Like most one year old's, Pigeon junior gets excited by any music and seems to enjoy moving his body (sort of) to the rhythm (except music that comes out of the disembodied scary box on the shelf, also known as the stereo). Some things get him up dancing immediately - like the countdown music to BBC news on tv for example. But the one thing guaranteed to get him moving more than anything else are the Shapes. It's just a two minute bit from another CBeebies program but he goes crazy when they appear. So how great is it (or perhaps as some weird kind of torture for parents) someone has put up a continuous 10 hours of Shape action on youtube. Guaranteed peace if only for a few minutes.

I had three classes of real little terrors today. Man I was so knackered by the end of it. One kid, after discovering accidently that marker comes off the whiteboard if you rub your hand on it, decided then to rub off my entire lesson plan for the hour. This was five minutes into the lesson. I was not pleased. Everybody else in the class seemed able to do, despite not knowing any English, the exact opposite of what I'd want - stand up when I wanted them to sit, pass the ball instead of throwing it, giving me a viscious beating instead of a high-five (which I now regret introducing to class as they only see it as an opportunity to hit the teacher). At this point, random screaming and running around and throwing stuff is a given. The students do it too. But seriously folks...

Had my first week of classes for the new kids year and got to meet all of the kids that I'll be teaching/babysitting for the next 35 odd weeks - 10 hours of classes. Unfortunatly, because it was the first class, all the eager parents have their faces pressed against the glass and pretty much watch everything that I do. Of course to make me feel better the school staff did this as well. I was not pleased as this did nothing to ease my nerves. Neither did the fact that in one of the classes a kid fell asleep on his cushion. I tried to wake him up, and all the other kids were shouting at him to wake up but nothing worked. I looked pleadingly out the class window for help and no one came in. Man, how boring was the class if he fell asleep? On Thursday I had the youngest kids of all - 3 years old - and in this one the parents actually sit in on it and do all the jumping and running around along with me in an effort to keep the kids amused. For this class there were only two students - one boy who just kept wandering around and lifting stuff up and one girl who actually got in on the act and began to take part. I was soo feckin' knackered after it despite the fact that it was only two students for half an hour. That's going to be a tough class when its over 30 degrees and theres rivers of sweat coming out of my shirt. On a better note had my first tiny bit exercise since I got here yesterday. Went out to Osaka-jo where there are actually small parks around the castle with, wait for it, actual grass! Grass, I tells ya! Thats an actual treat Played frisbee for a few hours while the light lasted. It was probably the hottest day since I've been here and was still 21 degrees after 10pm. Of course this is nowt compared to what its going to be like when summer comes. Going to have my first proper Japanese class this evening after having a short model lesson last week to see what it was all about. I wasn't very impressed by the free model lesson - it consisted of the teacher shouting "Kore wa A des!!!" while pointing at the whiteboard like some fascist salute while I was the only one in class. Hopefully this evening it'll be a little more involved and a little less like some military drill. For two hours and the crap load of money I'm paying it better be...