Life is sweet

I`ve had a lot of fun this week. On Tuesday, I had my usual Take Off 1 class, handed to me from another, allegedly more experienced teacher (one of those cocks who `has to` live here as England would no longer tolerate him), and again they were beaming with delight as they filed into school. A weird reaction from nine-, ten- and eleven-year-olds usually, but these ones act like they`ve never been allowed to play a game before in their lives, so I enjoy it and view it far more as their previous teacher`s failings than my success. If you do the lessons you`re supposed to, kids have to enjoy it at some point. The book is very easy to convert to games and one of the kids is doing it for his second time, so ought to be bored but they`re not, which makes it more enjoyable to teach them. Even Hironobu getting a ball in the knackers every lesson has not deterred them.

Even the perpetually mute Toshiki was genkier than usual. Mike-san reckons this is down to a mind-numbing make-up lesson with Rebekah (a gossip vulture I despise), so I readily accept his theory. Whatever the reason, Toshiki was quite a cheeky tike. He came in muttering something about `Joke Abenue` which no one could understand, but I think he was announcing his comedy act. Throughout the lesson he succumbed to devilish chuckles and was slyly naughty at every opportunity. He feigned a lisp for a while, though as he speaks so quietly I wasn`t sure it wasn`t real until he spelt dentist as `dentitht`, quite sophisticated for an eleven-year-old. He`s gone up in my estimations, even after farting at the whiteboard.

Thursday was good too, although I confused an email from Sean saying he`d been to see `V for Vendetta` as a threat or warning and was confused after a late night on Wednesday. I`d been to the George with Yukako and Steven and met up with Jery (Iito-san), who has been reading my blog, so thought I`d give him another mention. Hey Jery!

Yukiko brought me some homemade jam and the other ladies all brought me cookies and biscuits from various trips they`d taken. The previous week, we`d played a guessing game and I immediately guessed that Yukiko was Harry Potter, so this week I read in her diary that, because of this, `I am worthy to be British`. There you go. That`s all it takes. Sachiko and Hidako brought in some treats too - Sachiko is now regularly bringing me cuttings from her garden that need planting in soil and I am regularly taking them home, putting them in water and waiting for them to die. Without pilfering the soil from municipal flower pots, I`m not entirely sure how to get around this. I really can`t be bothered to take myself to a Japanese garden centre. Atsuko, the receptionist, gently warned me not to lean forward too far in Keisuke`s lesson as I was wearing a top that stopped two inches above my cleavage. He was tired and could barely speak in class, but she blamed this on me distracting him. Next week, I will wear a trench coat and see how we get on. I did explain that even in my baggiest, least becoming outfits, as s typical otaku, he stares as where he thinks my chest is, but she just chuckled and made me rule out ever wearing that outfit to Ageo school again. (I`d worn the same top the previous week with no comments, but I can`t be bothered dealing with mock disapproval.)

On Friday, I met up with Hidako and her daughter, much to Sachiko`s chagrin. Mutters of `jealousy` were rippled around the reception area as we made arrangements the day before. I spotted Tomomi immediately as she has Hidako`s face atop a 27-year-old body. Eerie, but convenient as we found each other immediately, even though Hidako was a bit late. We went to the Omiya Plaza Hotel, where another student and her daughter had taken me the week before and I had to pretend I`d never been so as not to disappoint them. This time I got to eat, instead of eating an incredibly small cake (they love cakes here, but shrink them to remain anorexia-thin) and we tucked into more Italian food, an exotic treat in the Far East. It was fabulous though, pasta, a dish that is very Tuesday and bores me at home, comes topped with half a small lobster and packed with clams, mussels and squid. After that, we tried to go to the cinema, but nothing was on (well, the Da Vinci Code is on, but everyone in Japan has already seen it - bar me, of course), so went window shopping. I wasn`t even allowed to pay for my train ticket, which was very nice, but a bit unnecessary. I`m a bit concerned though, Tomomi had to translate the most basic English for Hidako, which makes me wonder just how little she understands of my lessons, if any. She always laughs in the right places and her comments always make sense so I assumed she was OK. I might have to start doing the unthinkable and concept check...

Friday night, I quite possibly went on a date. In the sense that a man and a woman having dinner together is a date, it most definitely was, and in Japan this is even rearer amongst friends, but there wasn`t a sniff of romance in the air. When I first met Mamoru (whose name I obviously can`t pronounce, somewhat embarrassing when a friend`s girlfriend whose name I don`t remember came over and I had to introduce them both), he was very flirty, but Friday was very matey. I don`t mind, despite being my age, he looks ludicrously young and is still keen to teach me Japanese and buy me stuff . I had to go Dutch on dinner, which is a bad sign on the date front as you are totally kept by a Japanese boyfriend usually, but he has promised to buy me a copy of Akira in Japanese with English subtitles, which I`m excited about getting, but also means I need to hurry up and get a DVD player to watch it on. Of course, being Japanese, he was ridiculously ambiguous, asking if he could text me the next day, then maintaining complete radio silence throughout Saturday. He did have a test to revise for, so it is not in any way surprising or disappointing, but just why bother asking? He also sent this `cute picture of a cat, a gift for` me after we first met, so at the first opportunity I am going to teach him what cute actually means. I also need him to teach me kanji. He had his Nintendo DS with him, which does a `find the age of your brain` test, but it is all in Japanese. We muddled through him translating the instructions and then I had to memorise and draw 30 kanji - bear in mind the test was designed for the Japanese so most were obscure and difficult kanji, although I only know about 10 anyway, so it could have been for an elementary school student and I would have failed. My brain is 68. Spritely and young in Japan, so not too bad.

Perhaps I should introduce him to Yuka, a new student and the girl whose mother took me to the Plaza Hotel for the first time. She is cuteness personified. She`s adorable, lives an utterly charmed life, studying fashion and learning English so she can go off to New York to make more clothes. In our first lesson, we flicked through Cosmopolitan and discussed the `boho look` with particular reference to Helena Christensen and Sienna Miller and how Johnny Depp and Jude Law are good-looking, but not attractive (she likes Johnny Depp`s `atmosphere`. When we first met, she brought me a couple of cookies from the coffee shop she works in and almost wet herself when I said I`d like to go and watch her old J-Pop band. I can`t wait for her next lesson. I think we`ll discuss big bags and sunglasses...