Overdue Update

Golden Week Went to a small town on the Inland Sea coast called Ushimado for a few days during Golden Week. The area generally looks a little like Italy or Greece (well, at least compared to the rest of Japan anyway) and they seem to want to encourage the idea there as the chief tourist attractions for other Japanese are Olive groves and some faux "Roman" ruins. I wasn't able to find an explanation about the latter. The scenary in the area was actually quite nice and a refreshing change from suffacating concrete jungles of Osaka and around. Unfortunatly, it was raining really hard for the second day we were there which kind of runied things. We were staying in an "International Villa" - a big chalet set up exclusivley for foreigners to try and increase tourism in the area, so it was half the price of regular accomodation. School I found out that a student I usually have on Tuesday mornings though, a middle aged lady usually by herself, is actually the wife of the boss of the company. The school director decided to tell me this casually after I'd had about 4 lessons with her already. God knows how I've badmouthed the company to her. The kids lessons are definitly hit and miss. They'd all be great were it not for one or two students in each class who can make them hell. One little kid in a class literally falls asleep on his cushion about ten minutes in and I spend the rest of the lesson trying to keep him awake while the other kids go crazy. Another kid in a class can't seem to dress himself properly to the extent that I end up spending 5 minutes at the start of class trying to stop him running around with his jacket over his face and one sleeve taken off. Another class of 7 year olds are all boys but one, and they're impossible to control. And of course they all sit there for the hour oblivious to all the stuff coming out of there nose. The contagious little devils have given me no end of colds since I got here. Japanese class I pretty much started right at the beginning because, though I learnt a little Japanese before, it was pretty much useless to me except in telling me which are the mens and womens toilets - essential nonetheless. Having forked out 55,000yen this week on the rest of the term's lessons I'm in mo position to get a feckin digital camera either. On Thursday I'm meeting with some Japanese person, organised by the Kobe International Centre, who will basically act as a language tutor for me - some other teachers recommended it because its free and you actually get to learn important stuff. But anyway, compared to the other teachers here I'm practically fluent - most of them have made no formal effort to learn anything and which means I have to bail everyone out when we have to speak to a Japanese person (which really just involves me nodding vigourously and saying Yes to eveything I don't understand). Rainy Season Its starting to get pretty humid and wet here now too. Though the rainy season isn't supposed to start until somtime in June its been raining pretty heavily recently and when its not raining its really humid - the temp is hovering around 25 and usually doesn't go much below that in the evenings. And as the temp goes up so will the number of cockroaches in this place. I saw the first one of the year in the apartment too during the week. About two inches long and moving very fast up and down a wall near the kitchen. They are really freaky. As an initiation or something my flat mates decided it was up to me to dispose of it. Nasty business.. Misc I think I've found a swimming pool I can use out on Port Island, one of the man made Islands near Kobe built by knocking down a few of the local mountains. The Island is pretty drab, consisting of ugly looking hotels, an out of season theme park and the usual mix of industry and apartment blocks side by side - I guess my impression of the place wasn't helped by the rain. But they have a big sports centre with 25m pool and a 50m one in the summer which sound pretty promising. The only trouble is I have to get two trains to get there Forgot to get off my arse and get those pictures done. Maybe this weekend..