Saturday ramblings

Apart from the odd day, most of my Saturdays are kid free and are, now, all private students. I teach in the smallest room in the school on Saturdays and, now the noise problems are sorted out, it feels kind of cosy.

It struck me today how much fun my job can be. I can get students to talk about anything I want which, if you know me and my rather random brain, can be a lot of fun and very interesting and informative. And sometimes they even ask me about myself!

Take today: the topics of conversation were many and varied. Nothing outstanding, but very enjoyable all the same. We covered: the fact that vending machines in my town sell booze, but that I've never seen them; how easy it is to break the law in Japan; banning smoking in public places; the acting industry in Japan; King Arthur, the Knights and Samurai warriors and how they were linked; the atomic bomb; the BBC; hangovers; school history lessons; the preservation of old buildings; stage schools; the workplace; the Olympics and I can't remember half of what else now. Oh, the odd bit of grammar was also thrown in when it had to be!

And I've been tagged for Five Food Challenges by Y. I've always managed to (conveniently) forget tags but here goes. They're not very interesting, I'm afraid:

1. Keep food regularly in the house. My fridge is too often bare - and that after me spending a lifetime of shared-houseness dreaming of having a whole fridge for myself and not just a shelf. And remember to buy fresh food from the 100 yen shop.

2. Start preparing and freezing large amounts of food so when I come in all tired I can just sling things into the microwave and not have to think about it.

3. Give up eating bread. Again. And generally just cut out crap from my diet. This includes cutting down on the amount of caffeine I consume every day.

4. Learn some Japanese recipes. I buy a lot of Japanese ingredients but generally just improvise with them. I have two recipe books - I want to start using them.

5. Try out some new recipes. My 'kitchen' consists of a single ring, a toaster oven (with no heat variation) and a microwave. I've got very creative in the time I've been here. I want to get more creative.

Okay, I'm tagging Mr Teacher, Liisa, Beastie and Liz