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I did Karaoke again today I found the website for it here it is Jankara Again we drank the free alcoholic teas although my voice is a bit dry because of another cold caused by almost constant immersion amongst skanky Japanese children. I can sing some Japanese songs and read the hiragana to them as well to some extent. It`s good because it helps my Japanese learning. Other times I just sing the English part and let Reiko do the Japanese. Today`s favourites were the mighty Matsuken Samba II and Bobby Mcferrin`s timeless song and my personal mantra “Don`t worry, be happy”

Matsuken

Lots of Japanese songs make no sense because they will have a catch all English phrase such as “I wanna make you hot” and then something normally unrelated but which sounds good when placed next to that sentence in Japanese to folllow. Even Reiko cannot understand some.

However there are some good bands in Japan. For example Orange Range are incredibly popular poppy punk band, SMAP are an omnipresent boyband with their own innumerable television shows, adverts and businesses whose last song Say what you will was written for them by Herr Eric Clapton because he heard their previous song and liked it.

Of course I can`t get enough of Matsuken Samba. Ole Senorita

We saw a famous Japanese comedian in Osaka centre the other day and he`s on TV now. This is my crazy wild life.

I want to start a meme. If you`re here from BE can you please give this a go and see if it works? I will call this one “Three is the Magic Number.” Here`s what you do:

Three is the Magic Number meme:

1: Go to your blog if and choose the third blog from the top of your blogroll.

2: Click on it and go to the third blog of that one again.

3: Click on that and go to the third one from the top of the blogroll of that one

(if there are less than three on a blog then choose the second or if not as well then the first one instead)

Write a comment on their blog telling them the route you got there and get them to do the meme again by copying the text above or linking to it.

And that`s that:

For example for my blog I go to A year in Japan at http://www.ayearorsoinjapan.blogspot.com/ then to sushicam http://www.sushicam.com/links.htm (two links only) onto http://danielleussink.blogspot.com/ and post a comment.

If you tried this and it went well or you can suggest any improvements, please let me know by comment or email. This site`s url is http://quaisi.blogspot.com. Let`s spread “Three is the magic number!”

You may discover some interesting blogs to blogroll as well. Alternatively I could watch this whole thing crash and burn. I`m just trying to give something back to the blogosphere. I`m a giver you see…

haven`t been able to get the soundtrack of West Side Story out of my head for the last few weeks. Why is this? Maria…..

I passed the ALT interview. Now I`m on the waiting list. We`ll see what happens from here. This may guarantee an extra year or so in Japan if they make we work enough hours.

The digital camera has also been fixed so you may just see some clearer and less grainy pictures of food and things from now on as well. Hooray! Any requests for both non food and food related photos?

For my quarter century I`d thought I`d go extra special and photo my Bic mac and strawberry milkshake meal in Osaka centre. It`s a pity I didn`t get a picture of the restaurant itself as it is very trendy Mcdonalds with wood tiling and subdued lighting effects. Extra special Japanese for the 25th.. : )

I had an interview today for an assistant language teaching position at various schools in Osaka. It started off really badly with the bloke who could only be about 27 but sounded much older on the phone basically having the attitude that I didn`t have a chance. Then I had to do a ten minute demonstration so I chose a Directions lesson I teach and I was excellent if I do say so myself and the whole interview changed for the better. After that I also had to do a tricky 100 question multiple choice grammar test involving spelling and underlining the incorrect word in the sentence. One part - the parts of speech - I`m sure I got 100 percent correctly as I identified prepositons, relative clauses and modal verbs with ease thanks to my foreign language knowledge. What-what-what-what.

It was Reiko`s friend`s last day with us today. We have done loads these last few days including discovering a great Irish bar, taking touristy Osaka pictures and traipsing down long, thin and enticing Japanese shopping arcades with crazy shops selling anything from live crabs to monkeys and visiting London Town which is a Beatles bar with a Beatles cover band playing twenty minutes on and twenty minutes off. It is incredibly expensive and the food is served in miniscule portions but it`s (almost) the Beatles so I`ll let them off. They were really good especially the John Lennon bloke. They were all Japanese but sang in English and very josu indeed.

This is a tempura meal with rice and miso soup. Tempura was imported from Portuguese explorers. It is basically deep fried food comprising anything from aubergines to prawns. Oishee.

This is six balls of takoyaki which is an octopus chunk in a pancake ball topped with dark sauce and dried fish flakes. This is a true Kansai and Osakan speciality and is truly delicious.