I have to be up five hours from now. Am I anywhere near ready for bed? No. No I am not. Tomorrow should be fun, I don't envy Cheveda trying to deal with my sleep-deprived self. I imagine the excitement will keep me going for a while but I don't envision me having a wild night out on the town.

It hasn't rained since Tuesday morning. Does this count as a drought? It's actually sunny and everything, but since it is also 30 degrees and humid this is not as fun as it might otherwise be. It's still not as bad as it gets in August but it's the sort of weather where after doing basic chores like changing the sheets you need a shower and a change of clothes. Let the countdown to October begin!

I've been checking the forecasts for Xian, Shanghai, and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing don't look too bad...low thirties, which is a bit hot for sightseeing but not enough to kill you. The first time I checked for Xian it said it was going to be 37 but thankfully it seems to have settled down a bit to 33.

As much as I enjoy my work, I admit that the past couple of nights when I have been attempting to wrangle junior high first graders I have been wistfully thinking things like "this time next week I will be stuffing my face with peking duck instead". Yesterday was Masaki's birthday (Masaki being an incredibly talkative kid. It was cute when he was six, it is less cute at 13. Luckily he is smart enough that his inability to pay attention does not hamper his ability to figure out what we are talking about, and thick-skinned enough that when the entire class has had enough and shouts "GOOD GOD, could you stop talking for TWO MINUTES??" it does not bother him. Every time I run into his mother outside of school she asks me rather resignedly how he is doing and then tells me to just smack him upside the head.) Andrew tried to appeal to Masaki's new teenagerhood by basically telling him that he is now an adult and maybe he could try acting like one? To which Masaki asked if that meant he got to drive cars and drink booze. Kid, if I thought that booze would mellow you out I would totally hand you a bottle of vodka before the start of every class.

Anyway, I still have quite a few things to do before work tonight. Gym and laundry and cleaning and packing and making sure I know where my passport is, oh my. Am getting up at 4:30 in the morning tomorrow to catch the airport bus so everything has to be ready to go by the time I go to bed tonight.

Muppets Muppets Muppets!

It's been a bit over three months now since the tsunami hit. Life was not exactly disrupted here, but there was a lot of news coverage (pretty much exclusive for the first week, anything could have happened and no one here would have known). Now it's pretty much back to business as usual. It is easy to forget for long periods at a time that there are still many, many people living in evacuation centres and 7000 people still officially listed as "missing". They are starting to search in the nuclear evacuation radius, so that number might go down in the next little while.

Here is an interesting photo essay with some before and after pictures. It really gives an idea of the magnitude of work still ahead. I've read that only about 22% of the debris has been removed. In a lot of areas the best they have been able to do so far is to sort of stack it neatly in piles. I do not envy the people who are trying to figure out where to dump all that trash!

A video camera with footage on it was recently recovered from a wrecked car. It's an interesting watch. To put your mind at ease, the driver survived, although I do not know about the owner of the hand that appears at about the 3:15 mark. I can only hope.

I think my favourite bit is the driver in front, who gets out, flees the car, then runs back to shut the door. I guess old habits really do die hard.

I had one last go at the strawberry cake today. The season is pretty much over so it will be a while before I make this again. At least in this incarnation...I sort of want to try it out with all kinds of different fruits. I shoved some frozen blueberries and raspberries in there in between the strawberries, which was a wise decision. I made two smaller cakes this time, one to bring to Tomoko's house tomorrow and one to bring to work tonight. I may have made the girls listen to boring TOEIC preparation stuff but at least they got cake and tea to ease the pain.

It is difficult to sum up the recent hockey experience in one word, but I will try: "meh". I am looking forward to a hockey-free Facebook this week. Go back to telling me what you had for breakfast! It's far more interesting. I will also spare an eye roll in the direction of the rioters and then happily forget the whole thing.

Have you heard anything about this wonderful new book for parents called Go The F**k To Sleep? It's pretty great. And now it is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson! It has all the hallmarks of being an instant classic and I would imagine that every new parent will be getting a copy in the next year or so. Some of the Amazon reviews are full of outraged parents protesting this children's book laced with profanity. I am unclear as to what part of the title made it seem like it was appropriate for the little ones?

When I think to pay attention to the ads on the sidebars of most web pages, it amuses me to see how they change depending on what I have recently been googling for. Quite often the default ads are for American green cards, exhorting me to come live and work in the USA. No thanks, I'm good. I just got one for a Kobe Clinic, which turns out to be a place that offers LASIK surgery and, rather more excitingly, phakic IOL surgery as well, the one that I would need. I'm not sure what prompted this ad, I haven't typed in "blind as a bat, please help" in any form recently. They have a nice English web page and offices in Tokyo. Now all I need is around 800 000 yen to spare and a willingness to let someone cut open my eyeballs in order to insert a lens.

People with better eyesight than me (ie, everyone) keep telling me that it would be worth it, but I dunno. I've been wearing glasses since I was five. I'm pretty ok with my myopic vision. If nothing else, it gives me a good excuse to avoid housework. "Dust? What dust? I don't see any dust." Plus, 800 000 yen is a LOT of money, especially considering I can get glasses for around 16 000 yen now and I only need new ones every five years or so. Maybe if the school starts doing really well and I get a really amazing winter bonus, I will consider at least going for a consultation.

Of course, given that I had six classes yesterday but also only a grand total of six students, this massive winter bonus is probably a long way off. Apparently the evening classes are doing pretty well though and slowly filling up. Sadly, the initial interest in the baby class appears to have died off. I do enjoy the extra half hour of sleep in the morning, but I miss starting my day with cute baby giggles.