Tuesday 01/05/2012 It’s a holiday for most here in Japan, although not technically a holiday, since there are holidays before and after, many businesses will release their employees from work for today and tomorrow. The kindergarten had the day off in lieu of the Zoo Trip Sunday coming up in a few months. But Juku was still running. So today I did some washing, sorted out some lesson plans, did a whole chunk of Japanese grammar, and made Jana’s famous salad with egg for lunch. I reused the Weather worksheet from Friday’s Juku for this evening’s classes. The students were well behaved, except for two boys. I separated them at the beginning of the class, as they couldn’t even sit quietly together for one minute, but they still managed to be disruptive across the table from ... read more

I can’t express how lovely it is to have my weekends to myself. After three years of working every spare minute, and studying in-between, and before that a year of 24/7 craziness of travel and work, and before that, working and study-study-studying every spare minute for three years, it almost feels like a dream. Today I had a humungous sleep in, and lay in bed sweating out my cold to the sounds of children playing on the street and people walking their dogs and having a chit-chat. Pottered around and sorted out all my lesson plans into a folder, tested out the grill and had a cheese and salami sandwich, and then headed out for a walk in this glorious sunshine. My aim was to locate the cheap fruit&veg supermarket that Tom told me about yesterday. ... read more

Tuesday 24/04/2012 And the sun came out. And it was good, and warm! Kindy from 10-1 today. I was in charge of activity time, and got the children to colour in rainbows, then stick them on large pieces of blue paper (the sky) all ready to put in their end-of-year books. They all looked fantastic. Back to work 4.30-8.30pm. Studied ‘feelings’ again with this bunch of classes. Again, some classes were finished really early, and I could challenge them, but other classes were so very slow. When quizzing one class on last week’s ‘the body’, I pointed to eyebrows, asked ‘what are these?’ and one boy replied ‘Eyebrushes!’ with such conviction that I nearly fell off my chair. He’s actually quite right, they do look like eyebrushes, especially some people’s. Before Juku, I brought in my ... read more

Another sleep in, though not as long as yesterdays. Wrote a lesson plan for my senior Juku students for Tuesday evening, my other Juku students will do the Feelings worksheet. After a mismatched lunch of rice and corn cup-a-soup, I headed out to catch the bus into the city. Had a mild freak out when the timetable said there was only one bus coming every 1.5hours, but that must have been another bus. I was assured when an old lady started waiting with me for the bus. 370yen into the city, and I had a wander around the 109 Shopping Centre. My heart ached and my very soul was crying looking at the wonderful shoes. They were so beautiful and original, and there really was something for everyone! The wedges were in block colours, as well ... read more