Birthday

Well I turned the big 27 today. And I actually completely forgot that it was my birthday until lunchtime. Not that I completely forgot about it at all. Yesterday was pretty nice..my Japanese friend came out to Kobe and we finally took the cable car up to the Herb Gardens in the Kobe hills, a popular viewing point for seeing the Kobe skyline. Theres also a couple of small museums relating to herbs n' perfumes n' such, and we got to sit in on a free concert, where different people from the audience got up to play different jingles on a very complicated electronic organ, complete with loads of footpedals. The funniest thing was one, kinda tubby and profusiouly sweating guy in a shit and tie went up and played a song that sound like it was a theme song to manga cartoon (in fact most of the music sounded like that). It was only after a minute that I realised the song was actually a jingle they play in the fish section of the supermarket.. I've been fortunate enough to get a loan of some English books recently. Currently I'm reading a book called Sick Puppy which is pretty funny. I also read Digital Fortress recently which had an intersting premise, marred by the atrocious quality of writing and research. But the author is the same guy who wrote The Da Vinci code which loads of people seem to be reading. So when I met another teacher at work who just happened to be reading the Da Vinci code I had to ask him his opinion. He said it was really really good and I thought about getting it myself, until he just mentioned in passing that his favourite books were written by this guy called David Icke... Last Monday was a public holiday here (not that it made any difference to me cos that's already my day off..feckers) and I went to a small classical concert in Shin Osaka because a friend of my Japanese friend was playing the piano at it. She was really good on the piano but it was a pretty surreal experience. First off, I was the only foreigner out of the 100 strong audience of mostly elderly people at a classical music concert on a Monday afternoon. I'd never even be at something like that in Ireland. The choir consisted of 5 men and 5 women and they sounded pretty professional. But it was certainly weird to hear them play, among other things, "Home on the Range" in Japanese, sung to classical music. I'm more used to hearing Bugs Bunny sing that. Been feeling kinda homesick recently. I can't quite put my finger on what I miss - parts of Dublin or the milder summer. But it may also be that the Japanese skyline and summer are wearing me down. Not to mention the language barrier, the crappy apartment, the food, the less than inspiring job. I also miss English language TV and News...and I mean British and Irish..NOT American. I'm also missing my old college work, but thats tied into getting a little fed up with the English teaching. I guess the job is more and more resembling a temp job for me - the same thing day in and day out. It doesn't feel like I'm gaining much experience at anything. In fact going to Japanese class is the only thing thats helping my career. At least, I think it is.