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I got an email back from Berlitz saying call this bloke in Umeda. I did, he wasn`t there. I tried again he wasn`t there. I sent him an email, I called him today, I have an interview at four.

Tomorrow being 1st of the month, it is cheap cinema as well. So may go. Bugger all on though. Thunderbirds, Van Helsing, a Chinese samurai kind of film called Lovers (cunningly in Chinese) and some Japanese films.

There is a button you can press on the T.V. remote which lets you listen to some programmes in English instead of Japanese. This is much more interesting than guessing.

There was the sixteenth typhoon of the year whose outskirts ran through Osaka. There were heavy rain and winds but no wanton destruction. I was almost disappointed.

I saw a lizard in the bedroom today. It was tiny about three cms. I saw something move. I looked down. There was a lizard frozen. I thought it was a toy and I reached down to check and it dashed away. I don`t know if it`s a baby and it will grow up and attack me in the night or if it`s a small harmless little lizard. It looked pretty harmless though. Ah it`s a gecko.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/moh/kappa/sizen-info/yamori-1.jpg - Picture of said lizard

I have done really little since last time. Frisbee was cancelled, I went to Namba and sung karaoke with Reiko`s dad whilst Reiko went shopping with her sister. Yay. I`m not feeling too well at the moment. Ahh. Great.

I just received an email back from the interview I had in late June with Berlitz. I will have another follow up interview and if it goes well training starts between 6th Sep until 16th September. I am a bit lost now as I`m still waiting on news from my other interview. There are pros and cons between both jobs. The Esaka one is better paid (especially overtime) nicer hours and staff, comes with an apartment included and is in a nice busy part of the town. On the other hand, Reiko is very close to her family and living over an hour away on the other side of the city would be hard for her and the apartment may be crap, small and or near to a railway line or busy motorway and it seems I would be teaching a lot of children and I don`t know if I could do that. The Berlitz job is worse paid, but if I complete training, I can go to China,Brazil or Croatia or anywhere really and work at Berlitz there, we can stay here in Izumi City and there is a better career path than KGC.

It has annoyed me this email from Berlitz. I thought I had messed up the interview by understanding everything that the interviewer said and so not having any questions whilst the other bloke reeled off question after question on litle things which I didn`t really care about. I learnt from this in the recent interview, producing a folded A4 piece of paper with many questions to pose. You live, you learn, you become stronger.

It came at the wrong time this email. I am waiting for an answer from this nice school recommended to me by a bloke I played frisbee with, the interview went alright and now this email comes. I may welcome this new lifeline next week if I don`t get the Esaka job but at the moment it has complicated my life. I have sent off a reply saying please provide me with all the details and now it`s just a case of waiting.

Well today I had my job interview. It is a teaching position. I found out about it because a bloke I met at frisbee called Yutaka, emailed me the day after about it. He said as long as I don`t mess up the interview the job is pretty much guaranteed as the manager really wants an English bloke teaching there. Well I`ll see about that I thought and messed up the interview. Well I didn`t really. I got there late as it is at the other end of Osaka. We were supposed to get a lift to Nakamozu station and from there take the underground. But oh no. One train would be too easy wouldn`t it. Reiko`s sister took us there in her car at Reiko`s insistence in a journey which took two hours. We got lost twice and stuck in traffic for the rest. I told her that subway trains don`t get lost as it is one way only. I was so angry. I got there fifteen minutes late and had to call them to tell them I would be late. I did not want this. My plan ( and maybe you won`t believe this) was to leave Izumi (where I live) at eleven and get to Esaka at one (TWO HOURS EARLY) to guarantee getting there on time. Why the effort Simon? Normally you are a lazy bastard? Well people. This job have a flat which they let you live in which is only two minutes away from the place of work as opposed to a near on two hour trip from Izumi to Esaka. It only costs 50,000 yen per month (250 quid). Reiko can live there too. I have independence and a well paid job (150 quid above normal) It is in a busy and good area only four stops on the subway from the city centre and civilisation.

Instead we arrived in Esaka fifteen minutes late, spent the next five minutes trying to find the place and then I luckily stumbled upon Yutaka, who took me there himself. The interview went okay. It varied between, “We really want you to work here” and “You have no experience why do you want to work HERE?” I found out that most of the pupils I would be teaching are around three and above but are also adults and corporate clients and I wil be on 260 000 yen which is about 1400 quid for a 26 hour week. Seeing as they take off only 6 per cent as tax and 250 quid for the apartment, I would be able to be a rich man and save shit loads. Have my own place, buy my own computer, guitar (car?) etc. I need this job.

You can understand why I was so angry with Reiko. I am quietly confident I have the job as they want me but I am still unsure I find out within a week. Wish me luck!

rice plant
Originally uploaded by quaisi_productions.

Rice!

I have just been told of a job, which is amazing and unless I mess up the interview I am guaranteed. But if I write too much about it I reckon I`ll jinx it and I`ll have to do an ALT job. I`m getting pissed up on wine. Yay. Reiko got 880 points in her TOEIC exam, which is 20 points above the A grade or 96 per cent. They have whole sections in all bookstores full of books about how to do well in this exam. It is a really important English comprehension test which employers use as a way of asertaining your English level. She did so well she has got enough to be able to get a job teaching English. Mwa hahaha hahaha! 5800 people took it the month she took it and only one thousand got the top grade. She still thinks I should work full time and she stays at home or works part time. NO!

Also check out some of the new links on the right including the wonderful art from the electronic brush of Mr Matthew Ratcliffe and a link to Reuters` currency conversion rates as I am sick of telling you how much this in Yen works out in GBP. Generally it is pretty easy to do as you just halve it for JPY to GBP - 1000 yen equals 500 pence or five pounds. Mwa hahahahaha!

I played Ultimate frisbee yesterday for five hours. It was good although the Americans I play with are much better than me. One of them really wanted to win and if I dropped it or passed it badly he would shout at me, “What are you doing bro?” I wanted to win too but it was getting ridiculous. Later on he intended to throw the frisbee to me but threw far away and in the wrong direction. “Why weren`t you looking bro. You gotta look!” Alright man that was a crap throw. Even if I had been looking and I was trying to get into space, there is no way in hell I am going to make that catch. And why are you throwing to somebody who isn`t looking at you in the first place? I didn`t say anything like this to him because I am a shy boy but I wanted to hurt him. After that he didn`t pass to me unless there was no one else to pass to. But I think I played well. I made and scored some in the other games and I enjoyed that at least.

In the evening I watched Fahrenheit 911 in the Virgin Premier cinema. This was incredible. They had a special waiting room/bar for this cinema where they bring you drinks to your seat. You get a towel to put over your legs, and a small table in between seats and best of all the seats were large comfortable and reclined backwards. There`s me sitting at 45 degrees to the floor with legs stretched out in cinema heaven. The film was good as you probably know, although incredibly biased and it glossed over some things. But it was scary, real scary.

I`ve applied for a Assistant Language Teacher at a local school in Osaka via the powers of the internet as well. It`s raining. Great.

I haven`t done very much at all recently. Hence the lack of posts. Do you care? Hum. One of my posts did not save for some reason. In this I was a bit depressed. Reiko had an interview and I walked around Namba again on my own. I realised that without a native I am a bit lost at finding places, conversing in Japanese or looking at clothes (which symbol means male and female? I do not know. This often brings embarrassing consequences in toilets and clothes shops). I smiled at some Westerners in the street and they as good as ignored or scowled at me. Bastard scum.

Food I have eaten recently includes Sushi, rice balls with sprinkled dried seaweed flakes, a lamb and noodle hot pot and a 300 gram beef burger which in this minimalist country is large and only intended for fat bastards. I feel like emptying my throat down the toilet. Okay only kidding. Eating out in Japan is considerably cheaper than in England. You can get the cheapest Mcdonald`s beef burger for 60p or 120 yen. A healthy and filling meal in a good restaurant costs about the same as a Mcdonalds or Burger King meal in England. Around 1000 yen or a fiver. Of course a lot of these meals are rice or noodles with some meat and vegetables but even more challenging meals are about the same price such as sushi sets or Japanese curries. As Japan is often quoted as one of the most expensive countries in the world, I was surprised that the food was so cheap. I once had a large Japanese curry with large rice which came to less than 400 yen (two quid)

It was Reiko`s mum`s birthday so we went to Namba for the third time to buy things. I bought English Fortnum and Mason tea and some shortbread. These are incredibly popular things to buy ｆｏｒ Japanese people. As you can tell if I am talking about buying tea as a highlight, my last few days have not been that eventful.

Today I am hopefully going to play ultimate frisbee although this looks increasingly less likely as I still haven`t heard if it`s on or not and tonight I am going to see Fahrenheit 911 which only came out here yesterday. I watched cable guy last night and a spine chilling English film (described inaccurately as a comedy) about English women sumo players living in Yorkshire which Reiko wanted to see. Avoid!