Stories

The other day I was covering some classes for an absent teacher. My first class were these two 5 year old kids who were tiny, smart and cute. There was a jar of sharpened pencils which I was using to mark their homework, which after I had finished using, I placed on the ground - next to me. Then I started to do some ABC flashcards. I put the cards on the ground - also next to me - without looking. Then I felt a strange sensation in one of my knuckles...I had whacked my hand into the pencil jar and stabbed myself with a 5cm pencil lead. As I raised my hand, a 20 cm long pencil was dangling out of it. All I could think of was - I've scarred these 5 year olds for life with this image. I felt sick, but smiled, ripped the pencil out (which left a clean hole) and continued flashing "B - buh! C - cuh! D - duh!" - the show must go on, right? I snuck a look at my hand - and it had started to pour with blood. The kids by this point were looking at me with concern - "daijobu, daijobu sensei?" (are you ok?) they asked. "Yes kids, daijobu" I smiled - when all I wanted to do was vomit at the sight of the blood (I'm really squeamish with things like blood and stabbing oneself). So now I have a lead dot tattoo on my hand. I'm a really good teacher.

It's a Thomas the Tank Engine train for grown ups!!! I raced and raced to try and get a pic of the Gordon cart, cos I hate Gordon. He's so ugly and grumpy - big wide faced git! Could only get Percy before the train departed.



Shoes contrast. I could make an album of shoes I see on the trains here. I love looking at them so much. Those are Gareth's Nikes in the foreground.



It's Sailor Jupiter!!


This was all I could manage before someone busted me for taking pics of a school girl. But I had to, I loved watching Sailor Moon. Sailor Jupiter was my fave.



This is a place called Hirakatashi. I liked the balloon in the sky.




And that's a crane in the river. Bad pic - I need to take my proper camera out with me more. I keep forgetting!!



Naoko and Duma. We went to a place called Harborland in Kobe. There's a cool little rink for kids to drive around in. I couldn't fit in the train...



An Anpanman car. Anpanman = Red Bean Bun Man.



A Baikinman car; that's "Germ Man". He's pretty angry!



A GIANT Mario bouncy castle!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanna go in!!



A cool robot toy. I wish I had a sweet playground like this when I was growing up.



This is Erica.



She can do this. She's another Kiwi and a friend. She rules.



And finally, a crow on a ball. I was for the first time afraid of a bird seeing this guy. He was pretty close. I'm always concerned they're gonna swoop down and pluck out my eyeballs.

Japan - Day Ten

It's Suiyoobi (Wednesday) and I had a job interview today with a company called Aim in Tanimachi, close to Namba I think. I had to take the Tanimachi train line to Tanimachi Kyu Chome Station. I can't figure out if that meant I was in Tanimachi Kyu Chome, or Chome. I had to take the train to Osaka first, and this time got a bit lost in the train station trying to find the Tanimachi line - I almost panicked but suppressed it. Anyhow, the interview was for a one to one tutoring job, where I sit with a student in a cafe, at their house or my place and get paid 500 yen per ten minutes, in cash. I think it went well; I had to give a demo lesson explaining the difference between "I went to" and "I have been to"...I said "I went to" is in the past, and needs to be defined by time, "I have been to" is more of a term you would describe an experience with. Am I right? Have NO IDEA!!!

The interviewer, Masa, was really nice and invited me to the Aim Halloween Party this coming Saturday night which will have staff, tutors and students. 2500 yen for all you can eat and drink. Sounds good to me!! Will be nice to meet some people here too, so I'm quite happy :)

Here are some pics I took today and yesterday, more around the neighbourhood shots, as I haven't really been anywhere else yet:

View of Rokko, uphill.

View of Port Rokko.

Rokko Cable Car - you go here if you want to go up into the mountains.

Construction site. You notice a few of these empty holes around Kobe, which are sites where houses collapsed in the 1995 earthquake. Reasons why sites are empty vary - from respect of the dead through to not being able to afford to rebuild. Another interesting impact of the earthquake is that Kobe has a really 90's architecture flavour.

View of Rokko, downhill.

Crow swooping to the left. Their wingspans are huge.

As you may be able to tell, I've become quite obsessed with the crows. A huge bunch of them were flying around in the sky today. Something must have disturbed them. Gutted these sky shots show my dirty lens up!!
Mark can you come to Japan and clean it for me?

Food review time. I am not sure what these delights are called exactly, lets go with Alfort biscuits as that's the only word I can read. These are tiny little ship chocolates with a mini biscuit on the other side!

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