e. it has a table, the Wii etc.)


The kitchen. A bit messy. Note the bins - you have at least two in Japan - one for combustibles, one for non-combustibles.


The hallway for all our rooms - it's a bit of a Chinese laundry up the back there.


My totally awesome machine and new speakers!

Some pics of work

Decided to finally take some pics of my workplace today.

It's pretty good I guess. Today I held the first "fun musical english class" which involved me, a bunch of kids, and their mothers in the room (pictured below), with me playing nursery rhymes on the piano while the kids attempted to sing. Ah well, it was OK.

The front of the bulding


The sign at the front door - translates to "Jinyu Family Classroom"


The room where the action happens. Note the lack of chairs (we all sit on the floor - fine for the kids but my knees sure do take a beating)


On another note, I got my first phone bill today. ¥11,022. That's like $130. Oops!

FOSTEX PM0.4

These are my new speakers! I feel obliged to tell you that for the price, they are amazingly good! They're less than a foot tall and about half a foot wide, so don't take up much room. But the power is quite astonishing - I'd never have thought that speakers so little could pump out such powerful sound, especially the bass! They literally shake my room. And the clarity is fantastic too. Hard to believe! Highly recommended.

These days...

Not all that much going on the last few days with a couple of exceptions. Firstly, I have to work on Saturday mornings, which shits me off because it takes nearly an hour to get there (and I start at 10am), then I work for just one hour, then again almost another hour back home. It sucks a bit. But ah well, that's Japan for you. It has its pros and cons.

Anyhow I went out on Saturday night with my friend Takako, pictured in the Hanami post below. We went out to an Izakaya, a Japanese style "pub" (for lack of a better word), but these places also serve good food. Anyway I guess we must've eaten and drank a fair bit because after only an adequately filling meal (and about four beers each) we were set back ¥8000 between us. Still, it was yummy!

Today I went to work from 10, and didn't leave till 7. I probably would've been more upset had I not been able to sneak a nap in at lunch time. Heh heh. It's funny, I keep talking to people about my job and how it's pretty easy and they paid me in advance, and they pay for my lunch sometimes, and how I sneak naps in and stuff and they always say they're so jealous! Haha maybe this job isn't so bad after all! In fact, today one of the mother's of the students "donated" an electric keyboard to the school so (presumably) I can play songs and use them to teach English with. Oh well, might be fun, but jeez, these mothers are gung-ho crazy about surrounding their 3 year olds with English. Does it really have that much effect?

Also today I bought a pair of FOSTEX PM0.4 speakers second hand. Only ¥10,000! Retail is substantially more than that, and substantially more again in Australia. So, a good buy I thought.

Otherwise, life kicks on. Here's a picture of one of my neighbours, Jose (from Spain) with which I end this blog entry.

New Route

I have managed to cut 15 minutes and 130yen each way off my commute to work by rerouting my path. Previously I was going from Nakaitabashi to Ikebukuro (Tobu Tojo Line), Ikebukuro to Takadanobaba (JR Yamanote Line), then Takadanobaba to Minami-Sunamachi (Tozai Line). But now I go Nakaitabashi to Ikebukuro (Tobu Tojo Line), Ikebukuro to Iidabashi (Yurakucho Line) and then Iidabashi to Minami-Sunamachi (Tozai Line).

As boring as that sounds, trust me, it's a big difference!

Wizzout.

UPDATE: I changed it again to reflect the fastest option as discovered by using tokyo-subway. Now it is the Marunouchi line from Ikebukuro to Otemachi. About 5 mins less, same amount of money, only this time I get to look at Tokyo Dome twice a day...

Karaoke Challenge 2007

Karaoke Challenge 2007 has begun! And in an effort to directly compete with Sho, I have recorded myself singing Eternal Flame.

Enjoy!

Maze for blind people

This is outside the train station at Takadanobaba. Seriously, if I were blind I'd be wandering around for days.



Also, see all those pigeons? When I was taking this photo there was a group of about six male pigeons (not in this photo) all fighting over one female pigeon who just sat there in the "copping it" position. It was crazy - one male would jump on her back and just as he's about to stick it in, another male would charge at him and knock him off in a flurry of feathers and squawking. Eventually the female either copped it or flew off in boredom. That's when I thought "Gee, this is just like real life!"

Murder in Tokyo!

Did you guys all hear about the recent murder in Tokyo?

For those of you that can't be bothered reading that article, the gist of it is this: A 22yo British girl named Lindsay was apparently being stalked by a 28yo Japanese guy with plucked eyebrows, however, because she had developed some trust in him she had agreed to go to his house to give him a private English lesson last week. Her bruised and naked body was then found in a bathtub full of sand on his balcony, and he had scarpered from the cops down the fire escape and with no shoes on. He is yet to be caught and arrested.

This happened about four train stops from where I work, and the Canadian girl I work with was her friend! Can you believe it? Murderer on the loose in Tokyo!

Hanami!

Went to a Hanami Party (that's the one where you drink beer under the cherry blossoms in the park) today in Yoyogi Park. It was pretty good except the place was totally PACKED with people. I mean, it's an enormous park with toilet blocks and everything but still, the line for the toilets was still like 40 minutes for the guys and over an hour for the girls. It was fucking ridiculous. But, we all drank beer and had a good time - there were like 6 DJ's hanging around playing mostly dance music and people were getting really drunk and dancing around. It wasn't even a special event, just a regular Sunday, although it is the last day of the Spring Holidays so I guess that was why.

Anyway, here are some pics.

Some of the people in the group that I was with. Notice the other people around the park - well, this was the NON-crowded area.


A girl named Rei.


Me standing in front of a whole lot of cherry blossoms! By this point I think I was a little drunk.


My friend, Takako.