Amazing. Simply amazing.
I am utterly impressed by this recent turn of events.
Not being able to track down a decent pair of shoes in my size (actually, ANY pair of shoes in my size), I turned to the technological marvel known as the internet to see if I could locate any. After much searching, I had almost given up hope of actually finding any when I thought I'd look on the actual Nike website. 'Lo and behold, they have a listing of all the shoes currently available in their respective sizes. After setting up an account with Nike Japan, I tried an online purchase not expecting much since I don't have a credit card. I was most pleasantly surprised when one of the payment options was payment at a convenience store. How sweet is that?! Well, all this was in Japanese and despite knowing enough to make the purchase online, I had no idea how to go about paying at the konbini. Nevertheless, I headed over and showed the purchase invoice to the staff and they directed me to an ATM-looking machine where I was greeted with a veritable deluge of Japanese menus. No problem! The staff did all the work for me and just asked me a few questions. A most painless precedure and truly, a CONVENIENCE STORE! I'm still in awe of the whole thing.
And to top it off, a school cancelled today so I had just under three hours to spend. Well, there's only so much studying I can do at the local Starbucks so after a couple of hours, I went to Inage Kaigan half an hour early and on impulse, decided to check out the department store there. But wait ... that's not the surprise, the shoe store there stocks several shoes in my size! (^_^)
So now I have one pair with me and am waiting for the other pair to arrive. Good thing too as my current pair is really on it's last legs. The soles have actually worn down to the foam in some bits.
Whee ...
I'm stylin' now!
Anyway, I just got back from work and am rather hot. Am going to clean up and make some dinner.
Me's out!

Man! That rave was OFF ... THE ... HOOK!!!
We arrived at Ageha at 2230 only to be told that we had to wait until 2300. For some reason, they were really strict about keeping to the 2300 entry time when people could enter and the music would start.
Initially, the club was really empty with only a few people there but things started kicking at about midnight. The Guest DJs started coming on and the dance floor got pretty full after a while. They had several rooms with different DJs and it was quite cool going to see the different places. Man, those DJs could really mix it up. Sometimes, the music makes all the difference. There was also an open-air area with a small swimming pool where people could jump in. Indoors however, was really warm and even with the air conditioning going, you'd still sweat quite a bit. Combine that with dancing for hours and it'll really take it out of you. I must have drunk more than 10 bottles of water (and only water) once the dancing got underrway. I couldn't believe it. One bottle of water cost 300 yen. So, being the cheapskates that we are, we bought one bottle each and went to the toilet to refill it. Never thought I'd be much of a dancer but with everyone not caring and just having a good time, you can't help but be caught up in it too. I'm fairly certain that was the most excercise I've done in a very long time. The guys came prepared and brought glo-sticks for everyone. Only a handfull of people had them so it was really easy to find each other. Met a cute little girl by the name of Mia who could twirl those things like she meant it. Not having brought her own, she tapped me on the shoulder and wanted to borrow them for a while. Have to say, she was hot. Who am I to say 'no', eh? (^_^) The girls definitely dressed to thrill last night.
Man, can't do too many of these things. Got back at seven today. Took a shower and went to bed.
Woke up a few hours later to do some housecleaning and grocery shopping.

Blast this humidity!
Just walking around for a bit is enough to make you feel like you've been dipped in something sweet.
I finished work early today, as I usually do on Thursdays, and decided to walk around Chiba to do a spot of clothes shopping. I figured that locating clothes my size would probably be easiest here than going all the way to Tokyo.
No joy.
The only pair of shoes I managed to find in my size (after walking all around Gyotoku, LalaPort, Odaiba, and now, quite a bit of Chiba too) was a pair of white basketball shoes. Unfortunately, I'm quite a ways past my basketball shoe phase. Nope. No high-top whiteness for this man.
Shame though, since all the other shoes I've seen are a couple of sizes too small.

At school today, I got a rather nice souvenir. The sixth grade went to Kamakura last week for a school excursion and the teachers brought me back a very nice traditional Japanese fan (the non-folding type) which actually shifts a rather surprising amount of air when used. I think I've heard from somewhere that using fans like this is less 'harsh' than using electric fans or the like. Don't ask me why.

The office sent me my performance evaluation today. Was a little surprised. I knew about the evaluation and that the teachers were asked to give feedback regarding my lessons but I didn't know it would be so soon.
Still ... nothing to fret about. The schools all like my work (^_^)

Ugh ... still feel sticky.

I need to go for a shower and get some stuff ready for tomorrow night.

zap kaboom!

And I'm not joking!
It's raining quite a bit and it's only going to come down harder. The weather forecast said it's going to come down in buckets at about 2100. 22 mm/h is really quite a lot of water, isn't it?
Grr ... it's so humid too.

There's something to be said for trying out new recipes in the kitchen. Sometimes, they don't quite turn out the way you wanted and yet, at other times, things turn out beautifully.
Yeah ...
This isn't one of those times.
I was trying out a new Jamaican Jerk recipe to see if I could replicate Sean's. However, the recipe called for a couple of things that I couldn't really find here. Namely, Habanero peppers. That, and I suspect the recommended mix of wet and dry ingredients are badly out of proportion. Still, it did turn out quite nicely if not quite anticipated. I'm going to have to try again and see if I could do something about the consistency of the marinade.

In other news, in other, WEIRD news ...

Marvel is making an Indian version of Spider Man. WTF?! Well, I suppose I should be happy he isn't wearing a turban.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is appearing in an episode of the Simpsons.

and
The coolest pic you'll see today. Solstice Celebration.

Happy Birthday!!!
Aha! Bet you thought I'd forget, eh?
Well, no siree! I'm proclaiming it right here! It's my momma's birthday! So all you guys say 'Happy Birthday' too.
Doing anything special today? Maybe meeting up with some friends for tea? Or relaxing with a nice glass of red?
Write an tell your baby boy all about it ^_^

Woohoo!
The end of the week and I'm sitting here in Balearic with Jin enjoying my end-of-week pint. We had dinner and a few drinks before in a place called Tomato Ichiban and then went to someplace else to play a few rounds of darts but we ended up here!

Jin says:
Ok I gotta come up with some bullshit here? Ok Aeric is the MAN! Ummmnn... No that's true
. HE IS THE MAN! But he can't beat me at darts...( yet as he says...close! still Aeric) BUt now we is chilin' out at a psychedelic trance bar and I'm a few beers ahead of him ( NO WE'RE NOT! WE'RE NOT! WE'RE EVEN! Aeric) YA right... We'll see where this goes! Bring it!!! Party On! GOA TRANCE PSCHELDELIC TRANCE PARTy ON THE WAY!

Okaaaaaay ... maybe it wasn't such a good idea letting him type this. But it's all good. Chilling out ... cheap beers ... darts ... yeah, baby! Good way to usher in the weekend.

Being an elementary school teacher is really great. I bumped into a couple of my students on the train to Chiba. They were on their way to cram school whilst I was on my way to meet Jin. Really good kids. Had a nice chat on the train.

w00t!
Man, so glad the weekend is here!
Going to a rave next weekend with Jin and Sean! Should be a load of laughs.
Hey! And my chorizos just arrived! Fantastic beer food! Spicy sausages!
Yay!
I shall sign off now.

Booyaka!

Barbecue!
Well, yesterday anyway.
Woke up and prepared the meat I was going to be taking to Sean's. Picked up half a kilo of chicken and beef each along with some sausages. Thought it would be a good idea to marinate them in something too so I made up a batch of some spicy sauce to let the meat sit in. Nothing much, just some kimchee base, some kochujan (whatever that is), some vinegar and some sake. It's my all-purpose sauce which I use for stir-frying or ... well, anything, really.

I didn't fancy carrying drinks over from Gyotoku so I waited until I was in Futawamukoudai and met up with Jin to do just that. He met me at the station with a pretty big cooler which we then filled with ice and then went to the local supermarket to acquire beverages. We got some pretty strange looks. I don't think it's every day people see two large foreign people walking down the street with a large cooler and more beer than is really recommended, even for such a hot day.

When we finally made it to Sean's place, I was greeted by the dog, a Rottweiler-Alsation mix, whose bark is definitely bigger than his bite. Seriously, it's like half Rottweiler, half Alsation, all pussy. After taking a few hours to get to know us, and after bribing it with pieces of meat, it settled down enough to let us pet it. Strange, it wouldn't take any beer. Hmm ... strange creature.

The weather was perfect for a barbecue. I was really worried for the few days leading up to today since it was pissing down and I was highly dubious about the weather but things turned out ok. Got a nice tan just sitting outside with beer and meat. Ahh!
Speaking of which, I need to find out how Sean made that beef. Some sort of Jamaican Beef Jerk recipe which he would not divulge despite threatening to sic the dog on him.

In any case, I felt pretty tired by about six and made my way back home to sleep off the afternoon's extremely strenuous activities. Woke up at about 2300 for a quick toilet break and then went back to bed.

Feeling much better today actually. Spent most of it cleaning out my PC. It's remarkable the amount of dust that settles inside. I'm so glad I'm not in Malaysia doing this. For some reason, my allergies really act up when I'm back home but anywhere else ... really strange. No hayfever attacks even in the middle of pollen season.

On a side note, I've just sent several email trying to reestablish contact with several people I met in Japan but have left quite a while ago. Hey people! You know who you are!

Ugh ... I'm really down. In a funkified kind of way. And dammit, I'm all out of ice cream or any other kind of comfort food. *sigh*

And it's going to rain tomorrow night which hijacks any plans I might have had for meeting up with the usual people for the end-of-week pints.

Where's the 'something nice' I ordered earlier? Must really complain about the service.

On the plus side, am chatting with a dear friend of mine as I type this. Hey D! Big shout out to you! Am feeling brighter now.

Had a strange phonecall from the office earlier today. The school I'm working at tomorrow called and said that if the weather is good, I have to be at the school by 1020. If it's raining, I have to be there at the usual time of 0920. A strange request, I thought. Turns out that since Summer has come, all the schools will, over the course of the next week, be performing their annual swimming pool degunking. As such, the students will be knee-deep in the green crap that gradually appears over the Autumn, Winter and Spring months and scrubbing it away in preparation for the much anticipated swimming pool classes.

And I was witness to a most humourous scene in class. Two teams were competing and one team was doing badly (I mean SO badly that even by the end of the class, they failed to acquire even a single point). Anyway, I digress. Halfway through the game, three of the boys were laughing at how weak they were and they were actually saying 'Shiro hata! Shiro hata!' (white flag). I've never seen any team surrender outright before. Most amusing.

The day started out as normal as can be. Everything pretty much routine. At the end of the class at my second school, the teacher mentioned in an almost off-hand kind of way that she thought there wouldn't be any class today. Being somewhat startled by this sudden revelation, I took out my schedule (which I only received yesterday) and confirmed that there wasn't supposed to be a class. So I taught a class when I didn't need to. Hmm ... oh well ...
Got a funky note from one of my students. It seems that little do-it-yourself envelopes with cute pictures or designs on them are all the rage with Japanese schoolgirls now and it was one of these that I received with the condition that I read it later. Very curious, no?

I was also the BadAss teacher today. One of the kids is always noisy in class. Enthusiasm is good but when the student is being noisy and basically being a hindrance to the lesson, then it really gets on my tits. The homeroom teacher told him several times that he way noisy and when I was doing individual practice with the other kids, he was being a nuisance too so I told him to be quiet. Not liking this particular state of affairs, he proceeded to tear up a piece of paper to vent out his frustrations and just generally act up. So I kicked him out of the room. The class went remarkably smoother after that. Whoo ... ph3ar MY l33t DI5Cipl@n4ry 5KIlLZ

For some strange reason, I've been feeling tired lately. I don't think it's due to lack of sleep. Hmm ... maybe the heat? Come to think of it, it hasn't been excessively hot these past couple of days. Malaysia is loads hotter but it feels like the humidity here is just sapping your energy like little energy-sapping thinglies. Even doing the most mundane of tasks results in me breaking a swewat. More so when you factor in the prancing around involved when teaching elementary school kids. Ugh ...

Dammit ... I need to study too. Grr ... it's just so hard to get started and once I do, maintaining my focus takes even more effort than actually studying.

Ooh ... tomorrow is Thursday! Which means that I get home again! And I can do a spot of sun-bathing! Oh wait ... poo ... weather forecasts says it's going to be cloudy. Hope it doesn't rain this Saturday or Sean's barbecue will be a washout. Grr ...
have to sub another teacher at another school next week. Occupational hazards. Poo biscuits!

*sigh*
Something nice happening now would be most welcome.

Ok ... I'll stop whining now.

I had to work cover today for a teacher who couldn't make it. It was a pretty insane couple of classes. Due to the fact that this school doesn't have a regular English teacher (the one from the junior high school sends theirs over once in a while), each grade is taught in one class. Tiring doesn't begin to describe the experience of teaching classes of 100 kids at the same time. But it's a good kind of tired.
You can't beat the high you get by watching the kids' faces full of enthusiasm, admiration and yes, even worship. ;)
My one gripe was that the school was in Goi. For the uninformed, Goi is two stops up from Nagaura, where I used to work last year. In other words, it's fsking far.

Hey wait ... I just realized ... I'm pretty cozy under my winter duvet.
Check the date and realize how weird that is. Okay ... so it was pissing down yesterday but that's no excuse for the temperature to suddenly drop almost 10 degrees. Oh well ... better than being insanely muggy.

The rain falls again,
No cute girls around today,
So at home we are.
-Nick Adams

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and there's not much to do. We've already cleaned most of the apartment and are going to turn the floor into an amazingly clean yet surprisingly dangerous area by mopping it with some polish. This is done with a fair amount of irregularity but yet manages to coincide with the arrival of guests who are unaware of this minor floor.

The god of barbecues smiled on us yesterday though. The weather was very pleasant. I hesitate to say sunny because the barbecue was held at night. Still, we managed to have a good time and met lots of new people with which to unleash our usual brand of humour and sardonicisms. A newly married man was asked if he had a girlfriend whilst he was introducing us to his wife.

Oh well ... good fun nonetheless.

I have yet another barbecue to go to next Saturday. Sean invited me to his little party and apparently, I am assured of a good time (I'm not sure who's paying for the strippers but it ain't me (^-^ )v )
Yup! This plethora of barbecues is the official sign that Summer is definitely upon us. The extra heat and sun means that I essentally self-baste. I just need to be reminded to turn over every hour.

Weather, good! Home, early! River, near!
All the makings of a good bask in the sun.
I get off work early on Thursdays and am usually home at about 2 in the afternoon. With the weather being exceptionally nice today, I packed up my study book and a towel to lie on and headed off to the river to do a spot of sweet FA whilst simultaneously bronzing up my Adonis-like countenance. Actually, that's not completely true. I did a lottle studying. A lottle is like a little but only more so.

I have noticed that at one particular school, I'm treated like a VIP. This, as you imagine has some perks but it brings along with it some occupational hazards. With a remarkable degree of consistency, I find that I am ushered into the Pcincipal's office when I arrive where I have a cup of tea and chat with the Principal until my class is about to start. Once the class is over, I return to the office to have yet another cup of tea and more often than not, some random bit of confectionary. So far, it all sounds good, no? Well, look at it this way, I have no time to prepare anything for class should the lesson call for it (photocopying, setting up stuff, etc.) and when I'm done teaching, I have to sit there and participate in some nonsensical natter that could be deemed as small talk which inevitably lasts the best part of half an hour, sometimes dragging on for a full hour which in turn results me getting home later than I would like. Someone save me from this obligation of keeping up appearances!

On a much more positive note, I have managed to turn around one of the most dismal lesson plans I've ever had. Numbers is not usually a very entertaining lesson and the first class of the week had to suffer through a pretty dire lesson. It was absolutely dreadful. The kids didn't really enjoy the lesson that much, I didn't enjoy teaching the lesson. But after that first class, I reviewed what went wrong and tweaked it into a pretty damned good lesson. Even received a compliment from a teacher who told me that the kids always have fun in my classes ^_^

Just outside the school I work at today is a small mom-and-pop establishment serving ramen. So I thought I'd try some of that for lunch today whilst the kids are chowing down on the school lunches. Yummy! ChaShuMen with lots of pepper and a side order of super-garlic gyoza.