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I have finally managed to find a PSP for sale. Mwa ha ha! Today was quite a lucky day for me in general. I played pachinko and managed to win 7000 yen, I got to eat my favourite food of sushi in the afternoon (but tell the Japanese you like furikake the most. It messes with their minds) and whilst we were shopping, I saw a small batch of PSP`s miraculously sitting on the shelves. I unfortunately didn`t have enough money on me and for fear that one of them would be taken whilst I was out withdrawing the cash, I dispatched Reiko off to the bank and clung to the box as if my life depended on it ready to fight to keep the claim mine only.

Fortunately I got it and also Ridge racer and the mini game loaded Piposaru Academy with some crazy monkeys.

Most of it is in Japanese but the original menus are customizable to English. The disks are a cross between a MiniDisc and a small CD. The screen is massive and crystal clear and sharp. I`m a very happy man.

Today I taught more kindergarten kids at the Teddy Bear English school but this time on my own with their mothers present. One of the kids likes me and the other hates me but I got to play with a ball and I managed to get her partly on my side for a short time until colouring time. Those pesky swings. After that I had four young boys (oh yeah Simon?)

The elementary school I went to had the loud music and enforced (outside) freezing breaktime exercise regime as the last school. They came back again with massive smiles. These kids really are crazy.

I am getting sick of having to wear the provided-by-the-school plastic slippers that are three sizes too small when I visit the schools. This leaves me to walk around cold floors in large unheated rooms in thin threadbare socks being coughed on by children carrying infectious diseases. But I no longer work in a pork pie factory, nor am I penniless in Germany anymore and I am sure many of you will have had far worse days today. So for that I am grateful.

(Very dark picture of a) Korean Barbecue - pig`s tongue and beef which you grill yourself in the mini barbecue at the top of the picture and dip into soy sauce and the like. Oishee!

Yet more very mighty ramen noodles with rice set (and incredibly miniscule meat portion)

I was back at the English school I sometimes work at today but thankfully I wasn`t teaching two year olds. I hate teaching two year olds with their parents as before. Although I still had to sing a stupid song about wanting spaghetti.

Today I had three classes with three 4-7 year olds, three eight and ten year olds and two fourteen year olds. I got to watch a bit of Harry Potter and have a decent conversation with the junior high school students which went beyond the boundaries of, “Do you like daddy?” and “How old are you?”

I watched Finding Neverland this morning with Johnny Depp in and enjoyed it and this evening I am watching Trivia no izumi or “Trivia spring” which featured nuggets of info such as what happens if you drop 10,000 pachinko balls onto a frying pan held by a waxwork dummy from a helicopter 100 metres above (hint: It isn`t pretty for the dummy) and previewed next week`s show`s feature of what happens if you drop a bowling ball onto a trampoline from a helicopter 100 metres above. What do you think will happen?

The bowl on the left which contains a substance not disimilar in appearance to vomit is the incredibly delicious oyakodon which means parent and child. It is basically scrambled egg with chicken on a massive bed of rice and a side bowl of udon noodles and a pickle dish. The noodles - you just can`t escape them.

Today in the break time after my first lesson, the conversation between myself and my coordinator was interrupted with incredibly loud music piped through the speakers in the rooms. Yumi (my coordinator told me with a smile on her lips to look out of the window and I spotted half of the school outside with a skipping rope in their hands being made to skip for fifteen minutes solid skipping to what sounded like “I`ve never seen anything like it” in Dr Dolittle. Indeed I hadn`t.

I have visited many schools in Osaka and this was the first time I saw anything like this. I would have thought that they would have got enough exercise playing Dodgeball or madly running around like kids do instead of being forced to participate in boot camp exercises but there you go. Some of them were in my next class and came back grinning from ear to ear. Which just confirms my suspicions. Japanese kids are crazy.

Today in the afternoon I visited the school from hell. I had visited this school before to teach but they were shackled to desks and although boisterous, were unable to move. The kids are from mostly very poor or single parent families and so are usually unwilling to learn. Today let loose in a free room it was hell.

The teacher didn`t seem bothered to sort it out and made mimimal efforts to rectify even when a kid was knocked to the floor and three others decided, in the true honourable manner, to repeatedly kick him whilst he was down. They turned up fifteen minutes late which fortunately meant I had less teaching to do. They even didn`t like my Simon says game (Infidels!) I am applying for new jobs for when this one ends in March in the case I`m not rehired or the company doesn`t win the contract again.

Reiko and I double teamed on the mighty (yoshimune) slot pachinko and managed to make back what we invested which was safe at least. I have also developed an interesting semi permanent twitch in my right eye which is disconcerting. And so January passes…

Soba noodles with wakame (seaweed) and fishcake. Oishikata!

Curry rice with beef cutlet