Teaching again this morning - got to pretend to make yet more calls as a disgruntled would be limo passenger whose car has neglected to pick her up to get to the airport on time. Also, giving random customer service advice:

Him: "I demand that you not worry about a car being there on time to pick you up."
Me: "Uhhh, it's probably better if you don't demand that they not worry about you screwing up...."This English stuff is tricky business!

Anyway, that lesson was basically fine, if a little tiring, he keeps giving me these ridiculous scenarios that might come up on the phone, and then getting me to write out what he should say to each response. Its good, because it gives us something to do and keeps us fairly organized, but its also pretty entertaining. It feels like I'm back at ISR, where I had my cheat sheet of stock answers to all the rebuttals people tended to throw my way "sir, I'm sorry you feel that way, but blah blah blah..." I can just see him sitting there frantically paging through notes to get the correct response to the correct question as it comes up. However, all the power to him - I really can't say anything about any of my students given my current state of non bilingualism!

Headed off to my second lesson at a different cafe about a 20 minute bike ride away. I'd *just* picked up my drink when the guy called (at 12:27 for a 12:30 lesson) to say he'd overslept, and could we reschedule? Um yea, but it'll cost you. Very frustrating, and a, shall we say, firmly worded letter will be going out to all my students tomorrow explaining my cancellation policy. I guess I'd been lucky up until today, or it was just a bad weekend or something. At least today's guy was very apologetic - I still haven't heard anything back from the guy from yesterday.

Got home at about 1:30, and had some lunch, etc... I found a new blog to read, which is pretty funny - this guy has a 'simulated reality TV series' going on his blog, where he screen captures SIMS2 images representing his 'life' and writes commentary to go with them, ala a tele novela. It's a bit hard to describe, but worth a read. Check it out here. <<- That's the link to the first episode. I haven't read much else of 'Felix's Daily Starfish and Waffles' which is his general blog, but with a title like that, I figured it deserved a mention too. BTW, how do I get my archives to show up in that handy month by month toggly lovliness he has? Perhaps a template switch is in order, because I really do like that feature, esp. with so many posts going up on here...

At four we decided to crawl off the couch and go see if we could find the field our neighbours told us about where supposedly the Labradors play. At four pm on Sundays. Well, we found the field, which is surprisingly huge and empty for being in the middle of Tokyo (like probably half an acre+ of not used for anything specific land, which seemed very out of place and decadent somehow!). Unfortunately, there were a bunch of small kids skipping (in shorts, to toughen them up apparently), and so Venus had to run around on leash for 45 minutes while we waited for them to clear out.
We did see one other yellow lab lurking on the periphery, presumably waiting for the romping grounds to clear out, but they gave up before the kids. We held out (and it was chilly!) till they went, and then Venus got to stretch her legs like a real dog for about seven minutes, until she flopped down and decided it was time to head back to the heated leather comfort of her beamer. The field seem to belong to JICA - the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which seems to 'do good things' (yea, I didn't really read the website, just found the link for you guys). In any case, having that field is a pretty 'good thing', so thanks :).

We headed home, and watched some more 'This is Wonderland', which is a surprisingly good show - they have some great actors in there playing tragic cases, and it gives a good look at all the different types of people who commit petty crimes, end up in the system, and get screwed by the system. It also really lets you see what the public defenders are up against, and I think it's probably a pretty accurate look at what goes on in the judiciary system. Poor un-jaded Alice De Raey has quite the hard time believing what cracks exist! I can't believe I'm recommending a CBC TV show, but check it out, it's worth a look!

Peter took a break (which I filled with Sex and the City) to make 'camp food' for dinner - Canadian bacon on Californian bread sandwiches with imported American beans - yummy! We finished off with some imported from California Fuji apples (yea, you'd think those might be Japanese, wouldn't you?) for a nod to the health side of things, and then watched 'Stick It', the fantastic if you love gymnastics, but really not such a great movie about elite gymnastics. I miss the gym!! Tomorrow could be another bike to Baji Koen day though, so that would be good... At least I can feel stretchy there, even if I don't get to fly around in the air so much.

One final This is Wonderland, which I mostly slept through - this getting up reasonably early to teach thing is turning me into such an old lady! Midnight and ready for bed, what's with that? The blog writing, and that's about it for this day...

Night all,

D