Random thoughts, comments, observations and general fluff from a random bint who left London at the end of September 2004 to embark on a new life and new adventures in Tokyo, land of the cute.... and is leaving mid-June 2010 - and counting!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Rest of the Break

My ten days off is drawing to a close. On the whole it's been fairly relaxed, but I'm still feeling exhausted - or maybe that's from having done two all-nighters in the week.

The first one was a sayonara (farewell) party for Eras, my Dutch housemate - and one of the house 'family'. I organised a big surprise party with twenty people at the Keio Beer Garden in Shinjuku and actually managed to pull it off without him finding out. After a couple of fun and noisy hours in the beer garden we ended up with a few hours of karaoke, finally tumbling into bed at 5.15am -

and getting up at 8am to tumble into a car and drive with Eras to the airport for a sad farewell.

Anke, another of my house family, leaves at the end of the month. It IS inevitable the people you get close to here leave. I've had lots of good friends leaving in the time I've been in Japan - but it doesn't make it easier.

The rest of the week has been filled with lunches, hanging out, exhibitions and generally having a nice relaxing time - and clubbing last night.

And the has gone nasty - lots of rain and it's cold. brrrr!!!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Finally!

I can relax. I have a week ahead of me with no commitments and no firm plans. And it feels absolutely amazing.

Last week was long and exhausting. It started off with last Sunday and a very fun-packed day in Sanrio Puroland (Hello Kitty Land) - photos to probably follow some time this week - lots of laughter and silliness.

Then Monday I didn't have the energy to do anything because my work schedule (and partying schedule) have been knackering me out so much. Highlight of last Monday was taking a book to Starbucks and enjoying their air-con and macha frappacinos for two hours of reading and peace...

The rest of the week was a whir of multi-location working days which passed very very slowly with far too many hours being spent on trains.

Saturday, the first day of the ten day break, was spent shopping, eating, drinking and hanging out with housemates and Sunday we spent the day in HAKONE (photos ditto Kitty) which was awesome fun. After the long slow journey to get there we spent a long time eating lunch and wandering around the fabulous open air museum before doing the tourist loop to get the cable car and boat and finally collapse into an onsen at the end of the day. Very relaxing. And knackering.

And now - I'm free!

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Students!

The weekend is kicking off well: tonight I had a lovely evening in a small bar in Shibuya, 7ef, listening to live jazz and bossa nova..... so good. Such a nice way to start the weekend...

after a long week that included two more bloody summer schools (that's four done and I've just been given another seven for the next few weeks. Joy.) and a trek out to cover at a company where all the men had one uniform and all the women had another uniform. Really. Pretty strange BUT not as strange as one of the men I taught:

I'd been told by the regular teacher that the second class (a 90 minute class of intermediate/upper-intermediate students) normally discussed an article of some sort. So, a quick check of http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com gave me my evenings lesson: a discussion on playstations being banned from British prisons.

It was a gamble taking a subject like that to students I didn't know, but it was cool and they got really into it. And I mean REALLY into it. The highlight (lowlight?) was one student, who was maybe 15-20 years younger than the other two students who declared they (convicted criminals) absolutely should NOT have playstations. They should be brainwashed and, if that didn't work, they should be hanged.

*gulp*

Teaching life is certainly never dull!