One class Monday

Today was another beautiful day. It was getting fairly hot though, I mean like 28 degrees Celsius, but it wasn’t too cloudy or too sunny. I just hate having to wear a suit in weather like this, it’s too hot. Not nearly as hot as it was last summer, since that was the hottest on record in Japan. But you never know this year could be crappier than last year. But I really hope not. I had the opportunity to rest enough today, but since it was so hot I could sleep very well and the sun came out early again. I think that everyday this summer, I will complain about the terrible weather. The first typhoon of the season hit last week too, but only with rains. Nothing too terrible yet, just the humidity is making me sick and weak in the knees and gives everyone headaches.

I only had one class today, so I really wasn’t worried about anything since I don’t even lead it. I just needed to be there, just to be there. It was a 9th grade class. The lesson was on taking the Subway. It was a fairly easy lesson for the students I think. They really understood what was going on and they were responding. They did speak a lot of Japanese, but this isn’t one of the highest level classes, so I guess that is ok. They did fairly fine and the class just went right along smoothly.

After class, there was an assembly. A famous actor was coming to the school to speak to all the students and to some parents. It was really cool, I got really close to him when he was walking in and walking out of the gymnasium. He talked for a little bit about something. I really didn’t understand what was going on, but the audience loved it, so I guess it was good. Everyone was enjoying it. I started to get into it when he showed a bit of the drama that he’s been acting in for the past 20 years. The story is about a family who used to live in Tokyo and after the death of a person’s wife, the family decided to move to Hokkaido and live there. The story goes on about their life as a family and how living in the city is vastly different than living in the countryside. I mean this show has been on the air on Fuji TV for the past 20 some years. Every season they have an episode that’s 3 hours long. The show that I’m talking about is named “Kita no Kuni kara”, which means from the Northern countryside. The actor that I’m talking about is Chii Takeo. He was invited by our headmaster of the school since I think they were friends or something at the same University, Keio University. For those of you who have never heard of it, it’s the nation’s second highest ranking university. So I think that it was pretty cool, I’m really lucky for working at this school. I found out a couple days ago about other famous people who went to the school that I’m teaching at. And even some that are still there. So it’s interesting to see how things turn out like that.

After this was English club. That didn’t really go for too long since most of the students needed to leave to go to cram school. We talked a bit about what we talked about last week debate of Boys versus Girls. They were analyzing the pros and cons of it. Then they wanted to talk a little about the cultural festival that’s coming up in October. They want to get a good jump on it and get things ready for it. I’ve noticed that they take planning for these things way in advance, but I’m not sure they do that with their homework and class work. We’ve got to work on a few things I think.

I left work around 6pm. I caught up with another teacher who was leaving at the same time. I felt sick all day and when I got home, it was much better. I could just relax and eat. I think it might have been hunger pains or it might have been what I’ve been eating these past few days. But I can’t be sure of what’s going on.

When I came home and turned on the TV, there was HEY x 3 on, and they were doing a bowling match against Kinki Kids. I made a bit of dinner and then I watched a little bit of Engine, which is another Fuji TV drama and then my favorite show Smap x Smap. The cooking part, or the bistro smap dishes looked easy to make and delicious too. I think that I might want to try it out some day. The show itself was pretty good this week. They had some funny skits and then it was Naotaro Moriyama, the singer promoting his new album, but is most famous for his huge hit Sakura. I really like that song, and it made the show good. Anyways, I want to get up early so I probably will sleep after I finish downloading and installing Mozilla’s Firefox browser. It will be the third browser that I installed on this computer. My other computer had Netscape’s browser, but I really don’t recommend that one to anyone. It wasn’t good so now I’m shopping around for things.