It's nearly time

Hanami is almost upon us. Hanami is a special sit-underneath-trees-and-drink-yourself-stupid festival. It's fun. So far this year, I have two s-u-t-a-d-y-s parties to look forward to. I have a feeling the number will probably grow. There are lots of websites that tell you when is the best time to go and sit under the trees and d-y-s. The TV news also tells you when you should be planning your s-u-t-a-d-y-s for.*

Sorry about the delay in updating. I've been lazy/busy/tired.

Since last posting then: I had a fun weekend. Saturday night I went to a small but random 'party' that involved a lot of booze and food and was in a secret location with secret people. It also involved me giving a very naughty English lesson. There is photographic evidence, but it's being kept hidden! Sorry I can't say any more. I wouldn't want to incriminate anyone. But it went on to about 2am and no karaoke was involved.

Sunday was lovely too. Timorous Beastie and I went to Liisa's party. We stayed a lot longer than everyone else so I hope Liisa and her lovely hubby weren't too annoyed at us! I'm trying to find words to use other than 'lovely', but it was all very lovely: their apartment, their cute kid, the salads and cake, their friends, their friends kids.... it was all very very lovely!

AND Beastie and I went on the Yurikamome Line, which was great fun! It's an elevated train line and is pretty cool to look down on everything as you go above it all. I kept waiting for a rollercoaster type swoop, but sadly it didn't happen. Oh well.

The weather has now picked up, although it is still a bit unpredictable. The big heavy winter blanket has been packed away and I'm back to just a duvet at nighttime now. Yay!

The gym going is intermittent, although I'm still managing once or twice a week... and I keep noticing women wearing nylon tights under their shorts in the gym. Someone please tell me why? I don't mean leggings or sports wear... but tights. Bizarre.

The kids I started bribing to control their behaviour a few weeks ago are utter angels every week now. Unfortunately, I lose them all in three weeks time when they go to other classes at the next level. There's a bit of subtle bitchiness I've started to notice (they are six years old) but I'm going to let it slide... two of them keep holding hands and standing close to each other a little away from the third one. That's life, I guess, and 'aliences' change so quickly at that age anyway. Today they were really sweet. I've been getting them to say: 'May I come in?', at the door each week and have normally only got a mumbled 'mayiioeie' or something similar. Today they were all early and I was still rearranging furniture so told them to wait outside. They were giggling and suddenly I heard a really clear 'May I come in?' from them. I was SO chuffed :D

I don't like the course I'm teaching them. It's a joke. I'm expecting them to learn around 12 words each lesson on this course and this is WAY too many for their age and lack of English experience. Today we had great fun miming things like big, small, happy, sad, angry, hot and cold. Of course, I doubt they'll remember more than two or three of 11 by next week but who cares, they're cute kids and we all had fun!

I'm sure I had a heap of other things I wanted to blog about; but I can't remember them. Sorry.



* Hanami is the name given to celebrating the sakura, or cherry blossom, that appear this time of year. Blossom is very important in Japan (delicate like the soul of the Samurai, or something like that). And people set aside dates to go and look at the different blossoms as they appear. Plum and cherry are the biggest pulls, with cherry being a massive thing whereby parks, cemetaries, etc are packed out with people having picnics, drinking, singing and playing instruments under the trees. It was good fun last year!