If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

So today it was back teaching my favourite lesson - Numbers 1-12 to 11 year olds. They haven`t started becoming cynical and too cool to do my (wildly interesting or else) activities yet and are a lot of fun to teach. I get to play with a soft mini football and a whistle for 4 hours and get paid for it. Much more fun than my last job working in a bank for Barclays in Frankfurt. Getting shouted at in German by random German people with names which make me jealous such as Herr Joachim Bressel von Tessendorf (I want that name) asking where there money is - Look mate it wasn`t there fifteen minutes ago it won`t be there now. This system is so shite it takes me 15 minutes to find anything anyway, so go away. Oh instead of sending it to Brazil we sent it to Thailand. Funny isn`t it. - Excuse my nightmare inducing flashback.

Anyway I got fed for free at lunch time with curry rice - Oishee - which although meant eating with the germ ridden, virus laden, contagious Japanese children, is a free meal nonetheless. I think I am developing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. On average forty of these kids prod me, shake my hand and breathe on me after every lesson. I have started washing my face and hands with soap and water after every lesson to destroy the bacteria. After having two separate colds in a week and a half, I am taking no chances. On average I teach to around 120 children each day and I don`t think it is a coincidence.

After eating they asked me if I would play dodgeball with them. Coming from England where this isn`t the omnipresent sport on the playground which it is in Japan, I needed the rules explained to me. Imagine you cannot speak Japanese (on reflection this shouldn`t be so hard for the majority of you) and the rules and acceptable strategies are conveyed to you by wild gesticulations and an accompanying okay and not okay. Well I did what the kid told me to do and then found out I was out. Excuse me? No arguing, run round the back and do the reverse attack thing! I kind of understand the game and I like jumping around anyway so that even though I was a large target, I was on the whole too quick for them and the on-loan foreign player performed well on the whole. I returned back to my classroom with pungent aroma - eau de sweat. Professional.

When I was at school, the best teacher I ever had a, a graduate of Oxford University with a masters in German and Russian also happened to be the one with a hygiene problem. His shirts would invariably be stained with yellows and greens in the armpit area. I have come to understand his position. After most lessons there is a circular dark patch under both of my pits thanks in part to the 28 degree heat outside. A lot of the time I must ask people to raise their hand. Now I raise mine from the elbow only. After the dodgeball, I just trusted to their Japanese ability. Safer for us all…