My second class, beginning a little after 10am, was a bit better than last week's, when it seemed as if I'd been thrown into a cage filled with 20 enraged and/or crying small primates. This morning, I tried to warn them that if they didn't behave well, then I wouldn't lift them up over my head, but it was difficult, as they don't understand poor, backwards-sounding Japanese. So, they learned a bit, we played some games, and then I lifted each one of them over my head. It's a good work-out, although getting so close to all these kids encourages the infection of S____ Sensei with little-kid germs.

I picked up the weekly pay and drove home. My girlfriend had already left to run some errands. I started my first blog posting and received a call from her. Could you bring me some garbage bags? she asked. OK, I said. So I bought some exciting ones at Exciting Town and met her at the cafe. We had some lunch and then I returned home. Said hello to and fed the cat, wishing I could take him to the park (but it's been rainy here lately, so I can't) and came upstairs to continue blogging.

I have 4 more classes today (ugh) starting at 4pm and I'm about to prep for them. I'm trying to find an African ghost story for my conversation class with a male junior high school student. He lived in the U.S. for a while, so his English is decent. During my search I came across the following web page:

http://www.mundanebehavior.org/issues/v1n2/mandel.htm

Here, there's a fascinating account of an African tribe's reaction to a retelling of the story of Hamlet. Anyone who is in the least interested in Shakespeare should give this a quick read.

Back to work!