We didn’t find any costumes in Ota, but we did have a look in Sano Bulldog (it’s Japan’s finest purveyor of kitsch junk) and found some power ranger costumes. Adrian already had a green ranger costumes, Allen bought a blue ranger costume and I just couldn’t resist the lure of being the pink ranger. With a white afro wig and pink sunglasses for good measure. Unfortunately when I tried the costume on at home I found that it was far, far too small for me and I would have had to break it to pull it over my shoulders. Oh well, the wig and shades would have to do.

The gig on Saturday night went well, despite a number of things going wrong. Firstly, Kazuya (our drummer) went to his company barbecue in the morning and turned up to our practice at my place completely drunk. He was making faces and repeatedly said “I don’t feel so good” in Japanese. We had to finish our practice early to get him something to eat, so as to soak up the nasty alcohol. And what better than a Japanese curry?

Some say that Japanese curry can never be anything more than a pale comparison of the heavenly mana that is Indian curry. While it’s true that I prefer Indian curry given the choice, Japanese curry is good in many different ways. It’s like the curry you pour over your chips in England. It’s brown, runny and full of blobs. You know it can’t be good for you, but you always seem to get these strange cravings for it after a night out. Or at dinner time, lunch time, breakfast, whenever. In fact, I could go for a Japanese curry right now. What makes Japanese curry houses truly special is that you can choose your own ingredients, the level of spiciness and how much rice you get with it. These days I generally go with a spinach, vegetables, nattō (wikipedia will explain) and breaded chicken curry with spiciness level 10 (out of 10). Other possible ingredients include bacon, cheese, soft poached egg, sausages, eggplant, potato smiley faces, garlic bits and fried fish. All for a low, low price, and all very filling. Kazuya was feeling much better after one such curry, and we headed off to our gig with full stomachs.

I had bought a used 50 watt amp from “Hard off” (the Japanese second-hand superstore. There are chains everywhere and it’s possible to spend days browsing all the stuff they have on offer) and stuck some red spots on it to match my lurid guitar. Unfortunately, it got rained on slightly between the car and the club, so half the stickers were peeling off by that time. On stage, Adrian and Allen wore their power ranger costumes, while I just wore a black suit with the wig and glasses. Kazuya dressed down for once and was just wearing sports clothes.

The gig was going pretty well until halfway through the second song, where I stood on my amp and broke the input jack. I had to quickly make a dash to plug it into another amp. But I turned it up too loud, and none of us realised until the end of the gig. Plus, it kept coming unplugged. We coped with it all well though, and it was entertaining enough for the audience. I feel like it was a pretty messy, chaotic performance, but that’s the kind that I like. We didn’t have the polish or charisma of our last gig, but we put on a show. I think it was a bit too silly for the usual Ken’s bar crowd, but I really couldn’t care less about what they think. It feels like we’re getting pretty restless as a band, and we need to at least get more gigs in Ashikaga, and hopefully in other places like Utsunomiya before long.

Karen had been working night shifts all week, and was too tired to come to Sano on Sunday. This made me pretty sad, so I just moped around my apartment for most of the day, listening to audiobooks and painting spots on my amp (which also turned out to be pretty easy to fix). On Monday the weather became ridiculously hot during the day, and there was an awe-inspiring storm in the evening that was a real spectacle to see, even if it did only last twenty minutes. I made some pasta and painted even more spots on my amp.

Today it was sunny again and I was at Tada elementary school. I arrived a little early to discover that I had a class already, and didn’t know what I was going to do for it. Normally I have four lessons in a day, and get to spend the first hour preparing for my lessons. But sometimes I have five lessons, and today was one such a day. I had no way of preparing for it, however, since my supervisor at the school hadn’t faxed me a schedule of any kind. I had no idea what they wanted me to teach the kids until I arrived at school, with a class already waiting for me. I managed to pretty much blunder my way through all five classes with no teaching materials or preparation, having the kids make their own game cards and drawing pictures on the board instead of using flashcards. But I was so angry this morning, because this wasn’t even the first time that this has happened. Or the second. On the rare occasions that my supervisor at Tada does fax me a schedule, he always changes what he wants me to teach on the day I arrive, forcing me to pull some half-formed, poorly thought-out lesson out of my arse.

I managed to calm down though after spending the whole morning rushing around madly trying to get lessons ready. Because even though Tada might have the worst teacher situation, it has the best kids. I’m so grateful that they consistently swallow my ill-conceived lessons happily and enthusiastically. They cheered me up no end. Some of them can be a little odd though. At lunch time I was playing tag with the kids, and one boy started crying because I was “too fast”. I wanted to tell him that life is like that, get used to it, but wasn’t sure how to phrase it in Japanese.

Anyway, the first year teachers decided that after a long hard day of chaperoning students around Tokyo, they could all do with a drink. If it was me, I’d just go home and sleep, but the teachers in my school love their drinking parties and seem to need the smallest of excuses to have one. I remember we had one once because the head teacher sneezed four times in a row. Which may be a lie, but it isn’t bending the truth too much.

We met in a Japanese Izakaya named “Chakoya” (which, with the way it’s pronounced in Japanese, always makes me think of “chuck up”), which is a charming little place which is always packed with people. They gave us some wonderful food to eat (sashimi, yakitori, grilled cheese mochi, and other things with Japanese names that are difficult to describe in English). Usually there is a second party after the first one, but I guess everyone was tired, so we all went home early. Either that, or there was a secret second party in an underground fight club, and no one invited me because they were too scared of getting their arses kicked. I choose to believe the latter.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful. I only had three classes at my junior high school, so I spent most of the time there trying to set up Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. I really like Linux, and Ubuntu especially, but I doubt I could use it everyday. It’s not because I find it difficult to use, no, the problem is that it’s so tweakable. Whenever I boot up Ubuntu, intending to get some serious work done, I always end up changing the system theme, loading new drivers for my video card, or recompiling the kernel to get my sound card to work properly. These things sound like chores, and they may be to other people, but for me they are “displacement activities”. Whenever I have serious work to do, I always avoid it by doing something else, something less important but still in the guise of being serious work. It doesn’t just happen when I try to do some work on my computer. My apartment is never cleaner than when there is some important deadline looming on the horizon. By doing menial tasks such as housework, I can forget about the serious things that make me stressed. It’s not the same if I try playing computer games, or reading a book. If I do those things, all the while I’ll be thinking “This is just a waste of time, I should be doing such and such a thing before it’s too late.”. But If I do menial chores, my brain thinks “I’m wasting time, but what I’m doing is still important in some way. It has to be done.”.

Anyway, Ubuntu is great, but definitely not suitable for most people yet. I would say that I’m a Linux evangelist, but even I can’t stop using Windows for some things. I would say that it’s getting there though. It’s already great for users who don’t know much about PCs. Look at the success of the eeepc. It originally only came with a version of Xandros Linux installed, and was wildly successful. And no one complained at the lack of Windows. Indeed, it was seen as one of the computer’s biggest strengths. The reason was that the OS on the eeepc allowed you do do anything your average user could want to do with the computer. As long as you don’t want to plug in any new devices to it, or play games, it’s a pretty decent self-contained device for what most people want do do with their PCs. Low-end users with only a basic level of computer knowledge only want to browse the net, check their email and write documents. Which it does a stellar job of.

For high-level users like me too, Linux is great. I can customize it as much as I want, wasting precious hours of my life trying to make the windows go up in flames when I close them, or putting a 3D replica of Leonard Nimoy’s head on my desktop to greet me whenever I start up my laptop. He does this cool dance where he wiggles his eyebrows to the “Inspector gadget” theme tune. It’s great.

The crowd that Linux needs to win over is the group of users who know a bit about computers, or at least think they do, yet they want everything to “just work”. They don’t want to waste time installing drivers (Windows) or recompiling the kernel (Linux). And this is the group of people that Apple are winning over with their Macs, which are rather excellent. Even though I don’t own one (I just bought a new laptop, and very nearly went for a MacBook), I am told that everything “just works”. Which is all well and good, but what is there left for me to waste time tweaking or fixing? I just don’t think I would be a good Mac user.

Today I was at Yoshimizu elementary school, and nothing special happened. It was very hot, but we had to keep the windows closed because of the “factory smog” which greyed the sky outside. Very worrying.

On Sunday, Karen joined the three of us and we went to Domannaka Tanuma to get a light lunch before heading out to play tennis. They have the best yakisoba (fried noodles) and ice cream there. They have some pretty strange ice cream flavours too. I tried the wasabi (a radish that tastes like chlorine) flavour ice cream, and it was surprisingly good. We were all pretty full, and ready to play tennis, but then a kind old lady beckoned us into a side room. The others tried to back away, but I made already made eye contact, and even ventured a smile. Which was a rookie mistake. Within ten seconds were were all being shown various household appliances in a nice looking home improvement shop. They had it all: bright red ovens, cupboards on electric rails that go up into the ceiling, and toilets that played the sound of birdsong. Rather than people trying to sell us stuff, they sat us down at a table and brought in lots of plates of fried potato and cake. We were already full, but too polite to refuse, so we spend the whole time saying things to each other like “No, I couldn’t possibly, you take it”, “But I’ve already had more than you, it’s yours” and “Eat it or I’ll stuff it down your throat, you ungrateful swine”.

We left after having a nice conversation with some of the salespeople about how they had been to America. They spoke pretty good English, and they kept forcing their six year old daughter to introduce herself to us. We couldn’t get away from them without receiving even more free stuff though; they gave us five eggs each and some tissues.

Karen was too full to play tennis. We all were really, but we weren’t going to allow our plans to be thwarted by some ridiculously kind people, oh no. We played tennis for a bit and then went back home.

Yesterday, about ten students from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA came to visit my Junior High School. As I said before, I feel like our school didn’t really do much to prepare for their visit. We didn’t really do much to make them feel welcome. I found it kind of difficult to talk to the Lancaster students, partly because I really don’t know what to say to kids that age (14), but also because most of them really weren’t that friendly. Whenever I, or anyone, tried to explain their schedule to them, or just talk to a group of them, only one or two would actually look at me, and the others wouldn’t listen at all. I spent most of the time talking to the two American teachers who accompanied them, and they were lovely people. We got on very well.

As it turned out the meeting was very boring, but I had a good time discussing what the meeting was about with the American teachers. It seemed that our school has a student council with a massive annual budget (more than ¥1,000,000, taken from each parent paying ¥200 a month), and they have various student committees who decide how to spend the money. Usually it’s spent on school equipment. Basketballs, pencils and the like. It actually seems like a pretty neat idea. After that, the exchange students played some kendo (Japanese fencing) and left. One of my teachers said that one of them had been very rude to her, brushing her off as she tried to speak English to them. In fact, all of the English teachers in my school were left with a bad impression of the kids. Not good at all.

Today we only have two exchange students, and they are different students to yesterday. One of them is a girl, and she seemed to be purposefully ignoring me when I tried to talk to them. But I think that maybe she could have been a bit sure, I’m not sure. The other student, a boy, was very nice though.

I think maybe I have been a bit unfair about the US students. Maybe if I had made more of an effort to talk to them, I could have got to know them a bit better. I’m sure I’ll get another chance next year to meet some more students, so I really need to make an effort next time and think of things to talk to these kids about.

Today I found out that some exchange students will come to my Junior High School on Monday. Ten, to be precise. My school has them scheduled to do to a science lesson, followed by lunch, followed by an hour and a half long meeting in the gym. The staff will report on the clubs that they coach, and various other mind numbing things. For an hour and a half. In Japanese. I tried to protest at this, but the head teachers insisted that it will be an important lesson in Japanese culture for the exchange students. I’m sure it will be, but in ways that the teachers hadn’t intended. After this meeting, the ten students will be made to clean the school and leave. I’m not joking.

I have to say that 4^th and 5^th grade in this school are probably my best classes. Hell, even 3^rd and 6^th are great. That makes pretty much the whole school. But for some reason, 1^st (who I taught for the first time today) and 2^nd grades seem like a bunch of little terrors. In fact, compared to last year and the year before, just about all the 1^st graders I’m teaching now seem to have a short attention span, even for six year olds. I wonder what’s up with that.

Today, as it was my first class in 1^st grade, I let them ask me a few questions about myself. After the usual ones (How tall are you? What animal do you like? Do you live in England? Why are you foreign? Why do you have the face of a child?), one of them asks me if I like Dragonball Z (a Japanese animation for kids). I can’t say that I’ve watched it much, but I wanted to be down with the kids, so of course I said “Yes”. Then all the kids decided to test my knowledge of Dragonball Z. Every single question after that was “Do you know such-and-such a character?” and “Do you like such-and-such a thing?”. I could, of course, have replied “Yes” to everything, but I’m a bad liar. Besides, one of them was bound to catch me out by making up the name of a character. I left the class feeling like every kid in it thought I was a lying poser. I had better start watching more Japanese children’s TV.

Today I was at Yoshimizu elementary again. For some reason I was scheduled to only teach the first three lessons, then spend the rest of the day “planning lessons”, which is of course a euphemism for “being bored out of my skull”. In elementary schools I pretty much plan the classes and have the run of the class, while the classes home room teacher looks on. Which is the way I like it, but it’s always nice if they join in, of course. In Junior High School, I’m more of an assistant teacher, and the Japanese teacher of English plans all the lessons. I prefer elementary schools though, because I can come up with fun ways to teach the kids. Some ideas work, others don’t, but it’s never a complete disaster.

For instance, today I learned that teaching numbers to a class of ten-year-olds by getting them to play darts is not such a great idea. This may sound like a pretty obvious conclusion to draw, but they were safety darts. The problem wasn’t the danger, just that the kids just got too excited with the prospect of throwing a dart at a board, only to be bitterly disappointed when it hits the bullseye and bounces off uselessly. Well, they are safety darts, what were they expecting?

I only bought the darts in the first place because the school unwisely asked me to decide what to spend their English budget on. I would have leapt at the chance at any other school, such as the ones without flashcards or song CDs, but this one already had two of everything. And the catalogues were full of overpriced, useless rubbish. I eventually bought the darts set, the worlds most expensive oversized die (an unbelievable ¥1500 for a piece of polystyrene), and some videos that I’m never going to use in class. At one point I was tempted by a set of puppets, but I was never much of a ventriloquist anyway.

Lunch was pretty interesting. One of the kids at the table was half Filipino, which is a rarity in Japan, where just about everyone is 100% Japanese. He taught me a few words of Tagalog, which I have forgotten, except that the word for “myself” sounds like “aho”, which means “stupid” in Japanese.

So then I spent the afternoon just writing things on my laptop. It was a good opportunity to write a bit more about my travel experiences in Shikoku and Kawaguchi-ko. The ironic thing was though, I had all of this time to “plan lessons” but I couldn’t even do that. All I needed was five minutes to use the internet to get pictures and print out some flashcards. But the one pc that the school has given internet access was in use all afternoon. Which leads me to another rant. If you’ll indulge me, this will need a paragraph of it’s own.

The school has four computers in the staff room, but only one has the internet. It’s the same in every school. Last year, two of the computers at Yoshimizu had the internet, which was great, but now only one has. I asked why they did this, and the reason astounds me. Apparently, they can’t trust the teachers to use the internet properly. They’re scared that the people they trust every day to teach little children will start looking at pornography and god knows what if they have access to the net at work. So, in every staff room in Japan, only one computer can have access to the internet. I find this reasoning mind bogglingly stupid. The internet is a great resource for teachers. I can get resources such as game cards, flashcards and lesson plan ideas very quickly. It’s so convenient that I don’t even need to do any lesson planning at home, I just rock up to school and use the internet computer to print out the stuff I need. That is, if it isn’t already being used by someone else. Really, this kind of thinking is so backward and medieval, it makes me angry. There are lots of examples of this kind of thing in Japanese schools (and society), which make it seem like nothing has changed since the 50′s.

And indeed nothing has. And no-one wants it to change, either. The exact same lessons are being taught in the exact same style to students wearing the exact same uniform, in the exact same building that’s been there for over fifty years. The students still have to stay at school to join in clubs until at least 6pm every day. No wonder they get so tired. Teachers are so busy dealing with petty bureaucracy and coaching clubs that they stay at school until at least 8pm and then can only plan lessons when they get home. It’s obvious that reforms need to be made in the Japanese education system, but no one seems to want it to change. I often imagine how much better the English lessons could be in our Junior High School if the teachers all had time to get together and plan lessons. Most of the time, however, I enter the classroom and have no idea what the teacher I’m teaching with has planned, because they haven’t had time to tell me. Sadly, kids are still being taught English badly and everyone here is wondering why Japan’s English levels are the worst in Asia.

I’m sorry about that, but I’m just getting angrier and angrier as I’m sitting here typing on my laptop and waiting to use the single goddamn computer that has the internet, so I can plan my lessons. There’s so much I love about this country, but also so many stupid little things about Japanese society that irritate me. I think I’ve been here too long. I need a break.

Anyway, the DEP are pretty much my favourite band at the moment, and I really was planning to go. But I didn’t. Why not? Well, one factor was the price. ¥9500 to see five bands, only one of which I was interested in, and they weren’t even headlining. Another factor was that if I went, I’d have to stay the night in Tokyo and pretend to be ill the next day. I was fully intending to do this, but wussed out at the last minute. I could just imagine the teachers telling their classes of primary school children “There will be no Matto sensei today”, followed by tears and screams of protest from the kids.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about that. I was at my least favourite school today, where teaching is marginally less preferable to being forced to eat a broken glass sandwich. I don’t know what it is about this school, but the vast majority of the kids resemble rabid monkeys. Rabid monkeys with no interest in learning English. Which is a shame, because all of my other primary school are so nice, full of bright, smiling angels, all with a passion for English.

What’s more, my other schools usually let me go home early if I finish my classes early in the afternoon. Not the case here. I finished all four of my classes in the morning, then ate lunch with the kids as usual (where the teacher kindly seated me between the worst brats in the class, asking questions like “Is your mother dead?” and “Do you have a golden penis?”). All the other teachers had to visit students’ homes that afternoon, so there were no classes, no students, and nothing to do. So my supervisor, in her benevolent wisdom, asked me to do some gardening. All afternoon.

Now, I have nothing against gardening. Indeed, my plan for the distant future is to retire to a small cottage in the country and spend my time there pottering about in the garden. What I don’t like is having to do it now, when I’m still young. Especially when it’s so far from my job description it can only be viewed through the Hubble telescope. Especially when I decided not to take the day off to see my favourite band in Tokyo. Especially when they could just let me go home.

I was pretty certain that I’d done all the weeding and planting that I’ve ever wanted to do until I buy that little cottage, so I really wanted a way to get out of this gardening deal. It also didn’t help that I forgot to bring any suitable shoes or clothes. So when a teacher said “You really don’t have to do any gardening, you know, if you need to plan lessons”, I leapt at the chance. We both knew that I didn’t need to plan anything for my lessons, and that it was only a cursory “You don’t have to do it”, but I accepted his offer and spent the rest of the afternoon typing on my laptop. I sportingly went outside and offered to help after all the gardening had been done though, so that’s the important thing.