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Its not at all relevant to Japan, but I heard some horrifying news today.

There is a Wal-Mart opening in Hefei.

NOOooo.

Patrick won his second competition this afternoon, I think he might be getting a little tired of all this easy winning.  His next competition should be next week some time, possibly he could run backwards just to spice it up a little.

On the way to school this morning it was horribly muggy and uncomfortable.  I was already much too warm and flustered by the time I reached the station.

Unfortunately I discovered later it only reached 21 degrees today.  It definately didn’t feel like 21 degrees.  I am going to die when summer really comes.

I did manage to avoid another Childrens class today which was a rather close call.  I made a little bit of a fuss in doing so though, and it brought attention to the fact that I never teach any kids.   I think I might have to start doing some kids teaching to keep the all-powerful ones happy.  Scary, scary thought.

There is one small kinder age child that never speaks, just cries on occasion, so I may try that class first.

We have convinced Michael to move into our building next month, so we gave him a tour of Yoyogi after work this evening.  We looked forward all week to taking him to our previously favourite barbecue restaurant for dinner, but we were refused a table upon their sighting our not so Japanese looking faces.  A little disappointing.

Luckily we were warmly accepted into our favourite Chinese restaurant around the corner so we happily stuffed our faces there for a total bill of under $40. 

We were supposed to go and watch a baseball game this evening, but completely forgot until it was too late.  Bugger.  Time goes too quickly here to get anything organised sufficiently.

I have discovered another excellent thing about my schedule.  If someone works from Monday to Friday, they work all the way from the beginning of the week (Monday) to the end of the week (Friday).  On my schedule, however, I work only from the end of the week (Friday) to the beginning of the week (Tuesday).

Sounds much less!  Lucky me.

Despite all the ridiculous election candidate vans driving endlessly up and down our street promoting themselves via loudspeaker, we managed to sleep off most of our grumpiness last night and woke to find sunshine appearing through the clouds.

I think the election will be on Sunday… At least I hope it will be over soon, as the campaign vans for each of the candidates are horribly loud and annoying. They are a little amusing to see though, as they are filled with brightly clothed women waving out the window with white-gloved hands. Odd.

We went on a small trip to Melbourne today. Well.. not really, but it felt like it anyway.

Patrick knows Tokyo back-to-front because he runs all over it everyday, so if I am lucky, he will take me out to see some interesting places on my days off.

Today we walked through Aoyama to Roppongi. I couldn’t believe the number of parks and gardens along the way, and thanks to the past week’s miserable rain, everything was so green (Probably actually much more so than Melbourne has been for a while).

The air smelt like damp trees and there weren’t a lot of people or cars along the way, so it was a nice way to spend a day off. We walked through the new Midtown Plaza area in Roppongi and were happy to find an outdoor cafe just like any we’d find in Melbourne.

We bought lunch at Soup Stock Tokyo, which was a very clever find of Patrick’s. They have an amazing menu of soups which come with either a fresh bread roll or sesame rice. The restaurant itself had the atmosphere of a Melbourne cafe and I think we would have happily spent the whole evening sitting there if we could.

I finished my day with TWO small tubs of Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche ice-cream, which is the best ice-cream in the world.

Ahh.

Oh. AND we found some cherry blossoms still hanging on to their branches.

I think we are all suffering from some form of seasonal affective disorder.

Its been dull and rainy for too long now and we’re bored and grumpy. I hope we can think up some fun and exciting rainy day activity tomorrow or I might just have to wrap myself in the doona and refuse to move for a week.

..Or start online shopping, that might work too.

Even our dessert didn’t cheer us up. It was small and very unsatisfying. Patrick was VERY unimpressed.

Hmph.

Another unplanned post titled from our trusty textbook.

It was 26 and sunny on Saturday, it will be only 6 degrees and rainy tomorrow. 

I don’t know why Melbourne weather is considered bad,  this doesn’t seem so much better.  It snowed in Spring, after the first winter ever of no snow in Tokyo… seems very unpredictable to me.

I am not complaining about the cold, the longer the summer takes to arrive, the happier I will be.

As the weather has been a little miserable, we still haven’t had much opportunity to do anything bloggable so I am forced to write a bit more about work.

There is one very low level student who is a regular at our branch, he is very keen to learn, tries very hard each class, and is enormous fun to teach.  He must be close to retirement age if not retired already, and sports a very intimidating scowl most of the time.  He also has an unfortunate habit of being drunk during most classes and retains only a little from each lesson.

He has been improving in leaps and bounds over the last few weeks and has started to not only remember a few words from each class, but use them appropriately as well.

A few weeks ago we covered ‘discussing the weather’.  I was absolutely glowing with pride this afternoon when a familiar voice yelled out across the reception to me this afternoon: “Miss Sally!  It’s raining!”

Now I know I have made a difference.

During the cold weather here, I have come to quite like our star-trek style lavatory.  At first, I was a little shocked each time I arrived home to find the seat toasty warm, as if someone had just vacated it.  Now, I have simply grown to expect a warm seat wherever I go.  Patrick is already planning on having a high-tech loo exported to wherever we move to next.

Since seeing this article this morning, however, I am beginning to find all that warmth a little menacing.