My bicycle has been stolen. I parked it just outside my flat last night, but this morning it was gone. I had to walk to school and so I was late by about five to ten minutes. I explained the situation to my teacher and told my classmates about it later. Many of them were convinced that someone who lives in my building had taken my bike by ( Read more... )

I started back at school today after the spring holiday. I’ve been moved up to C class for this term. Two of my previous classmates are in the same class as me and the others also moved up but are in class D. It’s only the first day, but I think I will enjoy studying in this new environment. My new classmates generally seem much quieter and more ( Read more... )

Last weekend I went back to Osaka yet again. This time I was visiting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, on Saturday I went to say goodbye to my friend Kendo Guy who was going back to Australia that day. He was staying with his host family who were pleased to see me again, especially his host father who had yet again drunk too much alcohol the ( Read more... )

On Tuesday I went on a class trip to the Toyota car factory in Toyota city. Before our scheduled tour of the factory we went to the Toyota museum, which had various exhibitions about Toyota’s past, current practices and future plans. The exhibits at the museum were pretty ordinary and I’ve never really been interested in cars. The highlights ( Read more... )

Last weekend we had a leaving party for my friend Kendo Guy who is going back to Australia very soon. We wanted to do stuff that he enjoys doing and so we went to a gaming centre, then to an izakaya for dinner and finally to karaoke. Almost everyone in our group of friends was able to come along and we had a really nice day. The most interesting ( Read more... )

On Wednesday I went back to Kansai for my former 3rd Year students graduation ceremony. It was my first time to visit the school since I left Japan last August. The journey to Osaka was pretty awful as my bus was over half an hour late due to really bad traffic. I had arranged to have dinner with my former Japanese teacher, another woman and my ( Read more... )

On Sunday I decided to go on one of the tours that the language school offers on the weekends. This trip was to see some of the famous sights in nearby Mie Prefecture. I was picked up about 7.50am with three other people who live in my building by the guy who works in the school’s international office. This is the same guy who did our ( Read more... )

Today we had the speech contest for our class to decide who would appear in the school’s speech competition. My speech was about my experiences teaching in a Japanese high school. I had practised the night before, but wasn’t feeling confident as I had rewritten and added some parts and my tutor only checked it this morning. We drew lots to ( Read more... )

I went back to Kansai again last weekend and this time I took the coach both ways. I stayed with my friends Blanca (formerly Miss Ultimate) and Mr. Ultimate this time. I had a good time though it was quite a bit colder where they live and takes about an hour and a half by train from Osaka. On Saturday morning we had to get up at 6.10, as we had ( Read more... )

On Tuesday I went to dinner with my classmates and two of our teachers. We were celebrating the birthday of the woman from Singapore and went to an Italian restaurant, which was quite amusing as one of my classmates is from Italy. The food was pretty good for Japanese style Italian, though the pizza looked and tasted similar to Pizza Hut. I sat ( Read more... )