Jo in Japan: It's not cold enough

according to a student I taught the other day.

Now, I am cold almost all the time right now so I probably looked at her as if she was insane.

She then went on to explain she had allergy [please pronounce this in your head with a 'hard g' like the 'g' in 'dog', as most Japanese do] because it was too warm.

Having been in Japan too long, and obviously because I'm a genius, I decrypted her ramblings to mean that the apparantly unseasonably warm weather [yeah, right] had brought about early hayfever by causing the pollen to proliferate from the cedar trees - an allergy which about 99% of my students seem to suffer from.

Of course, I was right.

[mindreading is a very important quality if you want to be a teacher].

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I went to the supermarket for some salt. I went to the herbs and spices section. I found curry salt, salt mixed with pepper, salt mixed with things I hadn't heard of, other types of salt, rock salt, a different kind of rock salt... but no bog standard salt.

Of course, I was just being a stupid gaijin.

I mean, obviously, table salt would be TWO AISLES AWAY from the other herbs and spices.

Who doesn't know that?

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Did I mention I am currently cold all the time?

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I've made a bad discovery that is currently eating my time away:

I give you these links with a disclaimer that I cannot be held responsible for the undone chores and wasted hours that may result from looking at these links -

peekvid and alluc and tv links - all of which allow you to watch TV programmes and movies WITHOUT having to download them. This site can be used if you want to keep them, apparantly, though I've not tried it.

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Did I mention that I'm always cold?

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On a slightly more serious note 1:

June trip to the UK. I think it's fair to say it's not going to happen. Financially, there's just no way. I'm now going to aim for August 5th to 15th, so please make a note in your diaries. These dates both do and don't make more sense: on the one hand it's peak season for flying from Japan, but maybe I can avoid peak week and go before the prices increase; on the other hand, I'll have cleared my loan and money I've borrowed by then, so it'll make more sense.

On a slightly more serious note 2:

I'm kind of going nuts right now. My skin is really bad. Of course, I'm being really lazy about treating it (I do homeopathy not steroids - but had slacked right off on taking the tablets) and don't know what has caused the current flare up but I'm in pain. Most of the time at the moment. I think this may possibly also have something to do with why I'm feeling the cold so much more than other people seem to be - that my body just isn't controlling my internal thermometer as well as it should be. The skin is stopping me from sleeping well. Not sleeping well is probably making the skin worse. It's a lose-lose situation right now.

On a slightly more serious note 3:

I was exasperrated by the reaction of a Japanese staff member recently. In a nutshell, cos it's a bit long to go into detail:

- There's a kid who we teach who it seems is being bullied and has been for quite a while.
- It seems the kid probably hasn't told parents or her own school.
- I suggested maybe we could get some helpline information and put it up in the school.
- The Japanese staff member said no.

I don't get it. I really don't think it'd be such a big deal. I guess I'm wrong though.

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brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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Have a few more Thailand photos:

New Years Eve fireworks: