The good, the bad and Ryusuke

Shane has gracefully granted us a holiday today and tomorrow. Unfortunately, pay day is on Monday, so there`s not a great deal I can do at the moment. I`m currently looking at underwear on the internet. If someone peeked into my unmanned booth, they wouldn`t be able to tell if it was a gaijin woman`s, a teenage boy`s or a Salaryman`s.

This week has been quite ordinary in comparison to dunking shabu shabu (you dunk meat in boiling water at your table and then in a flavouring of choice - Japanese meals are so much more interesting than any other country`s - they are an activity as well as a feast) with Lizzy at the weekend. Unfortunately, Ryusuke, my student from Hell (well, Shin-Shiraoka, but I am sure they are similar), has upped his campaign. After a fairly successful lesson last week on winning, losing and tying baseball games (he is mad on sports, so perked up), this week he decided to try to leave the classroom at every opportunity to tell the receptionist he doesn`t understand me.

This can`t be true. His English is good enough to rebuke me with `Why? You know` whenever I ask him a question and we have drilled win and won and lose and lost a thousand times - if anything, it was boring, but no, his accusation is that I am not a good teacher and the receptionist seems to be on his side. I have now had to report it to my DoS. I am not overly confident in my teaching abilities, but I have just recruited four new students to this school, which has been haemorraging students up until recently, so cannot be appalling. JeDoS, who used to be in the Army, was grateful that I told him and said we need to `cover my back`. I was not concerned until he insinuated there was a need for military back-up...

I was told yesterday I will be changing Japanese teachers next week, after I finally got to grips with Hosoya-san`s sink or swim teaching method. I am quite sad to see her go. She gave me an incentive to learn no other teacher could or, hopefully, will. Apparently, I will get a better teacher - though she said this out of considerable false modesty and habit. The insincerity and superficiality of the Japanese was just starting to bite at the beginning of the week, but I have been confounded with considerable generosity since. Not least, finally encountering two blind people using the yellow tracks laid across the country to help them find their way around (one, sadly, before I realised what the tracks are for, and so he bashed right into me - I apologised in Japanese and hoped my accent wouldn`t reveal my foreign stupidity). The tracks run everywhere and are bobbled to warn of trains, roads and gentle inclines. When no medical abortions are available, I guess you must provide for those less fortunate.