Forget asbestos! This is the only way to protect your wooden castle from fire! This fish is designed to ward off all fire-bearing arrows and kids with a penchant for arson.

My bad day got worse...

So... No official complaint came in after the bad lesson but one of the students did make a passing comment to the office manager. Luckily I had already discussed the lesson with my boss so it wasn't a huge shock for them to hear the comment. I had a meeting to figure out how to resolve the problem. The suggestion was that I teach them again while my boss listens in on the lesson. Sounded like a good idea to me, but I was wrong... The first half of the lesson was ok considering how nervous I was but the second half.... I don't know what happened in the 5 minute break but when I went back in the smiles had disappeared and I was faced with two unhappy looking students. I obviously became even more nervous and really start to rush my instructions. It wasn't as bad as the first muckup but the students were clearly not happy at the end.... I'll update the tale after the customer comment forms have come in on Saturday.

Bad Day!

I had a very bad day yesterday. VERY! I completely screwed up the first half of a lesson and the students were not happy. I managed to prepare for the wrong page in the text book and when I had realised that the two students were giving me very strange looks because I had been talking rubbish I tried to seamlessly move to the correct topic by spouting more gibberish. It was about as cringe-worthy as you can possibly imagine.... I am waiting for the official complaint to come in... Bum!
Anyway..... I have a new toy to cheer me up. I will write about it in a future post. It's a PSP addon called Talkman. It is another way for me to practice my Japanese.
I know plenty of you are having bad days over in the UK, some much worse than mine. I hope that you all have a good weekend and stay happy.

The mincing machine pictured, reminds me of using playdough and pushing it through the little holes to make 'playdough hair' for little playdough people! There I am rolling a ball for the head, Shiho (just visible on the left) is making the body!

Moe and I are enjoying getting our hands dirty combining cooked soybeans with rice-yeast and salt.

Let's make miso!

I've finally decided that it is about time that I contribute to the blog, so that said, here's a post about a Sunday, a couple of weeks ago when Dave and I rolled up our sleeves to make miso; a fermented soy bean paste used to flavour soups and stews in Japanese cooking. Our friends (with the impressive collection of Japanese dolls below) have a family tradition of preparing homemade miso once a year at the end of February, and this year we were lucky enough to be invited to join them. So, after a timely but fun process of mixing, mincing and molding a thick paste of soybeans, rice-yeast, salt and vinegar, the mixture was then put to bed to ferment for 6-12months. By that time, it should have darkened somewhat and developed an alcoholic aroma (nice!).
Hopefully, a year from now we'll be able to sample our miso, and of course (with our humble inexperienced taste buds) give it the thumbs up/down.

This is a dolls festival being taken seriously!

A new post...

Sorry for the long delay but we have been very busy at work this week. We will continue to be VERY busy this week but it should start to ease off next week.
The 3rd of March is Hinamatsuri 雛祭 - Girls day or the dolls festival. It is very important for families with girls. Intricately decorated dolls sets are displayed. We have been given a small set which is incredibly pretty. I will try to put a photo of our set up on the blog sometime soon. The picture you should be able to see on this page now is an impressive display from our friends house (they have a daughter).
Families with boys wait until May 5th for the Boys festival (Tango no sekku) which, unfairly in my opinion, has degenerated into a general childrens festival... If girls get their own day why don't the boys?!

Mein Schloss .... UPDATE!

A long overdue picture of Mein Schloss (the German beerhall we visited a while back)

You can buy some unusual stuff at our local Uniqlo... Get your feminine sweat here!

If you know what I'm talking about it might be useful to you....

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Really great mp3's for people studying japanese

I just found these mp3's. They are great if you want to top up your textbook studies with some real-world examples.
Gambatte!

In Japan they make standing lamps that look just like people.

A vending machine selling tea, juice, vitamin enriched energy drinks, Pepsi.... and beer! Yay!

Valentines day was very expensive this year.

Big!

We saw this wedding taking place in one of the temples. What you can't see is the huge crowd of official photographers and wedding organisers.

Nara is famous for deer. They are a little dangerous. Signs everywhere warn that visitors should be careful when feeding them. In this picture you can see two lookouts. Inside the shop an armed robbery is taking place. When the closest deer saw my camera he stuck his tongue out at me (as shown). It just shows the lawlessness of these evil creatures.

Trip to Nara

Feeling better now.... Woohoo! Work is VERY busy though so this is just a quick one.
Just read an email from a friend I met on my TEFL course. He has a job with Rockstar Games (the makers of GTA). Congratulations!!! Now.... Where's my copy of Liberty City Stories??? ;)

At the weekend we went to Nara. It was once the capital city of Japan and so it has a wealth of interesting temples and monuments. Due to the way blogs are published you will see the pictures before reading this so I hope you like the pics.

O-genki desu ka? Iie, genki ja arimasen.

No updates on the captions. Both of us are feeling very poorly at the moment and trying to cope with work is tough.
When we are fully recovered I'll take the time to post something.

D