Saturday, April 12, 2003

April 12

Well, my weeks of wine and roses are over. I had my schedule faxed over to me today and I found out that I've got the lion's share of classes for our new year-course students next week. I should be properly exhausted by next Friday. I figure my soon-to-be former employers are trying to squeeze me for every drop before I take off next month.

I caught Daredevil today with a few friends. Strangely enough, we found it quite entertaining despite the spite thrown at it. Perhaps it was the fact that I had such low expectations, but even with some of the glaring faults, it did keep me entertained for over 90 minutes. And I think if I can be entertained by a flick that was roundly panned, I can only imagine the time I will have when X2 and The Matrix Reloaded hit our shores.

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

April 8

Well, I saw some of the banner headlines boasting of the death of the Hussein family at the newspaper kiosks. And sure enough, I turn on CNN to find out that nothing's been confirmed yet. Just forlorn ol' General Brooks trying to keep his bratty press corps under control.

It's Intensive time. I've got another one of those all-day freshmen training seminars at a government bank tomorrow. I'll be so wiped out by dinner time. Happily, I don't have any classes after 5.

Monday, April 07, 2003

April 7

On the birthday roll today, Tetsuwan Atomu, otherwise known as Astroboy in the Americas, celebrated his birth. That's right...years ago, when creator Osamu Tezuka gave birth to his most famous character, he had Astroboy arrive on April 7, 2003 in the genuine neighbourhood of Takadanobaba, in Tokyo. Takadanobaba is an area of small cafes and shops popular with the university crowd since it is close to famed Waseda University. On Sunday, there was a parade to commemorate Astroboy, and in the morning, Fuji-TV premiered an updated version of the anime.

Also on a somewhat wistful note, I went down to the trendy area of Odaiba by Tokyo Bay for a class at Shell Chemicals. I related to my students that I had first set foot in the area back in early 1995 when the place was nothing but half-constructed buildings, huge expanses of sand and...nothing. Now, it's its own little world away from Tokyo where the young frolic every weekend.

Sunday, April 06, 2003

April 6

Well, unlike the deluge of yesterday, it was a marvelous day today. I got together with a former student at her invitation to go for a walk in a city garden for a bit of cherry-blossom viewing. Surprisingly enough, not all of the blossoms got blown or rained off. In fact, there were quite enough of them so that a lot of groups were spreading out their blue tarps and having their picnics underneath the trees.. We saw a lot of submarine-sized carp in the ponds as well.