oishii, ne?

oo bargains, gotta love them. In Ikebukuro station this evening my attention was caught by a stand offering seven packets of things for 1050 yen (about £5). I wandered over and saw lots of dry fish things, nuts, dried fruit, chinese crackers, etc.

One of the salesmen came over to me offering me a dry fish sample. I politely declined. I have eaten dried fish before, but find them a bit, er, too chewy for my liking. He put the packet away into a pocket in his apron and pulled out another packet, this time offering me some dried 'sqeed'. The dried sqeed were in little unrecognisable balls. He then started saying 'mouse', 'mouse', and I started wondering if he meant dried squeaky things. When he elaborated to 'squeed mouse' I figured out he probably meant 'squid mouth' and, as much as the idea of eating some dried up balls of squid mouth didn't appeal, I graciously smiled and took one. EUW!!! Crunchy, yucky, stick in teethy EUW! But I just smiled and tried to subtly dislodge the crunchy bits from my teeth when he left me.... . Nice.

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On Tuesdays now I don't have any students I can have a conversation with before 8pm. Utterly exhausting.

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On Wednesdays now I have a new class with two toddlers. One's 2.5 years and the other isn't quite two yet. 'Interesting' is one way to describe the class. 'Impossible' is another. The older kid can speak and can concentrate and can remember. The younger is a little 'lively'. 'Lively' one has an older sister I teach. She's also 'lively', but she's 5 and I can control her and she draws me pictures and writes 'I love Jo' on them [creep!] I also teach the mother (all three of them separately, just to clarify!) and the mother will shout to control the 5 year old if she misbehaves. In the toddler class, mother of 'lively' and 'creep', just hit him on / around the head to control him. I was a tad shocked. So was mother of 2.5 kid.

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Student Y, my dog trimmer student, and I were discussing her diary today, as always. She's a fairly low level student but two private lessons a week means she progresses pretty quickly and English lessons are the highlights of her week, as she's written several times now. From a couple of days ago she'd written her father had told her she was fat. I was SO shocked by this. Firstly because that is such a bastardish thing to do, but mainly because Y is attractive and the size of a typical Japanese woman, ie skinny. I asked her if she thought she was fat and she just said she'd put on weight since last summer. I resisted asking if it was just a gram. I also resisted teaching her the words 'bastard', 'weight complex', and 'fuck off, old git'. GAH!

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Student K, a tiny elderly student, has a dog. We were talking about hanami and she told me she could see sakura in the park through the window of her house. I asked if she walked her dog in that park. She laughed and said no. I asked if she walked her dog in the streets. She laughed and said no. I asked her WHERE she walked her dog. She laughed and said something about its feet. I asked if it was hurt. This went on for a while before I could figure out what she was talking about. Finally she clarified: she won't let the dog out of the house because it's dirty outside and she doesn't want the dog to get dirty. GIVE ME STRENGTH SOMEONE. PLEASE!!!

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Sometimes during the day, if I think of something I want to blog about, I write myself a note. So, for example, today I wrote: 'fat dad', 'dog dirt', etc. I also wrote 'cheers', and have NO idea what that's meant to be. Cheers anyway, if you're reading this and drinking.

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Today I think I successfully pulled off looking cool whilst squirting myself with salad dressing. I had lunch in Yoshinoya (a chain of quick and cheap restaurants) and settled down to eat some ginger pork, salad, rice and miso soup. I had some salad dressing in a blister pack. Actually, I'm not sure what the proper name is for them but they are little plastic sachets type things with two compartments full of dressing. You bend the compartments and the dressing shoots out. If you hold it the correct way, the dressing shoots out over your food. If you don't, then it goes over your scarf, head, and the chair next to you.

Guess which I did?

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Cheers.