Today I had an almost full day with no classes - I finished writing 2 exams, sorted out a bunch of blog posts that I was really behind (at least sorted out where each post should go), and finished marking the last class worksheets. Phew!
Because it is the first day of December, and therefore officially the first day of winter, the space heaters got pulled out from the magical storeroom, and the teachers took great delight in crowding around them to warm up their hands. I am not sure of the rules of who is allowed to turn them on and off, but I think that it a really big social order thing, so I don't intend to figure out which buttons I am supposed to push.
I also had a surprise class - one of the teachers invited me along to his third year class at the last minute, and I had a good time going and helping with bits and pieces of their English compositions. Although honestly, a lot of the class was me being interrogated by a bunch of the students about "my boyfriend" that they saw at McDonalds. The teacher kind of put me on the spot, and asked me to talk about my tips for learning English for 5 mins at the end of class - EEK! I don't really remember learning English, so instead I talked about some of the things I have been doing to learn Japanese - watching TV shows and movies in Japanese, singing Japanese songs at karaoke and tring to read manga and other easy stories in the language I am learning. Three minutes in, he stopped me and told me that they don't have time for any of that, as they are studying for exams, and I should talk about how to learn grammar better. "Uhhh.... *awkward silence* I... umm... listen to podcasts?" Blergh.
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| Bike parking at school (the front one's mine) |
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| Sunset at Akashi Kita. |
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| Sunset from Akashi Kita |
On the way home, I stopped in to pick up some groceries, and almost got myself into trouble. One consequence of being a virtually cashless society is that you really have to think ahead before you go grocery shopping. Which I didn't do. It was only when the lady was halfway through scanning my groceries that I started to think about how long it has been since I went to an ATM... I frantically checked my wallet and found 5000 yen (plus about 300 yen in coins), and prepared to stop the lady scanning groceries when the bill came up to about that. Luckily for me, all up my groceries cost 5100 yen! Phew! Went straight to the ATM afterwards, and will really try to prevent this happening in the future (although given that this is about the third time it has happened to me, I suspect it won't be the last.)
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| These strawberries are about $1.50 each! |
Food Highlight of the Day: Picked up some beautiful Australian steaks for pretty cheap (yay last day 50% markdowns! 1800 yen steaks for 900 yen!). Economical AND delicious :)
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