ポんず！ Ponzu!

Yum, I got a box of kabosu (a kind of lime) from the Washimi family in Oita. Kabosu are one of Oita's famous foods, so it was lovely to get such a gift. Seiji looked up some recipes on the Internet and is in the process of making ponzu - a delicious soy sauce mixed with chili and kabosu juice concoction for using with meats or on salads or anything else that takes a good sauce.

He is using this recipe. It will take a few days...can't wait!

I borrowed the photo from the website - looks like it has gone a bit sidewise - please tilt your head : )

Worst haiku in the world?

I decided to write a haiku...it blends Japanese and Kiwi influences - see if you can spot how:

It is autumn, oh!
The leaves they are a fallin'
They sound like rain eh?

Update and final attempt!

Hmmm...my word count hasn't shifted much from last time I checked - I wonder why that is?!!

Now I am using this blog as a procrastination tool...yes, I have many things to do, namely, about six hours of proof-reading for an old student of mine who is doing a PhD and is in the final stages of her thesis...I have been checking her work for nearly four years now - amazing! Her topic is macroeconomics related - about companies in Malaysia - I have learnt a lot!!

I have had a full few weeks...

I went to my friend Yoshiko's wedding last weekend - it was fantastic fun - I was able to catch up with her and her family, and also see old friends Randy, Sayuri, Katoh-sensei and so on. It was bitter-sweet as I miss my old life...but it was really great to see people again - I wouldn't get that chance so much if it were not for my few connections left in Oita.

This week was pretty big too because I decided to stay in Japan for another year and had to talk to my boss about it...I tried to negotiate a few changes to my contract...but nothing doing...I lost a bit of respect for the Japanese way of doing things - treating people like robots (and especially foreigners - like disposable robots)...but I can't be bothered fighting the battle...I have fairly good conditions here, so it is all good.

I just got the crazy idea that I could write 50,000 by the end of November - if I stayed up all night for the next two days and typed my fingers down to the bones. I have only written a few paragraphs and I can feel the OOS setting in, so I think I will give away that idea.

However, I am amazed at how much I managed to write in about two weeks...now I will have more time (next year) and I plan to do quite a lot of research and more reflecting in this blog, so I will have plenty more to write.

I wonder when I will get my first comment? If ever?!!

Looking for a university job in Japan?

This site has a useful list of links.

Blo-re-mo challenge update

Well, I set myself the challenge of writing 50,000 blog words in this month of November...(in lieu of writing a 50,000 novel a la NaNoWriMo - although I am using their handy counter to keep myself motivated)...am currently at 12,796. Should be at 25,000. Oh dear.

It is much harder to write a lot of words on blogs than in a novel....I keep stopping to do previews, add pictures and links and check that a post is half-way public-worthy.

Oh dear.

Echino Fabrics

I recently (well, about 20 minutes ago) posted about Design Festa and indirectly referred to Echino Etsuko, a designer for Kokka fabrics. I thought I would write a little more about her.

When I first got to Japan nearly two years ago, somehow I came across her designs on the Internet. I tried really hard to find a shop that stocked her products (I even went to Nippori - fabric town - which is famous for its wide variety of sewing goods) but I couldn't find anything.

Finally, I found out she was exhibiting at Odaiba in a huge craft exhibition. I went there with the naive hope that she would be there (maybe this occurs in Kiwis who are used to seeing NZ TV stars ont eh street or out shopping?). Well, she wasn't, but her gorgeous fabric was - I bought a few hundred dollars worth and went home happy.

It seems very difficult to buy the fabrics here in Japan - unless you are a commercial outfit...but in the U.S. and Australia there seem to be stockists. Some lovely people on the lovely Etsy are using it to make lovely products.

Cute postcards - Design Festa

These are some cute cards - there for postcards available to buy at nearly every booth - ranging from 80 - 500 yen. It is an excellent way for people to be able to buy a piece of art, support the artist, and get a memory of (and contact details for) the other artworks the artist had on display.

It is one of my dreams to have a post-card shop with REALLY cool postcards from designers and artists from all over the world. It could look really good - like an art gallery or my sister's shop, with very white walls and just amazing designs on the walls.

Xmas goods from Design Festa

Here is a cute Christmas tree figurine with the modern twist of some cute characters.

Design Festa last weekend!

Well, I dragged myself to Odaiba last weekend to go to the Design Festa. I was pretty tired after a full week and rather anxious that it might not live up to my expectations. But, it was great!

First, though, I had to get "Lost in Odaiba" for about 50 minutes and wandered the streets trying to find Tokyo Big Sight. I can't believe I managed to find it last time, about two years ago when I went to a draft exhibition to find this wonderful lady and her fabric designs. I was new to Tokyo at the time, and INCREDIBLY hungover, but I managed to make the 90 minute trek there (and caught the airport bus home so I could sleep for two hours without worrying about changing trains).

Anyway, this year I finally made it at around 12pm and promptly found a cafe to have lunch and a coffee - I needed to steel myself for the 2000-odd booths of crafts and art ranging from mediocre to fabulous....

I felt satisfied at about 3:30pm and went home. My wallet felt about 12,000 yen lighter (NZ$200), but my heart felt a whole lot fuller (in a good way : ) ).

Pictures of the goodies I bought will be in the next post.

Talking / Writing about dreams

I have had some trippy dreams lately...actually awesomely real where I wake up and feel like something is in the room.

Anyway, I will not tell any of these dreams to you, because, dear reader, we all know that other people's dreams are not interesting. Why?

Because, contrary to a good fantasy story (or any story), dreams usually have no plot, no in-built-tension, no deep characters, and no subtlety what-so-ever (and, something that might redeem them, no connection with reality as I see it).

However, this doesn't stop an internet search coming with with a heck of a lot of people who write about their dreams. Google search results:

"Other interesting things that have been happening inside my head lately include some trippy dreams about my teeth .... So as it turns out, this same woman came up to him out of the blue in the week that I was pregnant that he knew I was ..." - a blog I do not want to read!

"I've had some weird weird weird dreams during pregnancy that I thought I should start putting on my blog. A few of them, frankly, ..." (should not be talked about, except with people who love you dearly, in my opinion).

There is, however, a whole industry built around analysing dreams for people who think they might actually mean something. This website offers dream analysis for $9 a pop.

A Good Day to be in Japan

Had the great luck today to catch an absolutely gorgeous view of Mount Fuji on the way to creche...It (she? he?) was covered in snow and STUNNING. I asked Rai if he had seen it and he said "chotto mienai" ("I can't really see it") which is what we say most days...I guess he has just got into a pattern!

Anyway, I got another view from S*ka Unviversity on the 4th floor, still stunning.

Finally, when I picked up Rai at 7pm (poor kid!), the teacher pointed out the moon to me and I was able to finally see the "rabbit" shape that Japanese people claim to see in the moon's face. Well, I am now a believer - there is no "man on the moon" there is a "rabbit on the moon". It was clear as a clear thing. This picture does not do it justice...it was AWESOME.

Phew! Peer observation over

At my Thursday university, S*ka, I have to be observed teaching once each semester.

Today was my second time and although I was a bit nervous, it went much better than the first time, and I almost enjoyed the process. My observer was another staff member at Soka, Helen Smith (hmmm...my arch nemesis's name....another Helen....but interesting!).

She is a lovely woman, originally from England but now settled in Australia (and presently teaching in Japan). She said that she gets bored after living in one country for about 2 years and that is exactly how I feel! Phew, there are other people like me. Now, I want to get to know her more - will hopefully observe on of her classes and also another teacher, Val, at some point soon.

The feedback I received was:

- My tasks were too challenging (not put in so many words, but this is the gist)

- I could try stepping outside the group and observing; using different pair systems and setting tasks for the third person, etc etc

There is a professional development meeting next week, and I would like to attend...just have to work out a way to wriggle out of Meisei responsibilities : )

Anyway, I have now had half a beer which went straight to my head, so I can't write many more coherent words, but because I have to reach 50,000 words, I will persevere.

My goal to do cooking has not worked out...I would have to cheat significantly now to catch up...let's see....I already wrote about making a cup of tea and putting flavouring on rice....now I can write about....opening a can of beer....cooking rice in a rice cooker....cooking Rai's instant porridge every morning....boiling soya beans....heating up leftovers....going to Mos Burger...buying dinner at a convenience store...yes, actually that last one is what I did today. Rai and I stopped in at Lawson's and got an onigiri and mochi for me and a mochi and caramel popcorn for Rai...that boy is headed for obesity at this rate!

Aaahhh...now I feel tired...it has been a long day....gotta go and lie on the couch and stop overusing full-stops...

Diary Update

Well, I seem to be busy (or at least feel busy) again...I already feel like I need a holiday and I just had five days off last week!

I guess this teaching business is more tiring than it looks. My darling husband often says "You've only got a half day today right?" which is true on Tuesdays and Fridays, but I am still buggered and recovering basically from the three classes I have on Mondays and Thursdays. It is a block of five classes over two days without preparation time in between that seems to do me in. Just when I have finished three demanding (two eigo - so demanding in terms of patience and energy; one C class, so demanding in terms of keeping people awake and on task - including myself!) classes, I have two think about two more before 9am the next morning. Some would say I should prepare the week before, and I do sometimes, but it is difficult to prepare too far in ahead - I always need to look at things again before class and see what is suitable....The same process happens again on Thursday (three classes from first period to fifth period), I leave the house at about 7;30am, get home twelve hours later and then have two classes the following morning.

Actually, I really love my timetable, because it means I don't waste too much time preparing - I find I am still doing good enough classes even without preparing for every step. This timetable is also a million times better than last year where I had three days finishing at 6pm - which meant I was very tired when I went to pick up a very tired Rai at 6;30pm. Another day started with a 9am class, so my body clock was completely out of sync!!

I don't seem as tired these days and I put that down to kicking my lovely boy out of my bed! Although it is a double bed, it ain't big and I wonder how couples survive in it. As for me, everytime Rai moved or sighed or coughed or asked for water or lost his blankie, I would wake up - and usually wake up completely, so it was difficult to fall asleep.

These days, I am sleeping so well that I sometimes wake up naturally at 6:30am after a good 8 hours unbroken sleep. This morning I woke up at 4:40am but it didn't matter - I had had seven and a half hours sleep and felt fine and still feel fine now.

So...what is all this rambling in aid of? Well, I have two purposes:

1. To add more words to my blog count - my aim is to reach 50,000 words my teh end of November

2. To avoid preparing for S*ka University tomorrow - I will be observed for my fifth period class, so I should try to produce something amazing, but at this point I am thinking I will just do what I normally do. I mean, there are only three students in the class and I am going to be observed "teaching" them?! I think I will just ask for feedback on my materials and tasks...

So, here we are. I will now go back to the IELTS task that I wrote previously and do some other stuff.

Later.

Seaweed and Rice (Blo-Co-Mo 5)

Today, I had about 10 minutes to have lunch before I set off for work. I knew there was some leftover rice, so I fired up the kettle to heat some water, to use with my old standby "ochazuke", only to find that I had no packets left. Shock horror!




I searched the the fridge for something else to put on my rice and found something called "gohan desu yo" ("It's dinnertime!"). It is a kind of seaweed sludge, mixed with soy sauce and other yummy flavours and it tasted DAMN good on the rice. Worth taking back to NZ if we can.

I love my tea (Blo-Co-Mo number 4)

Today, as with every day, in the morning, I made myself a cup of tea (well, to be honest, Seiji did, but I made my second cup). It was Earl Grey - which Seiji and I love. We buy it at rather a premium price from the foreign food shop in Mitsukoshi, but it is well worth it.

I sometimes have two cups but seldom more. I discovered that caffeine and I don't mix well after 4pm, so I have to avoid coffee, tea, coke and even chocolate after this time to prevent insomnia later on. It sucks actually. I guess if I built up my tolerance gradually, I could have more, but it's not worth the sleepless nights I would experience in the meantime.

Recipe for tea

Some hot water
A tea bad
Milk - a couple of tablespoons
Plenty of time to steep and then cool down (I can't drink hot stuff)

Seiji usually makes me a cup of tea every morning and it is a lovely thing to do for someone. Thanks Seiji - maybe I will tell you this one day to your face...maybe...

Gratuitous copy and paste from Wikipedia to up my wordcount (has some intersting stuff though!):

Earl Grey tea is a tea blend with a distinctive flavour and aroma derived from the addition of oil extracted from the rind of the bergamot orange, a fragrant citrus fruit.

Traditionally the term "Earl Grey" was applied only to black tea; however, today the term is also applied to green teas, including white tea and oolong, and tisanes, such as rooibos, that contain oil of bergamot.

Blog Update - How's it going Hana?

Well, I seem to be resorting to asking myself inane questions in order to get the word count up a bit on this blog (which I need to get to 50,000 words by the end of November to achieve my self-set blog-novel-writing-month challenge).

Today, I was VERY tired. I think five-days of non-stop action did me in. Luckily, I only had one class to teach today (plus 90 minutes in the Language Lounge - one annoying student turned up so I decided to close it early!).

The class went really well actually. I had devised this nasty assignment meant to get the students doing some more speaking and writing and I thought they would react badly, but they didn't and I put it down to a few teacher-y techniques on my part.

1. I let them choose 4 topics out of a possible 15 or so. I just spread out all the different sheets across some desks and they came and took what they wanted.

2. We listened to Avril Lavigne in the background while they got started writing.

3. I gave them some very specific feedback on their speaking tests and told them why saying "oh-oh-oh" didn't sound very English and why they should strive to use subject-verb sentences when speaking. I thought this would be annoying for them - it is very basic grammar that they learnt in their first few years of junior highschool - but I managed to come up with some common errors that they make to help send it home to them that they need to bloody well concentrate when they are speaking : )

e.g.1 In answer to "Did you do your homework?", they invariably answer "Forget" (literal translation from "wasureta" in Japanese).

e.g.2 In answer to "Why were you absent last week?", they usually say "Cold" (literal translation from "kaze" in Japanese), they laughed when they realized it has a couple of meanings.

e.g.3 "What will you do this weekend?" "Go out" ("dekakeru"). I explained that without a subject, this would sound like a command "Go out!". I used a bit of my teacher-ly license here, because actually it is quite a natural way to answer the question, but I wanted to drive home the fact that students need to learn and use the "rules" correctly before they start "breaking" them.

Most of the above explanation was for the benefit of one student who seems to be the lowest in the class. I have no idea how he got to be into the level 5 (out of 6 levels) class. I also don't know why another student, Masanori, whose speaking and comprehension are excellent, is not in the highest class. I am going to ask Price, our academic co-ordinator person, how they were tested.

So, that was a good class.

Back to the blog, well, I have written over 4000 words and done a lot of cooking (well, um, three things?). The words are okay because I can add more whenever but I have to catch up on the cooking a bit - or write some posts on the cups of tea, morning porridge for Rai, or even the seaweed glug smeared on rice that I had for lunch today, in order to reach my goal of "cooking" something every day.

Dammit - why don't I just do that and stop feeling guilty?

Akihabara!

It has been about ten years since I went to Akihabara with my friend Chris and we bought electronic dictionaries together. It was the start of a great relationship...with the Japanese language!

Today, I went again with Susan and this time we deliberately sought out signs of "otaku-ness" - Japanese geekiness, and boy did we find it!

First, we started by being geeky ourselves and celebrating what I thought was international donut day. I can't seem to find any links to it (it appears to actually be the 1st of June, in fact), so I must have been misinformed by the AFN radio station I listen to when I drive Rai to creche. Maybe the DJ was confused, because it seems that there are a lot of donuts being given away for people in the U.S. who vote...

Anyway, after enjoying our donuts and taking suitably geeky photos, we wandered around some figurine shops, electronics shops, and sex shops (well, okay, to be honest, one of each was enough for us).



At the sex shop, I was sorely tempted to buy a breast enlargement contraption but changed my mind at the last minute.


We also walked around for quite a while in search of a maid cafe. I could hardly suppress my excitement as we went in - I didn't know how welcome female, foreign, customers would be, but it seems that we were very welcome - and the only ones there! Ah-ah. The maid didn't even call us "master" or feed us - we needed to pay extra for that. Photos were also not permitted. At least they had a video playing that showed various comedians in the cafe - including members of SMAP, so I was somewhat mollified.



Overall, it was a great day - and now we can check another tourist site off our lists.

Cool music video from "Denki Groove"

I have just got to show you this cool video. What do you think? Leave a comment!

(Link below doesn't work so try here).

An amazing five days - boring diary post

(These diary posts are just to help me remember what I have done - I don't plan to write or edit them particularly well - sorry gentle readers!)

Well, I can truly say I achieved my goal of having a fabulous time this weekend and really taking advantage of all the days off.

I'm so glad I didn't go anywhere because I got to save time and money and spend lots of time with Rai. I also managed to do lots of stuff in Tokyo.

Thursday: Rai stayed home from creche and I took a well-deserved metnal health day after a bad night's sleep, a persistent semi-cold and an accidental sleep in. We took up the invitation from Declan, Meghan and Brian (Meisei teachers) to go and climb Mount Takao. We took a few (wrong trains) and got there in about an hour and a half, took the cable car up the VERY steep hill and then climbed up the final 40 minutes or so to the top past an amazing amount of temples (I pity the poor monks who used to live / worship there before the cable car was built!). We took a wrong turn on teh way down (took track 5 instead of track 4) and had to back-track a bit which tested all our muscles pushing 18 kilo Rai up the hill in his buggy. It made it quite fun and memorable though and we all felt we had had a good workout.

Friday: Rai didn't want to go to creche so I kep him home and we ended up going to Omotesando to see the amazing five (six?) story Kiddyland toystore. We also went to eh Design Festa gallery and had a delicious lunch nextdoor of chijimi (Korean pancake) which I cooked on the table in front of us.

Saturday: A relaxing day was punctuated by a trip to the supermarket to buy ingredients for my pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. At 5pm we left the house to go to Seiji's old workmate's friend's Halloween party. Had a great time talking to the hosts and otehr guests Raj, Dio, Yuko, and some crazy Japanese guy whose name I can't remember.

Sunday: We were pretty tired after a late night, but I decided to take Rai to the Meisei Cultural Festival and give Seiji some time off. It turned out we spent FIVE hours there and had an amazing time. Some highlights included the chamber music club's cafe - we had coffee and cake for only 300 yen and listened to the most gorgeous live violin and cello music; the manga club's cafe - all the members were dressed up as various characters and acted COMPLETELY like otaku (Japanese geeky salarymen) - even though they are only about 18 years old; the movie club's short movies; the live concert performed by various rock bands; visiting the computer club's room and checking out the various projects they had made (none of which worked); looking at the beautiful ikebana design from the flower arrangement club and putting stickers next to our favourites; watching the "ningyou geki" (puppet show) and laughing our guts out at the simple minds of children; seeing lots of students enjoying themselves and truly being themselves (not often seen in class!).

Monday: I finally attended a session at JALT, also checked out some books, got a few freebies, chatted to Craig at his poster session and got home by 3pm to have a sleep and do some cooking.

Tomorrow's plan: Go to Akihabara with Susan and check out the otaku shops - a post on it will surely follow : )

Cooking 3

Tonight I plan to prepare the ingredients for Chickpea and Pumpkin Patties using this recipe.

I won't be cooking them because we've already had dinner, but I figure preparing it all to be cooked tomorrow satisfies my "cook something everyday" challenge. Of course, tomorrow I need to cook something else as well - it might be the cucumber dip that goes with the patty recipe. I never said I would cook difficult stuff : )

JALT Conference

I got up early (well, 7am) this morning to go to the JALT Conference and see my friend Kelly do a presentation on art and creativity in the classroom. It was a very cool presentation - we made gargoyles out of air dry clay. I loved the little goodie bags that Kelly had prepared for each participant - including air dry clay in black and white and little aluminum balls for the body and head for the gargoyle - all presented in a white paper bag with a gargoyle sticker on it. Very professional and very cool.

There were five participants and we had a good time creating our own individual gargoyles in the 1 hour session.



Afterwards, we walked around the publishers' hall and talked to Perceptia Press - two very genki guys (Paul and Brian) - about their books "Octopus Activities" and "Scraps". The first is a speaking book that includes rip-out questions for students to use in class - they each get a question / topic to research in the class and report back on their findings. The book has cool pull-out question strips which look really tactile and fun.



The other book was "Scraps" a gorgeously presented book that includes scrapbooking pages that can be ripped out at the end of the course and put together to make a personal autobiography for the student. I would love to try this with some Eigo or Communication students next year and I think it would have been ideal for Susan's classes where she had students make their own scrapbooks. She said the students were very enthusiastic but that she got a little burnt out thinking of ideas for each week - this book would definitely solve that problem as it includes listening exercises with interviews with real people, pair-talk activities, useful vocabulary, a scrapbook page for each topic, presentations, readings and crosswords.


What I love most about small publishers in Japan, like Perceptia Press and others, is that their books are aimed at the Japanese market and involve and address issues that interest Japanese students. One reason I really dislike using the Interchange series (which is what we are required to use for Eigo classes at Meisei) is that it is not aimed at this market and the tasks included are generally not inherently motivating - it assumes a level of interest and motivation on the the student that is just not there and also avoids the fact that these students are false beginners - many of whom have not had a successful or positive experience with previous English classes, so repeating the same old pattern (as Interchange does) is not efficient or effective. The dumbed-down approach (for example, explicit teaching of BE-verb patterns) treats the student like they don't know anything, and just hasn't worked in my classes (although, I must admit, I have little experience teaching such students, so my teaching is also at fault, I believe). Anyway, enough of the incoherent rant and back to JALT.

Another book that Perceptia Press introduced us to (which they don't actually publish themselves) is "Common English Errors" for Japanese learners. We talked to the author, David, and his idea was for students to buy the book as a reference, then all teachers could refer students to it when they met a specific problem in their writing or speaking - this way the teacher wouldn't have to explain the same thing a million times, the student would be empowered to do their own "research" (at least, to find the entry in the book by themselves) and would also be able to read a Japanese explanation. The book includes practice, workbook-type, exercises at the back which really helps it stand out from a basic grammar reference. It would be great for developing learner autonomy, but I think teachers at Meisei aren't really organised enough as a group to carry out the process properly. Ah well.



I also had a quick talk with Compass Publishing Japan about books for my students who have to do the TOEIC test. They recommended "Very Easy TOEIC" so I ordered a sample. At about 2300 yen for the book and CDs, it could be a good required text for our second year students.

Design Festa next weekend!

I finally found the Design Festa gallery and cafe in Harajuku last week and got to check out a couple of exhibitions. I wish I had found it two years ago when I first read about it on the net - but one mustn't live with too many regrets, so I'll just focus on how cool it is that I finally worked out where it is.

There were flyers for the upcoming Design Festa event at Odaiba and I WANNA GO!

Apparently, there will be over 2600 booths - quite an unbelievable number (very Tokyo), so I have a feeling I will be passing quite a few very quickly.

Blo-Co-Mo 2 Roasted Pumpkin Seeds!

Today, since I am rather tired and we are ordering in pizza for dinner, I don't have anything major to cook - so, I am now cooking the pumpkin seeds left over from yesterday's muffins!

How eco is that?

Here is the recipe.

And, just to get my Blo-Re-Mo word-count up, I will add a bit of info about Jack o'Lanterns - which I never knew about before:

Why Carve Pumpkins?


The story of the Jack o'Lantern comes from Irish folklore. Jack was a crafty farmer who tricked the Devil into climbing a tall tree. When the Devil reached the highest branch, Jack carved a large cross in the trunk, making it impossible for the Devil to climb down. In exchange for help getting out of the tree, the Devil promised never to tempt Jack with evil again. When Jack died, he was turned away from Heaven for his sins and turned away from Hell because of his trickery. Condemned to wander the Earth without rest, Jack carved out one of his turnips, took an ember from the devil, and used it for a lantern to light his way. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern."

Okay, enough education.

Now, the seeds are finished and this is what they look like.



I now realise I have only ever had store-bought, shelled pumpkin seeds - I don't really know how to eat them in this state!

I thought I should just shell them, so I tried one, and I must say, it is a lot of effort for quite a small amount of seed. I looked it up online to see what I should be doing and apparently you can eat them shelled or un-shelled.

I tried them with the shell on, and they are kind of tough, but still pretty good. Probably seeds with thinner shells would be better.

Halloween Party

SS, Rai (3 years old) and I had a great time at a very eclectic Halloween Party last night. It was on the other side of Tokyo, so took a good hour and a half to get there, but was worth it.

We got there at about 7pm and were introduced to the hosts. They live in a nice, two-bedroom apartment which they rent for just over 140,000 yen per month (I can be so specific because I specifically asked - yes, the obsession with money continues! I mainly wanted to know, because where we live, the rent is paid for by my university, so I have little idea of how much apartments cost - now I know a little more).

The guy is Canadian and is a stay-at-home-dad. The woman is Japanese and worked at Lehrman's - recently she was forced to change jobs. They had a lovely 4 year old daughter who played beautifully with Rai.



As usual when you arrive at someone's apartment (or is it just me?), I took a look around at the bookshelves and general decor. On the bookshelf, I was interested to see the Holy Bible (good to note so that I avoid saying anything stupidly offensive), Japanese learning books, two full sets of Multiple Streams of Internet Income books (or cassette books?), a six-set of pornographic DVDs, quite a few Japanese porn magazines (these could have been fairly normal magazines - it seems that a lot of Japanese magazines aimed at men have overly "ripe" ladies on the front cover - quite distracting when shopping in convenience stores) and books of spirituality and tarot.

It was difficult to come to any firm conclusions after that eclectic mix, except that these people were majorly flaky. However, by the end of the evening (after having had my tarot read; no it did not turn into a swinging sex party, fortunately) I worked out they were pretty normal, down-to-earth people and we had a great time. Left at about 9:30pm and were home around 11:15pm.