This last weekend many of us headed over to Otseki (sp?) for a "pub quiz". It was pretty damn fun. They had us on teams of five and we had ten rounds of ten questions. My team consisted of Hanna (from England), John (also from England) Annie (not a JET but a teacher from England), Dilek and me. I kept thinking we were doing pretty well, but, alas, we did not win; in fact, I think we finished 5th out of 8....not good. The rounds were split into categories like geography, history, sports, music, etc. We all got a bit liquored up and racked our brains for snipits of information. Many of you know that I like trivia games and Jeopardy and this was no different. Plus, the place served Guinness (mmmmm....). So it was fun.

Had a strange occurrence today. I taught the morning over at Yuda (all girls) and then after lunch here at my place went to the Kencho to check in as I don't have a full day there this week. While I was there Watanabe-san (one of the three guys in the private schools division) came over to me and explained (in broken English) that next year (I guess that means April) some high school here in Kofu would like JET's services. So this means I will have seven schools. Ok, I can do that. But this also means that one of my existing schools will have to go to every other week visits instead of every week visits. Watanabe wanted to know which school I thought should go to every other week visits. As you might remember my Tuesday schools are already on every other week visits, so they are out. This leaves Minobusan (Mondays--Buddhist), Yuda (Wednesdays--all girls), JAA (Thursdays--aviation academy), and Yamanashi Gakuen (Fridays--junior high). Now I really didn't want to answer this as I was thinking at the time that this might come back to bite me on the ass somehow, but in reality I had to be honest, there was nothing else to do. So I thought a moment and told him that I thought Minobusan should be the one. Why? Well, they don't really use me all that much. It was three weeks between my last visit and the one this last Monday, and it will be another three till my next one. Of course, some of the reason for this is the fact that nearly all Japanese holidays fall on Mondays but still, they seem to tell me to just go to the Kencho half the time. Besides that, when I am there the teacher hardly uses me like all the others do. He hardly speaks English which means his kids speak even less and I end up being nothing more than a warm body in the room. It is quite frustrating to just stand up there while he explains things in Japanese and I just chime in once in a while with a word or a sentence. So anyway, that was the one I picked and I hope my bosses agree with me. And I hope that my name never gets mentioned to Minobusan about this whole decision. I also really really really hope they don't decide to make it Yuda that looses my every week visits as that is by far my favorite school to go to. Teachers, students, classes, work load, you name it, that is my favorite place to teach at. So we'll see.

Hope you enjoyed the few Haikus I posted. Yesterday at Sundai I gave out the assignment to about 120 students so hopefully I'll get some more funny stuff. I should also be getting a few more from Y. Gakuen this Friday.

Ok, this is just a short one. I just got home and am getting rather hungry. I am trying some new curry tonight. All you gotta do is make the rice and heat up the little package of curry, so it's easy. I bought the package of curry that had the number 8 (the highest the scale goes) to indicate spiciness. It also had some a picture of a flame on the front so I hope it lives up to my expectations. I'll let you know.