Food

Someone brought it to my attention that bananas are MASSIVELY expensive in Australia at the mo. They are about $1.20 a bunch here. Cheap as (banana) chips... Let's compare fruit prices, I will write here what I am paying for fruit and stuff and you think about it;
(Unless otherwise indicated all prices are for ONE item, not per kilo)

Apple - $1.85
Cucumber - $0.45
Orange - $0.80
Kiwi - $1.00
Whole pineapple - $5.50
Whole watermelon - $10-50
Whole melon - $15-50
Avocado - $1.70

I think in the end it is kind of the same because we pay more here for stuff that is cheap over there and then vice versa too. It annoys me that the fruit is priced per item though, puts me off buying more than one of anything for some reason... Chicken meat is cheap as, although beef is heaps expensive, but proabably not too much worse than at home anyway, just can't find a T-bone anywhere. Fish is cheap as and they have EVERYTHING you could want to eat in the way of seafood just at the supermarket which is great. I have been living on salmon steaks. YUMMY. Hmm, all this talk is making me hungry, better go home!!

SUNSHINE and bananas

It's wonderful and hot today. The teachers have rigged up a massive fan in the staffroom because they are so hot and it blows right across my desk which is heaps annoying. Paper everywhere. It's not that hot. I might get my legs out on the English room balcony today. Hmm.

Today and tomorrow is the grade 6 "camp" so there are 5 teachers missing from the staffroom. It's great. Plus it means I get to eat lunch in the staffroom because my schedule had me in with the grade 6 for lunch this week. I actually got to eat my food while it was still warm! And there was even too much for me, couldn't finish it! I feel heaps sorry for the teachers who had ot go on the trip. They left at 6:15 this morning and will get home tomorrow evening 7:45ish having been to 4 different major cities in Japan with 28 kids. I think it is a bit excessive to have 5 teachers accompanying only 28 kids, but if they want to waste their leave and money on dragging whinging mopers around Kyoto and Nara that's up to them. I expect I will get a full account of the Run Up and Talk to Foreigners happenings which will be interesting. I'd love it if they ran up the one tourist who has just had it up to here with sightseeing, is hungry, tired, lost, beweildered, just fought with their spouse of three days and just cracks it when 15 kids start yelling Harro!! at them. If that would happen I could almost feel sorry for not having gone.

Since it is 4:59pm I am about skip off home. Do you know what the best thing? Frozen bananas. Seriously, peel a banana, wrap it in cling wrap, put it in the freezer and suddenly eating an otherwise ordinary banana is a massive treat. Be better if it was dipped in chocolate first of course, but I can't actually think of a single thing that wouldn't be improved by being dipped in chocolate.

Grade 5 SUPERCLASS!!

I just finished the big Special Class with grade 5. Their teacher is Kishino, who is all buddy buddy with my boss, Ishi, and so she was able to change the curriculum for this month and make out like it was a really big deal and invited all these teachers from other schools to come and watch the last class, which was today. All the other teachers had to watch too and pretend they were taking notes and stuff, we even had volunteer old people come in to practice English one (even though their English is not that much better than the kids'). It was a joke really, only one teacher turned up from elsewhere and all the Nishi teachers were like, "yeah, we know this." The kids were great though and they loved it. They came over heaps early from their classroom in two straight-ish lines while Kishino was greeting the volunteers and telling them what to do. So instead of just sitting their staring at each other I had them play this game I learnt at the touch tournament the other weekend.

The game basically consists of two people facing each other, standing with their legs shoulder width apart and about 80cm apart from each other. Using only your hands and pushing only on their hands briefly you have to try and push the other person off balance. So you can't grab their hands, or stand there continually pushing against each other, just a quick shove, the idea being to make them put in too much power and topple forwards when they miss your hands. It was great fun and made the SUPER genki so when Kishino rocked up she had no idea why they were standing in lines and apparently trying to shove each other.

The lesson itself went really well and the kids were able to do everything and had heaps of fun, but as far as the worth of having people come and watch it... If I were one of the other homeroom teachers I would feel a bit pissed at having to take time out of my day to watch Kishino do what they do in all their classes. And it is kind of irrelevant to them anyway because each year level has its own abilities (and behaviour issues to try and control). After the class I had the usual bevvy of admirers coming up and saying "Oh, you are such a good teacher!" Puh-please, I know the Japanese use compliments as a way of starting conversation, but why can't they just talk about the weather like we do? I wasn't even teaching, I was just being a dictionary for Kishino who seems to think her English is good enough to go "freestyle" during class and when she gets stuck (usually after the third word) she looks to me to read her mind and finish it up for her. Anyway, the whole bloody thing was videotaped so I am sure at some stage I will have to watch myself dancing around singing "Do you have the broom? No, I don't!". A prospect I look forward to with the same glee as I would having my teeth pulled.

Squeak squeak

I reckon recently I have gone on a lot about the grade 3 problem here, but it really is the only big deal at school. Today I went to join the class for music. This means sitting in a room filled with 8 year olds wielding recorders... and they are not shy of giving them a loud chirp. So I am sitting there among what sounds like the death throes of some as-yet unencountered alien being, trying Oh-so-very-hard to pretend that I can't hear what is going on around me and that I couldn't think of a more pleasant way to be spending the time I have left with my eardrums. Eventually a combo of three teachers manages to get the kids to place the recorders on their desk where, it is presumed, they will be unable to make any noise with it. The rest of the lesson consisted of the teacher trying to get Hiroki to apoligise for calling another kids a spaz (because of which she cried which really annoyed me, if you can't get called a spaz without crying, how did you even survive until grade 3 anyway?), Hiroki ignoring her completely or saying a lot of words that rhymed with "I'm sorry" but were actually more insults and meanwhile the other hooligan, Masashi is up the front bashing out his own version of a concerto on the electric organ. Finally the teacher just goes and unplugs the organ from the wall which and begins giving the class a lecture about what to do when Masashi goes mental; ignore him and concentrate on your lesson. Nice advice. While she is saying this Masashi is kicking her, pushing her, hitting her (he was really putting some effort in too) and she ended her speech while dragging him slowly out of the classroom to the hallway where he went completely bunta and used his recorder to bash the teacher and the TA and finally threw it down the hall where it broke into a few pieces.

As if it's not bad enough that there are even kids like this around, the rest of the kids have missed an entire lesson because the teacher cannot deal with Hiroki and Masashi without leaving the classroom. Out of a 40 minute lesson the kids had exactly 5 minutes of learning time and the rest was spent dealing with their unbalanced classmates. I feel really sorry for them, all they are learning is how the squeaky wheel gets the most oil, but that they should never squeak.

A quiet one

Well I had a tremendously dull weekend. No one's fault but my own really. Friday night was the speech by my fellow CIR, Mario. He comes from Peru and so spoke about his country since everyone is so curious about it. It was an interesting hour or so. Unfortunately he had some trouble with the computer and his powerpoint production was slightly painful but it was informative anyway. It made me want to visit and have a squiz around. After the speech was over we stayed and were jumped on by various Japanese people all eager to use their English. Personally I don't like the idea that someone is only interested in talking to me because I happen to speak the language they are trying to learn, so I made little effort to become friendly with anyone. When they did talk to me I replied in Japanese, which is my usual tactic for getting rid of those who are only interested in English and not in me. Unless I am being paid I am not going to stand around talking to native Japanese people in English, after all, I didn't come all the way over here for that. After the speech a few of the foreigners went out for some beer and I tagged along. Unfortunately my night was cut off early, as it tends to be, by the need to catch the last train home.

Saturday I spent a good deal of time in the library in Okayama looking for and reading books. It was nice, but way too many screaming children for absolute relaxation to kick in. If you can't keep your child quiet for 5 minutes together I will give you a tip; don't take them into places where it is expected you be silent! So after about an hour I left in disgust and sat under a tree next to the main road, which was somewhat quieter. The best part of the weekend was chatting to some old friends who have found their way back to Japan. Plans for catching up are under way and I am HEAPS excited about that prospect. Next weekend I am going to go somewhere interesting I promise, then I can write about something more interesting than children with no manners being loud in quiet places.

YAY!

I've told you before Skippy, use a bloody ashtray!

Here's the picture I included in my quiz about Aussie stuff yesterday. I thought that the kangaroo with a ciggie hanging out of his mouth would give away the fact that the rest of the picture is perhaps also misleading... but clearly I was mistaken. Plus, he's drinking it with a straw, what self respecting Aussie would do that??

Today I would like to say thanks to all the people who e-mailed me! No particular reason except that there's been a bit of a drought in the mail department recently and so when I found six mails waiting for me to read earlier on I was very excited indeed. You can never receive too much correspondence. Unless you are hella famous and perhaps have someone stalking you. That would be too much. Also it might be too much if you are dyslexic and find reading a real pain the arse. Or if you were receving heaps of correspondence from people you didn't want to hear from and they were sending banal crap or those chain letter thingos... actually there are a lot of ways that lots of correspondence could be a bad thing now that I think about it. I take my previous statement back, or revise it to; you can never receive too much correspondence from those you want to hear from who have something worth saying. Yep.

And what is with chain letters while we are at it? Do people actually believe that if they don't send it on they will get the badluck that is foretold? Because that is a whole other level of illogical thinking. It simply doesn't made any sense for you to believe that a letter typed up by an ordinary Joe Schmo can bring you good or bad luck, even if you believe in such a thing as good and bad luck itself. These letters never claim to have been written by anything like the omnipotent being that God is supposed to be, so what gives it the power to terrify people into forwarding them on? Or perhaps people really are just sheep and if The Letter says to send it on, they will.

Yay Socceroos!!

Whackydo! How fab is the soccer news! The Japs were all crying and acting as though the world had ended. They can be drama queens when it comes to sport.