Andrew asked me today if my insistence on riding my bike to work is because I'm on a health kick or because I'm too cheap for the bus. It's a little of column A, a little of column B, and a whole lotta column C, which is laced with irony in that if I want a lazy morning I have to bike it rather than bus it. Biking it buys me a minimum of an extra 15 minutes which is kind of a big time slot that early in the morning.

Screamy did not live up to her name today, hallelujah. She even got a bit engaged towards the end and I was able to make eye contact with her and try to include her in the lesson without risking a meltdown. She's pretty cute when she's not actively puncturing my ear drums. There was a new baby girl of 8 months in the class today. She was pretty friendly so of course I decided that pinching her cheeks and poking her chubby hands/feet/arms/thighs was an integral part of the learning process. She's still young enough that she thinks this is funny. You would not believe, on the other hand, how pissed off Ewan gets when people do that to him now. Well, I can get away with it but he's not so pleased if anyone else does it. Unfortunately for him, he is still pretty squishable and he's even more adorable when he's angry, so needless to say the kids can't keep their hands off of him.

Liam is 5 now! I have not had a chance to talk with him to find out if he celebrated by dancing the funky chicken. It's a shame I had to miss his birthday party yet again but I did have a good time in Tokyo with Chevy and Andy. We went out on Saturday night and met up with an old coworker at a mostly empty bar (going out in Gay Town on the night that Kylie Minogue is back in Japan after 20 years does not make for an action packed night, but at least we got the comfy seats at the bar) and on Sunday we picnicked in Yoyogi Park. There were no cos-play kids in action but there was a shirtless masked man climbing a tree.

It seems Baby Screamy has eczema. So she is sort of already irritated and itchy, and then mama brings her someplace she doesn't like that is filled with scary people she doesn't know, so she cries, and that makes her hot, and that makes her more itchy, and then things get really ugly. Masami came downtown this week and met the babies, and looked pretty shocked at the sounds coming out of that tiny baby. "That is not normal crying", she said. To which Andrew and I both managed to refrain from rolling our eyes and going "No shit, Sherlock."

I know the only way she'll get used to the place is if she keeps coming, but part of me really hopes her mom decides to maybe put off the English lessons for a few months.

The newest baby, luckily, was a chubby happy lump of "Hi, nice to meet you! Sure, you can poke my belly. Also, I do not need to cling to my mother like a frightened koala. Anyone can pick me up, anyone at all! Whatever makes your job easier. Hey, what does your hair taste like?" Now that is what I'm talking about.

The toddler class went ok. Two of the boys decided they were shy and preferred hiding behind their mothers for most of the time, but I can work with that. At least they were facing in the right direction and seemed to enjoy my reading of Brown Bear, and breaking out the crayons worked to lure them a bit closer. Plus the third boy was absolutely brilliant. Not even a tiny bit shy and happy to repeat as much as he could, which was actually quite a lot. So that was cute.

Next week, I think, is their last free lesson and then we have a week off and so we'll see what happens in May. Masami said that we have yet another baby trial student next week, which makes four now and we've only been open for three weeks. Apparently there are a lot of bored stay-at-home moms downtown.

Excitingly, we're getting a sofa downtown. Masami warned me that it is not a cushy comfy sofa, but it has to be better than the funky Ikea chairs we've got at the moment. With no printer or computer or internet or any supplies whatsoever, there's not a lot to do at the downtown school during my break. I tend to take long lunches and go shopping but I am also trying to catch up on my reading and would like somewhere to sit. She said they deliberately chose one that is more stylish than cozy to discourage people from sinking into it and not moving, but upon seeing all the baby interest, getting something a bit more mom-friendly might have been a good option. (Personally, I was hoping for some sort of sofa bed so I could take naps, but alas. I am doomed to disappointment once again.)

In non-school news, Cheveda is almost in town! She's in the country, at any rate. The plan is for her to show up sometime tomorrow. I started cleaning on the weekend but got distracted. I am counting on a combination of jet lag and wine and chocolate cupcakes to blur the messier details. We're going to go to Tokyo on Friday night. The plan is to try and go to the Studio Ghibli Museum at some point but buying the tickets seems really complicated, so we'll see. (Also, my experience at staying at Andy's tends to be that we give up on the idea of going out in favour of getting right drunk and watching Star Trek, but Chevy is not so much of a geek and may feel like she actually wants to get something out of her short stay in Japan.)

Although I am delighted she is here and looking forward to this weekend, it is a bit tragic that it means that once again I am missing Liam's birthday party. I was in Hong Kong last year and Canada the year before. And this is the big FIVE. I may invite myself over during Golden Week to throw a private party.

One of the big disadvantages of the new schedule is that I never get to see Liam or Ewan anymore. Granted, teaching is a lot quieter, but also a lot less entertaining and with 100% fewer hugs and kisses. Boo. Masami stopped by with them today for a bit and I managed to sneak five minutes in with them. It's Liam's birthday next week and he is super stoked about that. I asked him what cool new things he gets to do when he turns the big oh-five, and he answered "I can do everything! I can ride a bike, and dance the funky chicken, and drive a car...no, I can't drive a car, and I can run away really fast!" and then he took off running. Kid, you had me at "dance the funky chicken".

It is pouring rain out right now but the forecast claims it will stop by morning. I hope so. I just checked the bus schedule and there's one at 8:46 and another at 9:13. The 8:46 would get me downtown WAY too early but the 9:13 would be cutting it a bit close if there was traffic. Once I finally get my own key it's not such a problem, but nothing opens downtown before 10 am anyway so it would just be me wandering the station all damp and irritated. Here's hoping it is bike weather nine hours from now!

Tomorrow should be...interesting. Baby McScreamyPants is back and there is another wee one coming, too, so that brings us to three infants for the first class, plus three toddler boys for 10:30. By the time my nice quiet adult ladies show up at 11, I'll be ready to hug them. Then I have a private lesson with a beginner adult. After that I think I'm going out for Indian food, as I will have earned something delicious. From next month the kids class at 4 will be moved to a different day, so at least I'll be done after that last noon class.

I look forward to watching the neighbours have apoplexy tomorrow with all the munchkins around.

Amazon.jp has always had a tendency to overpackage things, but this is ridiculous. Was their supply of smaller boxes destroyed in last month's disaster?

That baby class I was talking about? Yeah, the only way it could have been worse would have been if someone had thrown up. So. Much. Screaming. How can one tiny body even produce that much noise? And for 30 consecutive minutes? Afterwards Andrew told me that he was impressed by how well I kept my happy shiny professional yay babies! face firmly on and did not let on that my ears were about to start bleeding. It doesn't help that the room is rather echoey.

It has a completely different vibe from the Hatsuoi school. Part of that is because everything is so shiny and new, of course. We are keeping it as one big room instead of trying to partition it off. There is an adults side and a kids side, but all the tables and chairs and carpets can be rearranged as we see fit. It's very open and spacious. Unfortunately we have already been getting noise complaints from the neighbours. Right beside us is an izakaya (I have a hard time believing that an adult conversational English class makes enough noise to disturb an izakaya...more on that in a moment) and below us is a clothing shop. Andrew is pretty sure the complaints are more political than actual, though.

The situation is complicated. The owner of the building is a student of Andrew's, which is how we got the lease. The owner of the clothing shop is his ex. They were never married, but they were together for a long time and have a kid. Now, however, they are not on very good terms. Apparently he built the place for her back in the day, as her idea was to have a women's clothing shop downstairs, a mens shop upstairs, and a cafe next door. The mens shop did not work out and she then wanted her friend to open a hair salon, but we got the lease instead. So basically she is pissed off at us for existing in the first place and I'm not sure that there is anything we can about the complaints other than close the business, which obviously we don't want to do. Had she complained about the noise during the morning baby class, I would have accepted the validity (seriously, I can still hear the screaming ringing in my ears), but an afternoon kids class with one kid? Or an adult class? I doubt they are deafening. At least I am a lowly employee and don't have to deal with the politics.

I also started my private lesson last week, although I'm not sure how I feel about it. I like the student, she's very nice and we have a lot in common, but I currently finish at 4:45 and she can't meet me until 6:30. By the time we had dinner and then did the lesson (skipping dinner was not an option unless we both wanted to start gnawing on the textbook) and I rode home, it was nearly 9:30, and I had left my place at 8:30 in the morning. The bit of extra money is nice, but I'm not charging a lot and if I didn't have to do that, I could be home by 6 and have the evening free to do stuff, like cook dinner or go to the gym or watch half a season of The Wire. (What? That last option is totally valid.) We'll see how that goes.

Today we had our field trip to the fruit park. Last year I did the strawberry picking part with Ewan, which resulted in me not getting a lot of strawberries because he was shoveling them in his mouth faster than I could pick them. This year I teamed up with my newest student (and current favourite, because OMGcuuuuuuuute!), a five year old girl named Hanon, who kept picking me huge, ripe strawberries and then eating hers very very slowly. I mostly managed to avoid the banana ride, for which my arms will be thanking me tomorrow, although I did get some exercise in by holding a couple of students by their legs and then swinging them around in a circle.

The first thing we did upon getting to the beach was look around and wonder where we would run to in case of tsunami. (Answer: get in the car and drive really fast. There is nowhere high to go.) The beach was surprisingly clean. We still ended up with bags and bags of rubbish, and someone had dumped about two dozen tires in the area, but I went a lot further than I've gone before. Usually I end up poking around piles of driftwood, ferreting out little bits of garbage. In retrospect, that is definitely the way to go. Walking all that way back with heavy bags of garbage is not so fun.

It was a bit overcast and cool, but luckily the sun came out just in time for yoga.

Today was the first day back to work after our holiday. Today was not so different, only one class had changed, but it was still pretty hectic as I was running around trying to both teach and also get ready for tomorrow. I found out today that Hitomi will be working with me downtown, which is great both because I wasn't sure how it was going to work, not having a Japanese speaker to talk the parents through the signing up process, and also because she has a car and has been put in charge of bringing the bulk of what we need for tomorrow.

I am not so keen on this whole "leaving the house before 9 am" thing, but maybe a 45 minute bike ride is the perfect way to start my day off? Apparently I have two students in the first class, both under the age of 1. If they are not too shy, I plan to spend the morning getting in baby cuddles to make up for not seeing Ewan all day. Then I have two housewives (?) and then a four hour break which is apparently going to be spent laminating new flashcards. Whee? Then one more class and I am done at 4:45, although then I have to hang around downtown until 6:30 for a private lesson. It's going to be a fairly long day, if not actually all that busy.

The biggest challenge is going to be actually managing to fall asleep at a decent time tonight. It's already past midnight and I know if I went to bed right now I'd just lie there awake. Wish me luck.

Well, no extra limbs or super powers or even a faint glowing in the dark. Probably I did not drink enough of the water. I suppose I could always go back, but, if I'm being honest, I'm not gonna be drinking a whole lot of water then either. Now, if they declare the beer and/or sake radioactive, I can set about whipping up some sort of mutant superhero costume.

It was a bit weird being out and about in Tokyo on Saturday night. Mind you, the bar we went to is an open air bar and it was unseasonably chilly (I chose to dig out my wool turtleneck), but it was still pretty deserted. The trains were full of information about which trains were not running due to blackouts. Vending machines and escalators were turned off to save electricity. However, anyone who tells you that Tokyo is a deserted wasteland of a city right now is lying through their teeth. Tokyo's version of "quiet" still involves more people than almost all of Canada.

One statistic we were quoted was that last year in a two week period around this time, 20 000 foreigners left Japan. This year during the same time period, 160 000 left. That's...quite the leap.

Ohanami was, as I suspected, cold and flowerless. It was not a wasted day, though, as Yoyogi Park is still one of the more entertaining places on earth, even with the recent drop in cosplay kids hanging out.

I also spent one night in Masuo with the Sasakis. I was iffy about going but decided that one night couldn't hurt and I was able to bring Keiko some yeast. (Apparently the good people of Chiba have figured out that hoarding bread is a terrible long term emergency strategy and have turned to hoarding the more non-perishable ingredients instead. Or else maybe the delivery trucks have not been able to restock fast enough. One of the two.) They were also almost out of natto so when I got home I made my first ever natto purchase and sent some. Did you know that natto has a best before date? I did not. How can you tell when it goes bad? It gets less slimy and starts to smell nicer?

I had spring cleaning plans for my days at home but unsurprisingly I got sucked into the internet instead. I did get some stuff done, so it's not been a complete wash. I finally got to see inside the new school on Thursday. It's, um, spacious? And echoey. Masami and Andrew were going shopping for some basics yesterday so hopefully it will be a bit more welcoming on Tuesday. As of two days ago my schedule downtown was 10-12 and 4-4:45 but Masami has been fielding calls like crazy so by the time I talk to her again on Monday that may have filled up. I hope so, four hours is a long break. The annoying thing about that is there is actually rather a lot to do at the new school, it's just there's nothing in there yet to do it with! Furniture-wise I'm lobbying for a sofa so I can at least sit and read.

Tomorrow is the start of the beach clean/yoga events for the year. It will be interesting to see if the tides have brought us a lot of rubbish from the tsunami or if that has all gone elsewhere.