Our Man in Hikami Nishi

Things are going pretty well at school. My school is really small (only 176 students) so I know pretty much all of them by face already, even if only about 10 by name. Also because it's a low level high school, theres not as much pressure to perform as there is at more academic schools, so I often drive home just after 4 and see my kids hanging around outside Family Mart (conbini - corner shop but so much better), which I personally think is much healthier than staying around for extra classes and clubs for 3 or 4 hours.

Lessons are impossible to predict. I've had intricately planned lessons be a bit of a mess, and then today, when given 5 mins to prepare a lesson for my worst JTE, an impromptu game of scattergories was one of my best lessons, as the kids got really into it, and team DISRESPECT came from behind to beat team NO FUTURES in the closing moments. (They love choosing cool team names and weirdly the less able kids come up with the most fun stuff.)

Last week had a bit of a nightmare: I'm often right on the cusp of being late, and on Friday I managed to scratch another teacher's car as I hastily grabbed the last spot in the car park. Cue a day of stress and annoying stuff as everybody whispered about it around the staffroom and I awkwardly wrote a letter in bad japanese apologising (well, good Japanese after my friend Dylan made it, well, less shit). Many bows were bowed that day. Turned out the scratch was easily fixed so nothing to worry about there, just the hassle it caused. To smooth it all over I bought a little sorry gift of chocolate almonds from starbucks so hopefully thatll be the end of that.

UPDATE: Kocho sensei (headteacher) just appeared in the staffroom and said I need to practice driving more, slapped me on the chest and said if it was his car I'd have to pay LOTS, laughed uproariously at this and then disappeared. Interesting.

Just now a group of 3rd year girls came into the staffroom. They came over and tried to say their practiced English sentence. It was 'Sometimes your breath は general'. I had no clue what this meant. Maybe I have bad breath? So they tried again. Then enlisted the help of my supervisor (after accusing him I THINK YOU TWO ARE FRIENDS). He got them to write it down, and it turned out to be 'i feel your breath'. WTF? The three girls and my supervisor stared expectantly at me. 'I... don't get it.' They looked upset. 'It is... we're so close I can feel your breath. Sometimes I love you, sometimes not,' said my supervisor. Er...... okay? 'A little inappropriate?' I suggested. Apparently not in Japanese as he explained to them how its a bit weird - but only in English. 'Thankyou!' and they traipsed out, leaving me a hand drawn picture of Disney's Stitch.

So school is fine. I'm so fucking behind on studying Japanese, I've entered myself for a test in a month today, and I don't even know a quarter of what I'm supposed to. Going to have to work my arse off - it's like Uni all over again. Except this time I will actually do the work. Definitely.

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The weekend was cool,went down to Kobe area Fri night and just relaxed, we tried to watch Howl's Moving Castle in Japanese (seen it a few times so probably can just about follow) but of course I fell asleep. Ate Omerice for the first time which is omelette and rice and is pretty underwhelming which makes me wonder why its half my school's favourite food. Picked up a stupidly expensive purple puffy jacket that cost a month's car rental but wanted it for ages. It's from Beams which seems to be like the Japanese version of Urban Outfitters, but way more popular and a little bit more upmarket. All about the collabos there, bought a porter × beams boy bag for a friend and my jacket's millet × beams. Went to Osaka Sat night for FREEDOM TIME again and of course patrick forge killed it.

Before we hit the club we popped into that same bar as before (9 seats 3 barstaff), love that place. James Woods movies on the screen that time and playing George Benson off of LP. Headed down, DJ Kawasaki on Especial Records first of all, loads of brazilian house which was wicked. Then P Forge came on, bit of broken funk but essentially was about the deep house, few tunes I recognised from back when I used to listen to his innervisions show, but its all about breaking you down and opening you up.

NOW THAT WE FOUND LOVE WHAT ARE WE GONNA DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

which is this but a deep deep house version with the vocals looped for time before the beat kicked in. And of course a version of Another Star (really subtle rerub of the original, just a more prominent kick and hat for a house feel) that seems to be a theme for this kinda night which I'm loving. And the 4hero version of John Coltrane's Naima that I still don't fully get but I'm getting there, into Phuturistix's Cohiba, which reminds me of doing radio at URN in Nottingham as my mate Max played that a couple years ago on a mix he did for the show and I was like WHAT IS THAT??!? And Reel People's Second Guess... all about the classics. As we left, they had a table of LPs on especial records, picked up Sleepwalker's "The Voyage"... I already have it on CD, it's only 5 of the tracks, and I don't have anything to play it on out here. Still though.

No pictures as I took them all on my sparkly keitai (mobile) and as yet haven't figured out how to get them on the computer. Working on it.