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So day four and the job is still going well. It was my easiest day so far today as I only had two lessons and so finished at 11:30. After that I went with Atsuko the coordinator to a cafe and discussed Friday`s lesson which is about telling the time. Last night I went to bed at 7:00 in the evening and woke up at 7:00 in the morning. I was shattered. It was the first time I have had consecutive working days since June and my body couldn`t handle it. Incidentally, due to the plunging of the temperature down to 21 degrees, it was also the first time I have worn a jumper since June albeit only for an hour in the morning. Anyway get over it Simon again two days is nothing, I work 12 hours a day seven days a week I hear you cry and I agree. Bloody lazy bastard I am. (And it looks like I`m blogging in Welsh) I am.

At the end of both lessons today the kids turned into zombies. They all stood up and walked towards me with their name tags and chanted sign, sign, sign. They surrounded me, pushing me towards the wall waving their tags menacingly at shoulder level. I was honoured until I saw on one of them the name Bob. Bob is a bloke who also teaches at the schools in Sakai and although I haven`t yet met him, his scrawl shattered my illusions of grandeur into a thousand pieces. Why, they weren`t interested in me! Only a Western person and his name. I demand complete allegiance! Some of the tags luckily weren`t sullied by the dirty red scrawl of Bob and I wrote exra large on them so that even if my nemesis, Bob the evil one, were to return to teach at the school, there would be no room for that polluted name to deface and detract from the noble, courageous and honest emblem of Simon the Great!

Before my lessons at the school I visit the head teacher with the coordinator and they usually chat away in Japanese and I sit their and nod and smile for twenty minutes. Today however the man we met spoke excellent English and had spent some time in Germany so we had a lot in common. He attended my second lesson and even had some bad words to say about the previous teacher (Bob) to the coordinator. For example he was making the young children stand up individually and spell difficult words such as cloudy which the the headmaster didn`t agree with [insert my evil satisfied laugh here] Afterwards he told me that the fact that I can`t speak Japanese actually works in my favour (Herr evil Bob has lived in Japan a long time and speaks fluent Japanese) [insert second and even more satisfied laugh here] and that in future if at all possible, he wants me to be the English teacher at that school meaning increased work and pay for me [insert third, extra loud, evil and satisfied laugh here] Simon 1 Bob 0.