Edited highlights

You might notice that some of my blog entries have been trimmed. Apparently this site is quite easy to find on Google, so to stop any sensitive information falling into the wrong hands (or people finding out how awfully I gossip about them!), I`ve had to do some pruning. I hadn`t ever imagined that people would bother reading this (even those I asked!), but fortunately finding that lunatic`s website before I left the UK hammered home an important lesson in self-censorship so the damage is minimal!

The weekend has been fun. Yesterday, I chatted to Kaiah, the friend I picked up at my AEON interview and have only actually met once, for hours about Japan`s timewarp. It is perpetually 1972 here. The TV is dreadful, technology is backward (speak to anyone who has lived here about the washing machines - oh my days) and all forms of discrimination are rife. After that, I settled down to some over-priced cheese and crackers and took in some more of this terrible TV: A `kawaii` woman cooking a lobster badly, while a battleaxe excels. Of course, the pretty woman came through in the end, making her the perfect non-threatening trophy wife. The `plot` never changes from one week to the next. It amazes me that the `pretty` (like a Greek leathery, over-preened and brassy star) one hasn`t accidentally learned to cook, but each week she simpers in the kitchen and spills things to heighten the drama of her ever-predictable win (I did notice, however, that her white sauce was suspiciously lump-free). Perhaps she`s not as inept as she makes out.

Yesterday I bumped into Darrell (I just can`t bring myself to call him Daz) in the internet cafe and showed him when the George is. He was hankering for a pint, but it wasn`t open, so we met up with Natalie and headed for the Charleston (it`s on the my side of the train station, so I`m hoping to set it up as a new local) for a pint and to marvel over Japanese teeth (why British teeth are notorious, yet they get away with brown, rotting gnashers here, I don`t know - Britain needs a good PR) and how the trophy girlfriends so many gaijin crave reek of oral rot and shave their faces. Kawaii, ne?

Last night, virtually every teacher in Omiya gathered for Riaz`s birthday. After shovelling subsidised food and drink into our faces (Mike, Raj and I clearly ate and drank far more than anyone else at the table, but paid the same price), we headed to Doma Doma for more drinks. I shouldn`t have gone as I was 100% sober and the cocktails I experimented with there must have been packed with caffeine as I got home and lay waiting for sleep for several hours. It did give me a chance to mingle with some of the other teachers I don`t see so often and remind me why that is. Every boy at the table took turns regaling us with increasingly unlikely tales of grossness and gore. I wouldn`t believe that the cast of Jackass could pool such experiences, let alone that lot. Fortunately, Sean managed to pull one of them up when he tried to pass off a bad joke as a genuine life experience, but he should have been equally vigilant with the others.

Today, I will have to do my best not to take my tiredness out on the 20 children I teach today, but having had 42 minutes sleep, I cannot promise anything.