Under wild East Anglian skies

I'm fully settled into English life again. I've watched Jeremy Kyle and the Wright Stuff almost every day, I went to Felixstowe for fish and chips by the sea (and scorched myself a very patriotic shade of red in the process) on Wednesday, last night Mum, Tammi and I watched Charlie sing in Bury St Edmunds Cathedral before coming back to Haverhill for Mum's first Indian in six months (my last was far more recent) and today I went into Cambridge to go shopping. Unfortunately, in my excitement, I ended up with a size 7 and a size 5, neither of which are ideal, so have to go back on Monday, but the joy of being in the lower end of the size spectrum was infinite.

The only thing missing so far is a picnic on Hampstead Heath, but I can make do with a pasty up by Haverhill reservoir. The dogs would prefer it, what with Billy being car-sick.

Tomorrow I hope to find a pub to settle into to watch the football. It will be the first step of my new programme to reclaim Britain from the louts. I'm going to take it back. A friend sent me this, which is inspiring me further. I particularly like the barman's Churchillian quote:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17302491&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=beer-we-go-name_page.html

This afternoon I went down the Woolpack to watch the predictable English quarter final penalty defeat against Portugal and that vile thug Rooney acting like a spoiled hooligan and bringing the team down to ten men, although ten men who upped their game considerably once they were missing Beckham and Shrek.

I've just got back from seeing Alan Carr, and a few local faces, at the Arts Centre (formerly known as the Town Hall). Missing nine months of the Friday Night Project didn't matter at all. It was bliss to enjoy comedy that didn't revolve around someone falling over or goofing around (funny faces have always been a sophisticated part of British humour and were most likely stolen by the Japanese...). Now I'm taking my premature hangover to bed with a large glass of water and some Richard and Judy recommended fiction. Good night.

I'm coming home, I'm coming...

I'm in London, happily being rained on (I get the quintessential British experience, coming home in Wimbledon week), having paid my first visit to a British shop to invest in some Melton Mowbray pork pies and a hunk of Danish Blue. I get back to Japan looking like Bella Emberg, but I will be very, very happy.

The journey was uneventful, perhaps a mercy given the potential expensive of any cock-ups and perhaps a curse as it was almost 24 hours of bored nothingness. My backside is numb from sitting and sitting and sitting and my shoulder is hanging a few inches lower than usual from the weight of my hand luggage (everything I could not risk losing should my case go astray, so practically everything). I did nearly miss my connection in Hong Kong by arrogantly ignoring the advice video on the flight and then having no idea what to do and where to go and finding myself in a queue for a desk I didn't need to visit before finally, frustratedly asking someone how long I had to wait and told I didn't have to wait at all being pointed in the right direction at the back of a thousand-person queue for security checks. I also got checked for bird 'flu as I entered Hong Kong airport and reassurely passed...

Hong Kong airport is a holiday in itself. It's huge and has loads of designer stores that I could never hope to shop in. The view of the city itself is breath-taking too. The airport overlooks the bay, which is fenced off by regiments of enormous high-rises and all this is nestled at the base of a fair-sized mountain range. Narita airport is not bad either (perhaps I have just travelled from Stansted once too often, where there is "not even a MacDonald's") and while waiting for my flight I stood on the observation deck watching the cargo planes take off and land and pondered how in the hell they managed it. I might get into physics for a while so I can get my head around it.

I needn't have bothered packing my textbook in my hand luggage. I took it out of my bag and stowed it into the pocket on the seat in front for the full duration of the flight, instead sitting through the embarrassingly homophilic Bentback Mountain (maybe I'm just getting a bit "small 'c' conservative" in my old age, but the story hardly justified the many, many gay love scenes - although I think I would have relaxed more had I not been painfully aware of how visible my screen was to a very kakkoii passenger a few rows behind me. Everyone else was watching Disney and I was browsing soft gay porn... I also watched the Libertine (better) and a unnecessary racist drama with Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore. I made the most of the free-flowing red wine, although once the air cabin staff clocked this, I was provided with ever greater portions of snacks to soak up the alcohol and so left the plain with my hand luggage spilling Tim Tam bars. At one point, the passenger next to me opted in for a red wine at the same time as me, so I said 'let's get drunk', but, possibly being the only Chinese person to not understand English, he just looked confused and I looked embarrassed.

Getting onto the cramped, grubby Tube was disappointing. I'd actually been looking forward to it, but had forgotten the littered state of neglect it falls into on Sundays until I had to dig my seat out from under a mountain of Sunday supplements and KFC wrappers. I am not sure I could honestly recommend London to a Japanese traveller. I love the city and am so pleased to be back here, even the rain is welcome (despite making the two bikinis I packed for the heatwave utterly redundant), but it compares badly to Japan on a superficial level. The trains, the service in shops. I was completely thrown by a lad in a t-shirt chatting into his mobile asking if I needed any help while I was dousing myself with duty free perfume testers at Heathrow, rather than bowing and excusing the intrusion while offering me something weird, but free to taste (this occasionally means Dairy Milk and bagels, so I often lurk around supermarkets trying to look rich and inexperienced in diet). I've often felt uncomfortable with the level of needless servitude in Japan, and still do, but it does make our lot look like a bunch of louts.

It is wonderful to be back in the company of the relaxed and the sane. I've only been here a few hours, but I've already clocked up more TV hours in one day than I had in Japan in the last month. It's been brilliant. News, football coverage in English (stupidly, I asked if the game was live, having got so used to seeing 11pm kick-offs) and daytime TV. Bliss. This morning, I watched an unbelievably chav-tastic episode of Jeremy Kyle. A woman who had been taken into care for having scabies and adopted was physically attacked by her birth mother for calling her a prostitute, though the mother then admitted she was, but that the daughter manned sex lines while her children were in the house. From the state and sounds of them, I can't imagine either drummed up a roaring trade... Later, a fat girl and her special needs ex-boyfriend fought over his visitation rights to his son. Her new boyfriend came on and was excessively patronised by the self-loving Kyle, while the ex's sister told her to get off her fat arse and stand up for herself. It blows Trisha out of the water. This Morning made it a double-whammy with an aristocratic photographer grubbily romanticising a sexual fling he had with his own mother at the age of 15 (I can't help wondering if the piece would have been handled as light-entertainment had it been a girl and her father). He was showing off her portrait with a 'well, wouldn't you?' attitude, which Fern seemed eager to bolster, while his wife was introduced with the caption 'husband had sex with mother' and yet still managed to pull off a fairly dignified interview. It's good to be back.

Japanese cuisine

Manboo is doing it`s best to see off its rivals by giving customers an oxymoronically named `SoyJoy` bar when they come in. I haven`t dared taste it yet. I`ve had too much weirdness already this week. Tuesday night I went for my regular `how to bag a foreigner` session with Kaori and Yukako and was offered the most unnecessary food on the menu. I had requested we go somewhere quite nice as I wanted as much Japanese food as I could get before my trip back to England on Sunday. They were quite excited and ordered flying fish sashimi, which was wonderful, and some various other bits and bobs, including chicken gizzards yakitori and `soft bone` yakitori - what seemed to be skewers of fowl back bones. Japanese chefs are quite efficient when it comes to carving up a chicken, they often serve up what we would toss into the bin.

Kaori and Yukako again amazed me with their dating ettiquete. Kaori could not believe my taste in saying a fellow teacher called Alex was quite cute, but was still actively stalking him in spite of her low opinion of his looks and his character not being to her taste. She also couldn`t understand why I might quite like a date with Takakun, while not being madly, obsessively in love with him... Yukako stole the night by asking how many times you need to have seen a man before he might consider it a relationship, not imagining that having seen Rob six times in a month probably had him patting himself on the back for his own outstanding achievement. Kaori dropped her head into her hands in disbelief at this moment, while I was left to explain the situation. I feel like a teenage exchange student at times.

I did manage to put across my point of view that sleeping is not a hobby (so many of my students say this, it is utterly depressing) and now Kaori is going to tell people that going to the toilet is her hobby. I suggested cleaning her teeth as an more ladylike alternative, but it isn`t seen as a necessity here so lacks the same clout in the punchline. I also taught them, something I am not overly proud of, `sloppy seconds`. Kaori intends to use it if any of Yukako`s other cast-offs try it on with her. They taught me that there are no alcoholics in Japan. It is fine to call your friends `alchos` as it is not a serious problem, and therefore a joke. In America there are serious alcohol problems, as they have clinics... Red-faced, sozzled salarymen weaving along platforms, supping Asahi at 10am and occasionally toppling under trains is not a serious concern.

On Thursday, Sachiko used her `topics` to denounce my appalling behaviour on Saturday. I had invited her out to a small get-together of my mainly Japanese friends in the King George and later that night found a message from her saying she`d tried to come in, but couldn`t find me. I assumed she hadn`t bothered and this was a feeble lie to cover her tracks, but it seems not. Each of the students take turns to read their prepared topics, Hidako`s on her trip to Los Angeles and Takako`s on her stay in China, and Sachiko became quite grave as she started to read hers. It was a ridiculous guilt-trip and attack on my manners, although I wasn`t quite sure what she expected of me, but much of the story involved her needing consoling from her husband and daughter-in-law. The other students just laughed and thought she`d been into the wrong bar, but eventually I managed to get her to say she had got to the door and not even opened it to look inside. As I was in the basement, I had no reception so her calling and standing in the street was pointless. I am meeting them for dinner later (I think I am getting to finally try eel!) and intend to redress the whole situation and educate them on the traditional English pub.

It`s the countdown to my brief return to England. I fly on Sunday, so really ought to be packing now. My room is in complete disarray with a suitcase hidden somewhere under a year`s worth of clothes. I do have my new cheek pillow safely placed in my hand-luggage, but that is the firmest step I have taken so far. I am dreading the flight, but looking forward to going home. I certainly won`t miss the small porch that doubles as my kitchen or the `retro` washing-machine that swills my clothes around in cold water and old dirt. Half my case is going to be full of laundry.

Girl power

It`s quite possible I over-reacted slightly in my last blog entry. Been a bit stressed sorting out my trip to the UK and had too many alcohol-related late nights to think straight. I had a bit of a get-together in the George last night and it`s weirdly set everything back in place. A few of the teachers here still lack they imagination to do anything with a woman if they`re not going to fuck her, but some of the saner ones reminded me that these losers are in a minority and it`s probably why they had to leave home in the first place. Strange that some of these pearls of wisdom came from a Stretch Armstrong-alike ex-stripper called Troy. We spent much of the early hours of this morning berating these leonards and describing just where they go in the food chain.

On Friday, I met Atsuko for lunch and we did a bit of window shopping. She helped me reserve a seat (well, she fully reserved the seat, I stood beside her and nodded `hai` a few times) on the coach to the airport. I have to get to the station at 5.40am. Ugh. This week I have to sort out my re-entry visa and pack. I have just remembered that I hate travelling, particularly from airports. I love flying - except when I get a bit claustrophobic - but having to get to airports on time and making sure I check in at the right place always drive me insane. Having missed two flights last year due to my own stupidity, I expect to sleep 0 minutes on Saturday (always a performance-enhancing exercise).

After meeting Atsuko I treated myself to an entirely unnecessary `cheek pillow` for the flight. It`s a small, scented pillow with a cute face and arms to keep me company on the journey. I am not sure I`ll use it though. It seems a shame to grubby its sweet little face with make-up, then I came home and spoke to Jo at length about the ridiculous similarities between Greece and Japan. We do seem to have found ourselves experiencing very similar things, possibly inevitable if you leave quite a progressive country and move a man`s paradise.

Today I met Sean for lunch and then took him to the international supermarket under Omiya station, where he paid a small fortune to treat us to feta cheese and olives. Thank you, Sean. It was worth every yen. When I get back to England, I am going to spend the entire time gorging on olives, brie, ham doorstep sandwiches and butterscotch Angel Delight. I may throw in the odd bag of prawn cocktail crisps too. Sashimi is all well and good, but there`s nothing better than a big plate of carbohydrates. (Japan has finally discovered the Atkins Diet and is unlikely to be stopped by any warnings of developing bad breath, seeing as it is already suffering a severe epidemic.)

The woman-hating new teacher (who apparently likes me, though I am difficult, opinionated and Western-looking), was in the pub last night trying to crack on to Kaori. Ridiculously and very short-sightedly, seeing as he met Kaori, along with Yukako and Nozomi, the night he snogged Yukako and tried to get me to steer her towards his room when she was so drunk she was about to collapse. Kaori reported all this back to me, along with the ADoS`s adolescent attempts to get to Yukako through Kaori. I love being the female gaijin today! I get to hear of all the failed attempts of my colleagues to pull my mates, it`s hilarious. I also seem to have the power to veto any relationships I deem unworthy as they don`t trust their own judgements because I have dismissed so many of their idols as losers. I should probably stop doing that, but it can sometimes give you the creeps when you see a huge, buck-toothed loser letching on a nubile 21-year-olds Anglophile.

I`ve also had the amusement/consternation of possible date, Takakun, to deal with this week. I really need to study Japanese dating more than anything else in the world. I have no idea about how it works (I understand how it works for the Japanese girls with gaijin men, both seem to accept the first offer, regret it later and cheat at leisure). It seems, rather than being polite about it, if someone asks you out and you are busy, you either refuse to reply or replying saying no and expect them to continue fielding possible dates and times until the woman offers up something convenient. Not seeming all that dignified to me, I was ready to throw in the towel, but was encouraged to continue by my female friends (`it is always a good time to email`). I eventually got an explanation that his work was busy, but he wants to stay in touch, so all may be well, but I do need to explain that my Japanese is not quite up to native fluency yet. All his emails are packed with kanji and I either have to get a friend to translate or send it back and ask for hiragana only messages. I am not sure why, when the Japanese spend years of their own childhoods writing and rewriting these things to ensure they remember them, they expect a lazy foreigner who has been here less than a year to know as many kanji characters as them.

Just not cricket

What a rollercoaster of emotions this week has been. On Saturday night, I drank my way through the England match - enjoying the rowdy, mispronounced singing and misplaced enthusiasm from the Japanese fans watching far more than the game itself. Did anyone else think it was a bit boring? I did meet a hilarious boy called Taka, (I can`t say why he`s hilarious, I just remember laughing a lot while he was around), who has inspired me to learn how to say `he laughs like a donkey` in Japanese. Useful, ne? I initially thought he was Jery`s younger brother, but when I sobered up, realised this was a failed joke.

Sunday I went on a wash-out of a date with a guy from Cafe Lamp. I was extremely tired and hung over, which was not a good start, and rainy season had begun. Possibly. One Japanese person will tell me it`s rainy season, but then when I say it to someone else, they say the opposite - ad infinitum. For people who hate confrontation and argument, they can be bloody awkward. We went to Yokohama, but being Japanese, he put us on the wrong train, so it took half the day to make an hour-long journey, then tried to get me on a big wheel, despite my claiming many times that I don`t like heights (they act as cheap love hotels and teenagers go in the London Eye-like capsules to neck for 30 minutes). I was fairly confident I wouldn`t be scared, but didn`t want to risk any improper behaviour. He`s really not my type and I haven`t got to the chapter on knock-backs in my Japanese book yet. I finally managed to avoid the big wheel as the boats to Yokohama`s China Town stopped running early and we didn`t have time to do both. He rather sweetly offered to pay my fare, which amounted to a couple of quid. Then we wandered around the soaked streets trying to find an affordable, nice restaurant. The Japanese technique for choosing seems to be to follow the masses, rather than branching out and trying somewhere that looks good and undiscovered, so we ended up in a very cheap, busy place that looked to me like the Chinese equivalent of a trucker`s cafe. Apparently it`s traditional for men to pay on the first date (when they know it`s a date, last time, we went ambiguously Dutch), but Mamoru`s job is incredibly badly paid, so he paid ￥4000 and I ￥2000. It was quite fun, but totally unromantic and all his plans failed. Aside from the big wheel and the poorly plotted journey, everywhere sold tofu, which I stupidly announced I hate and we missed the cinema. However, he did teach me a brilliant bit of Japanese slang. Apparently the police are called `public dogs`, a phrase I think should be spread in Britain, too. Please use it.

I`ve also had more issues with Omiya Men`s Club. I invited a new member round to my flat on Tuesday to check out my single female Japanese friends, thinking he and Yukako would hit it off. They did and snogged in my flat, but I was so drunk I didn`t actually notice. Last week he announced, as though it was a fact, that Western women are not attractive. In my opinion, conceited dwarves are also not attractive, but I know some people have unusual fetishes so would not brandish my opinion as a wholly undeniable truth. This week, I caught him trying to butter up the Japanese girls by saying he doesn`t like Western women because they have opinions. I certainly have one on him...

It is not just this one. Before I came to Japan, I was prepared to encounter a bit of sexiam from the locals, this not being a particularly progressive country socially. It`s practically Stepford circa 1972 - they suffer from almost every `ism` imaginable and are not in the least bit ashamed of it. In fact, the Japanese people I have encountered, generally seem unaware that these are viewed as faults by outsiders. I thought I`d find it quite tough as a woman because here everything I perceive as a quality in myself is regarded as unnecessary, or even ugly. Personality is most definitely not ranked highly and the best way to shine is to reapply your lipgloss. But it`s my colleagues that are the bain of my life. Some are so ridiculously old school it is obvious why they`ve had to come to Japan. Britain is way too progressive. I`ve never been overly aware of my own gender before, but here I feel branded. While discussing my current situation of practically having no gaijin to confide in (Japanese girls only talk about getting boyfriends - I am a `How To` guide, not a friend) I was told that men don`t feel comfortable spending too much time alone with a woman (why?!) and that after spending all their time with their girlfriends, I shouldn`t expect to get too many invites out as the other teachers want `men-only` nights. I sort of understand this mentality, but find it absurd and offensive and it leaves me lurking around the George on my own. Thank god I have met a sensible group of Australian Nova teachers to hang out with. (Not a sentence I previously imagined I`d find myself saying).

Monday night, I went to watch the Japan game with some of the Nova teachers and some of their Japanese girlfriends. One had a complete fit when Australia scored and eventually had to hide in her boyfriend`s bedroom crying. Chotto excessive, perhaps. I got to practise my stumbling Japanese on the girlfriends, but speak a garbled mix of Janglish, plotting a basic sentence structure in Japanese and filling in the hard bits with English. I think they understood. One had just recorded an advert for Nova and seemed quite good, but you can never be completely sure if you are understood as a standard response to anything is smiling and nodding. Obviously, everyone here is now gutted at the defeat. The build-up to the start of the World Cup seemed bigger than in England, with far more enthusiasm, unless I just less attention back home. It`s been fun winding up my students about it though.

On Tuesday night, the Japanese girls came round for more advice on how to date gaijin they don`t fancy. Yukako thinks her boyfriend is `strange` and Kaori doesn`t like the guy she is asking out, although I once referred to him as cute, so I think I have inadvertantly given him the stamp of approval. Not exactly ideal, considering I might have wanted him for myself. They are hilarious though. Yukako appalled the others by announcing that sex is her `hobby` and later asked Kaori to join her in a threesome with Kaori`s stalkee, Graeme the JET. Kaori, of course, refused, but I have since learned the Japanese for threesome. My vocabulary is growing and growing.

My students have been amusing me this week. One of my kindergarten students, a four-year-old lunatic called Maica, was shouting the Japanese for `tits` on Saturday, and also the word for `can`, but I couldn`t understand what it was she could do. Sachiko and Hidako, after plotting my date with Mamoru last week, told me that he was not good enough because he doesn`t have prospects and were horrified when I explained that dating here is only fun and prospects don`t matter as I am never going to marry a Japanese man and live here. I think they were hoping that they`d never have to deal with getting a new teacher by shacking me up with a salaried ball and chain. Sachiko asked me to `hear` her life story as an example of how love should work (or a man should work, love rarely seems to be involved) and then asked Hidako to follow suit. Hidako`s English isn`t so good spontaneously, but something was said about a second love and a baby. At first I thought she meant her husband had a girlfriend before she met him and she stole him away, but it turned out that while they were married, he had an affair, at which time she became pregnant and threatened to leave him, so he had to ditch the mistress. I am not sure how this was supposed to convince me to marry a Japanese man.

Nothing special

Manboo is near capacity, so I`ve been stuck in a tatami room on the top floor to compile this week`s entry. The boy at the counter went into enormous detail about having to take my shoes off, but all in Japanese so his colleague had to explain in surprisingly good English. While I was queuing a teenage schoolgirl couldn`t stop staring at me, so I smiled - seemingly making her day. Now I can hear her boyfriend making it all over again in the booth next door. Making out on tatami in polyester-mix school uniforms is not a silent business. Actually, in the time it has taken me to type that, it has stopped. My typing speed is around 70wpm. Teenage boys are the same the world over.

I`ve just got back from Hidako`s house, where I was invited after trying to wangle a day out in Ginza. Sadly that didn`t materialise as Sachiko is having her house renovated and so needed to stay in Ageo. I got force-fed a weird, but quite tasty lunch and sat down in front of King Kong to avoid the struggle of having to sustain a conversation for too long. I had hoped to practise some Japanese, but couldn`t be bothered, a phrase that tellingly doesn`t seem to exist in Japanese, or at least it`s not one anyone is prepared to tell me. Sachiko was there and showed me pictures of her `darling`. Not a word I would use, he just looks like a tubby old man in bad jeans.

It`s been a long, long week, parents` observations not helping, obviously. Haru`s mother, who observed last Monday and egged on Psychotic Rei, handed in her feedback - I should apparently be more strict with disruptive pupils. None of my pupils are generally that disruptive without a mother acting like they`re the cutest little thing. Also, I didn`t dare risk telling him to leave the classroom and have him refuse while two mothers looked on. Naoto`s father observed his class this week, along with one of the mother`s, but arrived late and as soon as he sat down, curled up in the chair and went to sleep. After the lesson, he told Yoshiko-san that his son needs to take his lessons more seriously. Wednesday`s observations were unpleasant, as I`d expected. Miteki and Ryoya got bored and acted up as the language was way too easy for them, and special needs Hiroaki threw the pen-lid in the air every time he had to draw something on the whiteboard and tried climbing under the table five times. Thursday`s lessons were much better and the mothers all commented on how fairly I shared my time around the students, but as they couldn`t understand some of the language, they imagined their children couldn`t either.

Sunday night Sean and I went to Saizareya for some cheap grub (less than a quid for two small glasses of wine is not to be sniffed at). Of course, this bargainous place is a mecca for teenagers and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of gazing at one of the kakkoiest boys I`ve ever seen only to realise he was there doing his homework. I managed to stop myself going over to help, but maybe next time I`ll take some fake business cards... On the way there, it seemed like we had discovered Omiya`s fire station. I hope we were wrong. I do not want to be saved by a firefighter who travels on a yellow foldable bike.


I was in a terrible mood on Wednesday, and poor Mike had to put up with my whining about Omiya Young Men`s Club. A new teacher has arrived in our building, so I introduced myself and this week asked him around for a drink. I found he already had company as he had been put in touch with another male teacher who has the same day off as him and has been invited to join in a football game (neither of which were invitations I would have specifically wanted, but it is always nice to be asked...). When I arrived, I was left to make the best with a teacher I had nothing in common with aside from gender and who was on the verge of and eventually tipped over the brink of a nervous breakdown, so I was not impressed by the warm welcome this guy received (though he was nice enough to me himself, to be entirely fair). Mike caught the full blast of my disdain, only for me to have to take it back the next day when I found myself drinking into the small hours in my flat with Kate (a Nova teacher, of all things! A very nice one though) and one of Shane`s central clique.

Last night, I put the TV on as an attempt to make amends for my recent lack of study (I did try to chat about Kurosawa again this week and my teacher had prepared a hand-out, but I can`t remember the words for `robber`, `fall in love` or `murdered`, which is a shame as they are far more interesting than `put out the rubbish` and `open the door`), but actually spent an hour watching a film in Chinese before I fully realised that the clothes were different and their Japanese more tonal than I am used to (I thought it might have been set on Kyushu somewhere). After Shaolin Soccer finished, I flicked through a few shows and found a fey pop star`s chat show. I watched it with Yukako briefly last week and, would you believe, their are vicious rumours flying around that the guy in the sailor suit is not gay. His friend in black quite possibly suffers similar rumours, but is doing his best to quash them by openly admiring 80`s new wave and name-checking Kajagoogoo and Culture Club.

This is my friend Kaori`s dance troup. They took part in a competition in Shinjuku, but I couldn`t go. She is the one wearing a white and blue shirt, waving everyone on. Is it wrong of me to have felt mildly uncomfortable watching this? http://www.littlestep.jp/20060528_SatoshiNumber/DSCF0979.AVI

I notice that 422 people have read my profile now. Who are you all?!

Good Morning Saitama!

Blogging is a far more dangerous pursuit than I ever imagined. It seems I`ve made myself mildly notorious by writing this thing. I`ve been found out by other teachers in Omiya, as well as Jery and George. No longer can I admit to wearing Dr Martin-style shoes or drinking beer in my lunch break or any of the other things outlawed in the Shane contract. It also seems I have a regular reader in Jery now, so a small shout-out to you! I can`t imagine this is that interesting for anyone who knows me here and is likely to just read things I will soon be telling them myself, but if they have time to kill, it`s their choice.

Friday was a write-off. I had a hangover. Not `two days drunk` as the Japanese say (futsukayoi), but one evening slaughtered and a whole day ruined. Yukako came to my apartment laiden with food and booze which I stormed through. It was lovely though. She`s a brilliant girl and has shaken off some of the conservatism of her compatriots. I even got her to moan about Japan a little bit, although did then feel obliged to berate England - quite half-heartedly, mind. She brought some colour-changing liquour (add water and it turns from peach to pink) and takuyaki round - small balls of batter with lumps of octopus in the middle, smothered with sauce and mayonaise. I`m fairly sure the night ended with me passing out on my futon, but as it is quite normal for people to fall asleep drunk in public here, Yukako doesn`t seem to have even noticed. It reminded me of some of the things I love about Japan, that being one of them!

I was knackered though. I`ve been out quite a bit this week. Sunday night I wanted to meet up with Sean for a very cheap meal, but ended up going to an izakaya with him, Adam, Riaz and a Japanese couple who I bullied into teaching me `bad Japanese`. We got stung with an enormous bill considering there was so little food (though buckets of beer), but I did learn how to say `it tastes like sick` in Japanese: kore wa gero no aji desu.

On Monday, I bumped into Darrell, who treated me to a couple of beers in exchange for listening to his life story. Again. He can really talk, but is great company. A Japanese couple sat quietly next to us, but as we `kampaied` another beer, a third glass clinked against ours. The girl had gone to the bathroom and the deserted boy couldn`t resist a little gaijin action. We tried to practise our muddled Japanese on him and he attempted to use his English, but after managing `what music do you like` we were stumped and went back to our own conversations.

On Tuesday, Kaori came round and we had some wine. She brought two bottles, saying she knows I like to drink, and only had a couple of glasses, so I was slaughtered. I planned to skip Japanese the following day, but woke up at 7am on the dot, so thought I may as well go. The teacher thought it was hilarious that I had a hangover and I managed to tell him, in Japanese, that beer and wine get me very drunk, but I am fine on gin. He constantly told me to relax, which must have lost some meaning in translation. Still being a bit pissed, I couldn`t have been more relaxed.

School`s been a bit mad this week. Shit-Shiraoka decided to begin parents` observations early this week and so I arrived at school with a scarf around my head and pedal-pushers, looking to all the world like an extra from West Side Story, then had to hold it together in two kids` classes while the War of the Worlds unfolded. Naoto, a showy, spoilt, but usually manageable kid decided now he had a bigger audience, he needed a bigger show and nearly came to blows with Akeru all for sake of a `Taiwan` flashcard. I hope the mothers were focused on their own children, who were perfectly behaved, of course, and didn`t notice that I had lost complete control. In the second class, the behaviour was even worse, but as I expect it from Rei (a little maniac who seems to flirt with me, even though he is nine, and is quite likely to bring a knife in to school to stab me the next time I tell him off for punching one of his mates), it wasn`t so bad. He did try to jokingly punch me in the stomach, which made me want to seriously smack him, but I restrained myself.

Tuesday was a bit more lightweight. Shoko went crazy in class and sang every sentence I asked her to read to the tune of `Shall We Dance`, the lesson was making offers and requests and as it livened it up for a bunch of otherwise bored 13-year-olds I encouraged it and was sorely tempted to join in. Maybe my earlier encounter with an uncontrollable two-year-old that forced me to appreciate the classes I have. I had to taiken two two-year-old boys. One was ridiculously cute (the receptionist politely told his mother he looks like a girl) and sat and beamed whenever I spoke, but made no sound, while the other faced the wrong way and pulled all my materials off the table, but lost interest as soon as they were on the floor in reach. My previous experience of doing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in front of an observing mother and a reluctant child have numbed me to this, but Yoshiko has not had this training and was frazzled by the time the boy left the school. He tore and screwed up any paper he could get his hands on and constantly tried to make his escape down the stone steps outside, while his gormless mother chatted and let him go about his business. Yoshiko attempted to stop him going down the steps and he ripped open her jacket and blouse! She was mortified, but I yanked the boy off her and let her dress herself before we dragged him back to his mother. On Thursday, I had to sit through another of Sachiko`s songs, this one about grandmothers, as her daughter-in-law was due to give birth within hours of the lesson. The other students find this more uncomfortable than me, but still she goes on. It wasn`t quite as long as the last one though, so we gave her genuine smiles after - but of relief.

Rachel came to visit yesterday. We went for Shabu-Shabu in Shinjuku. I seem to have passed the False Assimilation stage and am truly Japanese; I got off the train at the wrong stop, got us lost and we very nearly had to plump for a plain, old izakaya. We managed to get there in the end, and it was tabehodai (all you can eat), so I shovelled all I could into my face, barely able to lift my carcass to the station, then got on the slow train home. We went to the George `for one` after and bumped into Yukako, Jery and a load of other people. One of Yukako`s friends tried to set Rachel up with a guy until she heard Rachel was only staying for the night, then the crowds parted, I got ushered in and, with everyone pointing and smiling expectantly, was left standing facing a man I had nothing to say to. He was potentially good-looking, although Rachel and I wavered constantly on this point, but he had a brace (at 34, this might be a bit much) and was a bit conscious of it, so wouldn`t speak much (his voice was very unappealing, so this was no bad thing) and when I finally did talk to him, it turned out he has a girlfriend of four years.

Rachel and I insisted we were not drunk, but my memory tells me I was a complete twat, so I hope that was the alcohol and not something more constant. Rachel got a completely distorted view of my life in Omiya. Once I spotted Yukako, I was welcomed like a celebrity, even being hugged by one woman I`ve only met twice before and whose name I couldn`t pick off a list of two. A crazed drunk kept grabbing me and out-Suggsed me while Madness was on, telling people I was his friend over and over, although I have only really said hello to him before. George played a World Cup medley and Rachel was overly impressed by my knowing all the words to the John Barnes`s rap. We eventually managed to drag ourselves away at 4am, having slated Kylie to a couple of Australasians (she DOES look like a horse with a child`s body) and discussed how badly kaolas smell.

Today we were hoping to go to Kamakura, but didn`t have time, so went into Akihabura, got a huge lunch from KFC and sat by the river eating it. We visited a shrine we happened across so we could justify the trip, but mainly loafed about counting the homeless. We did find a Russian Orthodox Church that I insisted was not Russian until I found I could read the sign above the entrance because it was written in Russian.