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Awesome day today. We went bowling at an AMF (!) in Kyoto with ECC. There were tons of students and some staff. I got my arse kicked, but it was all good fun. Read more…

My AM class is awesome. There are three boys and two girls. The poor girls put up with a lot – they sit there quietly soaking up information while the others stuff around.

Today the boys were great. The lesson was about birthdays, and as well as decorating [plastic] cakes, I taught them the phrase “Happy birthday!” A couple of the boys had heard this before, and started singing the birthday song. The girls didn’t know it, so I asked the boys to stop so I could teach the phrase properly. I tried again, but they started singing again. Oh well! I taught the girls while the boys continued singing. By the time I brought my attention back to the lads they’d moved on from Happy Birthday to some song without words, and were just happily singing away.

Awesome kids. I’m sad that next week is an adjustment week (due to the national holiday) so there are no kids’ classes!

I stayed home sick today for the first time since coming to Japan. Actually that’s pretty bad: I haven’t even been here for three months yet. I’m disappointed in my immune system.

For lunch I had a thistle sandwich. More specifically, I julienned and fried some gobo, and ate it with peanut sauce. It was quite good! It’s sweet and reminds me of parsnip. The texture is interesting, too: most of the root is hard, with a spongy/webby core. If you’ve ever whacked a thistle*, you’ll know what I mean. It was a bit difficult to bite in half, so next time I’ll make the pieces shorter.

* No euphemisms were used in this post.

Random memory: In physics in year 10 or so we were making those things that jump out of tennis balls. You cut the ball in half, then invert it and put it on the ground, and pop! it leaps up high. I had the brilliant idea of sticking it to my forehead like a suction cup. But the suction was so strong that it gave me a bruise. I walked around for a week with a 2″ hickie on my face.

[photopress:IMG_4322.JPG,thumb,alignleft]Yesterday we finally went to Nara to check it out. We’ve both been there many times for work, but hadn’t had a chance to explore the parks or temples.

Thursday must be a popular day for school excursions. Wherever we went a sea of yellow hats washed around us.

One of the coolest things we saw wasn’t in the park at all, but in the streets leading to it. Some guys were making dango, a kind of dumpling. They had a machine to shape the balls, but they made the dough themselves. It was incredible to watch. Two men stood on either side of a huge mortar, and pounded the dough with big mallets. One of them then put his mallet down to kneed the dough while the other kept going with his hammer. All of this was done at about five beats per second, with lots of yelling from both guys to keep synchronised.