Wednesday July 6, 11:32 p.m.

Another long day. I went down to Roppongi Hills to see if I would have any more success in getting a ticket for Star Wars on Saturday. Well, the clerk told me that advance tickets would only be sold a full 48 hours before the release day. Argh!

I ended up going up to Shinjuku for a late lunch. I went to Maharajah next to the Kinkos again. But the buffet was done so I went for a Tandoori Platter. The waiter was about to advise me on getting something a bit more with carbs but my stupid mouth immediately blurted out that it was OK and I was fine with my choice. Yup, the Platter contained two pieces of Tandoori Chicken, two pieces of fish and 2 sausages. No curry, no rice and just a smattering of onions. It was all good but it would have been nice if I'd had some carbohydrate representation. I felt like I was eating an Atkins Diet version of an Indian lunch. But my mouth decided to act before my brain did. Since I came in at 3, I was the only customer in the restaurant. Although I missed out on the buffet, I think there's some benefit in getting in late. I got some complementary double portion of chocolate cake for dessert.

I went across the street to Kinokuniya to find some texts for The Manager's first real lesson tomorrow. I did get the New Interchange. I couldn't find the business text of choice since the book itself is so old that it's probably out of print. Instead, I got something a bit more slick. It should be OK for him. Man, I really shucked out the yen for the material including a tape cassette. Luckily, I'll be recouping half of it from The Manager.

Got to Speedy's. No food with me this time since all that protein would stay with me for the rest of the evening. My lesson with 001 was fine although I was getting a hint of "Haruhiko Fatigue" from her by the end of the session. So it was good that she wouldn't be able to come next week due to work. A little absence is always good. I may be heading for Speedy's Sunday cooking lesson on the 31st.

I got a rather short-notice announcement from The Homecoming Queen. Looks like her new hubby, The Quarterback, is having a birthday party on Friday. I haven't seen the group since Chip Guy's return during Golden Week. The planners seem to be slumming it a bit in terms of venue. They're holding it at El Torito, that Mexican chain. Then again, PH isn't planning this do. She always goes for the high-grade, high-cost places.

My social calendar seems to have been filling up tonight. I've got the birthday party, the little cookoff at Speedy's on the 31st and I just finished a long chat with one of my old students who's told me of another party on the 24th.

I'm gonna have to send a fax over to that household ware company that's sending the bed tomorrow. I just want to make sure that they bring the bed by 5 at the very latest since I've got head on out for The Manager's lesson.

Wednesday July 6, 9:41 a.m.

I got my wake-up call this morning from a ring from The Matron. Yesterday, I'd gotten the message from that store saying that my new bed frame had come in and that they would like to arrange a delivery day. Unfortunately, they never left a phone number. So I sent an SOS to The Matron via her daughter's e-mail. Well, I got all the information so I'll give those guys a call now.

In another piece of news concerning contacts, for the past several weeks, a former student has been trying to contact me via phone but she never leaves her phone number or addresss so that I cannot return the call. Well, I know that The Songbird is the only other teacher I know who's kept in better contact with her. But I didn't know HER contact address. So I sent another SOS to SR and The Delta. Luckily, the latter person got back to me with a lead. Now, I hope the Songbird will complete the circle.

Tuesday July 5, 11:16 p.m.

Not too sticky today thankfully and we even got a spritzer of rain during the juku lessons tonight. I only have the fan on right now.

The juku classes were a bit more even in execution tonight. The New Kid buttoned down and gave me a pretty decent performance. The Poppy didn't show up tonight. According to the boss, she's probably gonna be doing her fair share of no-shows since she isn't really all that keen on studying English. Oh, joy! She's just gonna wreak havoc with the balance of my class with the Milds for kicks. In any case, I was rather grateful since I could actually progress a bit more quickly with the couple tonight.

I finally got word from Paddy. As I'd thought, his main computer crashed so he only got my second message via his Blackberry. He's in the middle of studying for bar exams so he won't be getting anything out to me before next week. That's fine with me.

Tuesday July 5, 12:56 p.m.

Well, the heat's back on, and so is the air conditioner. The Beehive was its usual genki self. I actually will have a day off from them next Tuesday since their old teacher will be coming back for a rare stint with them.

Gotta get ready for the juku tonight. Now that I've got three kids below 20 amongst my group, it's been a bit harder getting plans made up. The New Kid is now coming in a bit later than usual so I may have to crack the whip a bit for him. Hopefully, The Siberian will be continuing his new and improved attitude. I'm still trying to get the right balance between The Poppy and The Milds.

Now that I don't have to worry about The Hawaiian anymore, I'm pretty much free and clear until the evening when it comes to Wednesdays. I'll probably hit the gym tomorrow, then see if I can pick up that ticket for "Revenge of the Sith" at Roppongi Hills for Saturday morning (fat chance!), and finally search for a Business English text and get a grammar text for The Manager's lesson on Thursday night.

Monday July 4, 9:37 p.m.

It's ironic, isn't it? Last week, Western Japan was dying of thirst. The weather gods overhead, in all their Machiavellian glee. have therefore inundated the area with tons of water for the past few days. Tokyo got its fair share this morning but now things have settled down.

Speaking of things not settling down, The Class Act once again brought up the topic of the Big One. Looks like there was another one of those documentaries last weekend on the inevitable huge earthquake that will swallow Tokyo. News about the Big One pops up periodically like an infestation of flies over my garbage area during the summer. The city is now almost 20 years overdue for one; some people say that Kobe got the short straw and got hit with the Big One instead 10 years ago. I'm pretty fatalistic about it...if it comes with the dreaded magnitude that the experts say it will, then there's really nothing anyone will be able to about it. I'm not saying that I'll be cool as a cucumber when it finally strikes...I have no idea how I'll react when it hits.

Well, not only did I get a so-called Ochugen gift from the parents of the two sisters in the form of gift certificates on Sunday, but it looks like I have become the proud owner of a collapsible paulownia bed frame, courtesy of the Matron. A few weeks ago, she espoused on the wonders of this contraption whose wood can absorb a lot of humidity making it ideal as construction material for closets and chests of drawers. I recall saying it was interesting. Apparently, the Matron took that as a signed deal. The frame is on its way...for free. The Matron coyly told me to treat it as her Ochugen. Well, that's great...I'm not sure if it will fit into my room, though. I'm not even sure if I'll be here long enough to enjoy it properly.

Lunch was once again supplied at the house but this time, it wasn't Chef who provided the yummies but the lead housekeeper. I had some of her homemade hot soba with pickles and fresh fruit with an espresso to finish it off (still felt sleepy during SIL's lesson, though). I'm constantly struck at the hospitality that I've been given over the 2 years since I started teaching at the Lady's house. I mean, the Lady is a wealthy woman and yet, she and her staff have been nothing but kind and generous to me. Maybe it's a bit of reverse snobbery on my part, but I'd always felt that the rich were above us peons and made sure that we knew it.

For The Company, it was the Junior's classmate. He told me that he'd gone and seen "Revenge of the Sith" at the last preview at midnight Saturday before its official opening this weekend. I internally sighed. Earlier, I also found out that the Stick, a huge SW fan, had also caught her favourite movie a couple of days ago. And even earlier, there was even the Barmaiden's first sighting. There's nothing more depressing than on hearing that your peers have seen the most anticipated movie this year days before you do. Well, at least, Junior's colleague was able to whittle away the remaining time talking about the movie.

After some hemming and hawing, I decided to have dinner over at Hansens, that hot dog place, not too far away from The Company. I really have to do something about my ordering skills. I just wanted to get the 2-dog set with fries and drink; I ended up getting another order of fries and another oolong tea. The scary thing was that the server didn't blink twice on giving me a double set despite that I was a party of one. Even scarier was that I was able to polish everything off easily.

Well, back at home now. I'm taping the last program for my parents and then I'll be able to send the latest visual package off for home.

Monday July 4, 7:27 a.m.

Well, kinda forgot that it's the Fourth of July. Mind you, the only country that cares hasn't reached that day yet.

It's gonna be a rainy one all day today. Y'know what they say about rainy days and Mondays...I can just hear that ol' Carpenters tune right now. Just my luck that I'd left my best collapsible umbrella back on the subway yesterday. But thousands end up the same way every day. If the lost and found departments were magically turned into banks, they would become the world's largest funds bar none.

The Matron's daughter sent in the message that she's got a fever so my week's gonna be that much lighter. At least I can get home at a decent hour. With my feeling about the kids, I'm kinda wondering if I should be dumping all of the teens. Believe me, I wasn't too enthused about The New Kid last week. I wouldn't be too sad if he decided to cancel out this week.

Well, Fuji-TV actually put out some stuff about the Live 8 concerts this morning. Y'know...just for those millions of folks who may have never heard about this worldwide effort over the weekend.

Sunday July 3, 8:53 p.m.

Once again when I got to the kids' house, the elder sister did another sudden pullout...ostensibly due to her midterms. I hadn't been aware that she was so diligent (I'm being sarcastic here). When the mother told me, I started getting yellow alert signs flashing in my head; Mom mentioned that she chewed her daughter about it but I'm starting to wonder if the elder has finally had enough of me. The younger sister still made it out but now that I'm nearing the end of her textbook, I'm starting to think it may be time to wrap up things with this family now that the younger sister will be heading off to Australia as well. Even the younger one has started to show signs of Haruhiko fatigue. Well, I'm gonna think about it over the first half of this week and if I still feel the same way, I'll send a warning letter out to the mother.

Afterwards, I checked out Akihabara. Looks like "Cruising The Anime City" had an effect on me. The main street was closed down to vehicular traffic as is usually the case on Sundays but I saw quite a bit more than usual when it came to the pedestrian traffic. I saw a young girl dressed up in some purple anime get-up singing some sort of anime song with a gaggle of admiring men surrounding her. Meanwhile, on the other side of the boulevard, there was a girl dressed up in a high school uniform just flinging herself around in some sort of anarchic dance. There were some other events going on in the streets. I even saw a maid handing out flyers...probably for that maid cafe.

The "Star Wars" marathon continues. Last Friday, it was "The Phantom Menace" on NTV. Now, it's "A New Hope" on TV Asahi, and then "Attack of the Clones" this Friday on NTV. And here I thought NTV Fridays were always known for just showing Miyazaki films. I'm trying to see if I can get a ticket for "Revenge of the Sith" at Roppongi Hills for this coming Saturday since the kids' classes have been re-scheduled again for this Sunday. But the theatre still refuses to sell any tickets online until 2 days before the release day, and the theatre only takes credit cards. I'm still not too trusting of credit card purchases on the Net. TV Asahi still follows the tradition of all the other commercial stations and shamelessly cuts and snips away at the movies it shows.

It's gonna be a rather quiet week, although Monday and Tuesday will be the usual slog. Wednesday and Thursday will just have night classes while Friday will only be The Teacher. Maybe I'll catch "War of the Worlds" then. Looks like I'll have plenty of time for the gym this week.

Sunday July 3, 7:14 a.m.

The computer's cranky again. I got bluescreened last night and I'm getting all sorts of error messages right now. But I've managed to just sidestep them so that I can still get this message out.

It was an early night (leading to this early morning) last night; I just hit the futon at 10:30 and listened to Quincy Jones' "The Dude", one of the very few albums that I can listen to over and over again. Just some great old school R & B. "Ai no Corrida" will always be one of my favourite songs, period (although the lyrics are just as beyond as any 80s Hall & Oates tune).

As expected, Japan's "contribution" to Live 8 was comparatively paltry. No media coverage, at least live anyways. At first, I was gonna express some shame for this nation but then my inner voice gave me a swift kick in the shins. Who am I to lecture since I haven't done anything for world hunger? And again for the same reasons that I gave in my last entry, I couldn't expect the young folks to get all that excited about Live 8. Still, it made me cringe when I saw some of the comments from them. One fellow just said, "If it weren't for Bjork (one of the few foreign performers at the Tokyo site), I wouldn't have been that thrilled to go." Interest in saving Africa, indeed. Plus, it's a bit of a fact that over here, one has to give friends a month's notice before any event takes place. Organizers for Live 8 Tokyo had less than that being the last group to get their act together. There was also a report that at least many of the attendees did wear white armbands in support of African aid, although the snarky side in me wondered if the folks just thought it was a cute little accessory/conversation piece for the guys at work on Monday.

Well, time to make breakfast and then head on out for the kids.

Saturday July 2, 8:41 p.m.

I got as much cleaned up as I could and managed to lose a kilo in sweat at the same time. Then I got the fixings for dinner. I went ahead and tried to make those Nagoya Chicken Wings that the OC had told me last weekend. I'm gonna have to remember not to fry too much at the same time; I'd forgotten throwing in a whole bunch of wings at the same time lowers the temperature too much. However, I did get them made up. The taste isn't as good as hers but then again she's had lots of experience to fine-tune the wings. The meat was cooked but still rather juicy inside so I'm kinda wondering if that explains some of the rumbling in my tummy right now.

Still doing my taping chores for the parents. This time, it'll be three hours worth of traveling shows from TV Tokyo...the channel that seems to specialize in those and golf programming. Plus, I've gotta prepped for my rare Sunday lessons with the kiddies.

Saturday July 2, 11:08 a.m.

Oh, you mean there is a Live 8 concert today? Who'da thought?! There's been virtually bupkiss in terms of news about this so-called internationally known megameeting of musical minds. I read about it on Canada's Sympatico webpage...good lord, even Barrie, Ontario in is on this?! Of course, there was extensive coverage on CNN. But I check The Japan Times...nada. I just saw some some stuff on the latest trance dance sites in Tokyo. Well, to be absolutely fair, I did see a nugget some days ago buried somewhere in The Times about perhaps Dreams Come True helping out on the Japan side of things...and Tokyo's contribution will just be a stone's throw away from me in the Makuhari Messe convention centre. There was also some stuff on JPop.com but basically the media coverage here is absolutely miniscule. It's just a cultural...and perhaps even political...thing. Japan has never had a long tradition to charity aid although with the recent start of two annual telethons during the summer, it's trying. I think the political thing may be from the cozy relationship between the media and government. The journalists' clubs basically have to tow the party line on fear of retaliation....which may be why there's been very little in the papers and on TV. The whole goal of Live 8 is to pressure the G-8 countries to do more to wipe out extreme poverty. Koizumi's administration, being one of the G-8, would probably not want any additional mud slung at it.

I thought I'd gotten another quick response from Paddy about my immigration stuff but instead it was just a letter from the OL apologizing for the sudden cancellation last night. I told her I understood the situation and in fact, I feel somewhat responsible for the current state of affairs since I was the person who had first decided to move The OL to Fridays trying to accomodate Speedy with his plans for me.

I actually watched an episode of "Wonderfalls" on a tape from one of my Toronto buddies. Actually, it was pretty engaging and refreshing after the usual variety stuff I catch here on Japanese TV. It's just too bad that the series got canned pretty quickly. But then again, networks can get pretty mercurial. "Malcolm in the Middle", a show that has long worn out its welcome with me, is still on the air but "Wonderfalls" got its can kicked. It's rather too bad, too, since William Sadler (the villain from "Die Hard 2" and a few "Deep Space Nine" eps) was actually on as a somewhat dotty-looking dad...too bad he wasn't in this ep I saw. But then again, the Fox Network doesn't seem to have a great record when it comes to filming series up in The Great White North. "Class of '96" (not sure if too many remember that one) was filmed up at U of T but also got cancelled in short order.

Had my first 10-hour dosage of sleep for the first time in months. A nice combination of no kids today and another cancellation of JJ has helped me out there. Still, I gotta learn to kick back a bit more. Living in the usual Tokyo maelstrom of deadlines and work pressures all these years have gotten me wired up to make sure I have breakfast made by 12 noon (I've yet to make it) lest it be called a very strange lunch. I'll be keeping things here at home today and do some major cleaning of the apartment before I head on out for grocery shopping. I'll try and make those delectable Nagoya chicken wings The OC whipped up for me last week in Karuizawa.

Friday July 1, 10:21 p.m.

That restaurant up the road was not all that full but then again, it is located off the main roads so most of the customers would probably be neighbours anyways. However, I wasn't complaining. I ordered the deep-fried pork cutlet (tonkatsu) with a layer of grated radish on top. Unlike the usual tonkatsu dishes, I didn't get any heavy sauce to pour on it. Instead, it was just a soy sauce mixture that I got. Good if a bit salty.

I managed to tape that 3-hour enka special for the parents. Hopefully, I'll get the next package of tapes off to them next week.

Friday July 1, 7:48 p.m.

Well, another Canada Day in Japan...which basically means nothing special outside the fact that my home country is now 138 years old. All I got from The Teacher and SR when I'd mentioned the fact to them was a polite "Ah...so".

Usually at this time, I would be teaching The OL right now but when I made one of my frequent checks of my phone messages, I received two from her stating that she wouldn't be able to make it tonight due to work. Luckily, I got the messages just as I was about to head on down to our usual meeting place. So I was actually able to get home after all and start taping a semi-annual enka special for my parents. It's the usual hijnks of aging Japanese balladeers singing and making cute on stage; but it's opened a bit in the last few years. Today's lineup even includes a couple of former Morning Musume members doing a cover of an old Pink Lady hit.

Well, I haven't eaten since lunch. So I'll see if I can get into the Japanese-style family restaurant just a block away. If not, I'll have to head on out to the convenience store.

Thursday June 30, 7:09 p.m.

Woke up to a major downpour this morning. I think that rain pretty much topped up the Tokyo reservoir to a solid 100%. Figures that I would be heading for Immigration. It was a rather circuituous route...and longer than usual, thanks to the rain. It's amazing how precipitation can screw up the train lines in this country. Looking at the Yamanote Line monitors, there was a whole rash of delays or stoppages on a number of lines.

I arrived at Tokyo Immigration about 75 minutes later. I must admit that it didn't look too chaotic inside. It had the atmosphere of an airport lounge. I only needed to talk very quickly to someone at the information counter. She gave the checklist of what I need to bring if I'm gonna have any chance of becoming a permanent resident. Quite a tall order....I'm wondering if Paddy's optimism is misplaced. Anyways...

I got back onto the bus. The rain had stopped but it was still pretty gloomy and humid. I took another combination of subway and train up to Otemachi Station where I walked up to my destination of the Wolfgang Puck Express. Being past noon, there were a lot of lineups branching from the various restaurants. WP was no different; however, I lucked out in that I was a solo compared to the small groupings of waiting company folks. The waitress took me to one of the bar positions. I was also lucky that I got to sit in front of a large SONY plasma screen to watch, if not hear, the ABC Evening News. The interior was suitably trendy in reflection of the man and his fame in Hollywood. But it was the food I came for, so I ordered The Classic Puck Burger. It came with fries and a Diet Coke. I wasn't disappointed...the burger was very juicy...in fact, I had to be careful not to squirt anything or anybody with some scalding meat juice when I bit down. Now, this was definitely a burger to be reckoned with. And I can compare it favourably to the best burger I've ever had back in Toronto's Blueberry Hill. Well done indeed, Wolfgang! Mind you, the price was probably the most expensive amongst the restaurants in the immediate area but the food was worth it. Some 15 minutes after getting there, the crowds had cleared out so I think I know when to arrive.

Then, it was up to the Tea Room to see The New Yorker for her first lesson since getting back from her trip. No miracles here...her English was still nearly non-existent. Still, we plugged away at improving the basics of her Simple Present. Not too bad but we were both worn out by the end. I got a nice souvenir from her in the form of a Yoda. I wonder what I'll get from her sister.

Yup, I'm tired. I've bought the fixings to make some spicy Korean miso pork but it's gonna tax me some more. Still, I've made this dish a couple of times. It's a surefire winner and perhaps it'll bring up my stamina and appetite. Perhaps I'm lucky that I won't see The Teacher until 11:30 tomorrow.

Wednesday June 29, 11:04 p.m.

Decided to make this entry into a double review. First off, that book I got last week called "Cruising The Anime City" is quite the bible for those newbies who are fascinated by this shadow world of bespectacled, fashioned-challenged geeks and anime-costumed exhibitionists. For the veterans, the book won't mean much since they probably already know much more than what this book offers. However, the newbies will get a lot of information and maps on the big stores in the otaku Mecca of Akihabara, and even a nice touch of what it's like to go to the largest anime/manga convention on the planet. Some of the homemade comics written and drawn by the fans kinda scares me a bit: explicit homosexual affiars between two Ultramen, and some rather chaste romance between Gimli and Legolas from Lord of the Rings...as the author mentions, Tolkien must be spinning in his grave. A couple of the interviews were also very interesting for different reasons. There was the one with Jan Kurotaki, a Japanese returnee who also happens to be the most famous cos-play artist in Japan, and then there's one with a plastic model collector who strikes me as being just one level below a sociopathic thug. The interview intimates that his years as a shakedown artist in Shibuya and as a jailbird are behind him but after reading the Japanese Holden Caulfield threw a can at his mother during the interview, I kinda wonder if he should still be kept under observation.

The second thing under review is "Star Wars: Clone Wars". I watched the rest of the 70-minute compilation. And it all does work out very well. Even some of the lesser Jedi like Kit Fisto and a couple of female Knights (or should they be called Ladies?) get their day in the sun. But the guy to see is Mace "The Man" Windu. He sure puts the "Shaft" into hand-to-hand Jedi combat. The one good thing about animating these three years between Episodes 2 and 3 is that the Jedi Knights can be seen doing stuff that would confound even the most experienced stunt coordinators and effects guys for the live-action bits. Windu is the one who benefits the most from The Cartoon Network treatment. I'll be looking forward to Volume 2.

Speaking of the coming of the final(?) Star Wars, I found a "Only In Japan" ad in a magazine during my usual browsing at the convenience store. There was a curious Darth Vader looking at a cellphone that a couple of uniformed high school girls were showing him.

And to all, I bid a good night.

Wednesday June 29, 10:19 p.m.

Looks like the next stage of my body's conversion to summertime is nigh. I'm gonna have to bring in the electric fan into my room once more if I'm not gonna end up waking up in my own sweat overnight. Movie Buddy seems to be going through the same thing according to his blog.

Also, another sign that summer is here. I paid my first premium of the Citizen's Tax for this year. It shouldn't be too long before I get the premium schedule for National Health Insurance. Ick!

However, I got some good news at the gym. I finally broke the 92-kg. barrier for the first time in my 9-month history as a member. I still have the doughnut around my belly but hey, the scale don't lie! So from my corpulent self of Xmas, I've dropped 4 kg or 8 lbs. Not too bad at all.

I had my first lunch at the family restaurant a few floors down from the gym for the first time in a few weeks. I still got the smile from the waitress. Today's lunch was a filet of chicken in garlic butter sauce with rice on the side. Yup, I like celebrating dropping weight by ingesting calories. I was a bit disappointed in the chicken, though, since I was expecting something a bit more crispy-skinned. Instead the skin was rather flabby; it was kinda cannibalistic in a way. However, the sauce was very delectable.

I took the subway downtown to the business district of Otemachi and did a very long walk until I reached The Otemachi Building (Egad...the imagination that went into the naming process!) and walked up to the local Kinkos. I managed to print out the rest of those immigration documents. I won't be filling them out just yet. I'm heading down to Shinagawa to talk with someone at the Info Centre. I'm rather wondering if the lineups for that place will be the same as the legendarily long queues to get the visas. Ah, well...it'll be an adventure.

After I got that piece of business done, I went down a couple of floors back to subway level on a bit of a culinary trek (yes, I know that I had just eaten lunch). OA once told me that that Krispy Kreme clone called The Doughnut Plant had one of its two branches in the sub-basement. After a bit of searching, I found the place. And yes, in a bit of a marketing ploy, I saw a tall cart filled with gigantic (certainly compared to the fare at Mister Donuts) donuts. Well, that was enough for me...I ordered some sort of fancy-schmancy named chocolate version with an iced coffee. The interior of the small shop was kinda made out like a trendy little cafe. The donut was quite good...it reminded me of some of the stuff I had back at home: chewy and yeasty inside with the very sweet chocolate coating on the outside. Yup, she passes muster. It'll be a repeater. I'll have to bring some folks along though.

And to add some extra incentive to come over to the Otemachi Bldg., right across from The Doughnut Plant, there was the Wolfgang Puck Express eatery. I saw some interesting lunch specials including hamburgers. Not exactly super cheap at 1300 yen for a burger and fries but I am talking about the chef to the stars. Maybe if I get out in time from Shinagawa tomorrow, I may make a quick run to Otemachi before I see The New Yorker at 3.

I took the Marunouchi Line to Speedy's, only to fall asleep and overshoot by one station. Luckily, I had lots of time before my usual lesson with 001. I spent the extra time that used to be taken up by The Hawaiian's lesson concocting some model lesson plans. BTW, I got some e-mail from the girl herself. She seems to be settling into her new life in Perth nicely. She loves the homestay family but thinks the school leaves a lot to be desired. She said my lessons were superior to those at the school. Good golly...I wonder how bad the education over there is, then. I never felt that I had to really pull out the heavy artillery for The Hawaiian since she was was pretty happy with anything that was put out in front of her.

The lesson with 001 was also pretty languid. We spent most of the time sidetracking from her homework questions. We only had 15 minutes to go into the new chapter. Luckily, Speedy is pretty liberal...as long as the customer is conversing in English, it's a hit. I kinda analogize it to the landing that any pilot can walk away from as a good landing. The two of us even gabbed on her first experience watching a Star Wars flick...by watching Episode 1....oooohh, not a good start. I had to explain about how Episode 4 actually preceded Episode 1 and that "A New Hope" was actually the one to see first.

Speedy was telling me that things are slowly starting to come together in terms of attracting new students. They've been getting more call-ins and perhaps those model lesson plans may get some usage. My Wednesdays may be getting even busier; certainly, Speedy hopes so. Needless to say, his big venture is still in a very early shaky phase. His wife has been taking on an extra job to make ends meet and the two haven't really seen much of each other lately. I hope that the business finally picks up steam for their marriage's sake. I remember during my days on the JET programme, one of my homestay family's friends started his dream of opening his own izakaya only to see it collapse a year later. A further cost was a separation from his wife and family due to the stress. I hope Speedy doesn't suffer a similar fate.

Tuesday June 28, 11:35 p.m.

It was one of those Bizarro World type of nights at the juku. I actually had a progressive lesson with The Siberian, a man who usually wouldn't say 10 words when one would do. He was outgoing and jovial. Meanwhile, I was off-kilter with the others. The New Kid continued to act like a high school boy would after baseball practice, before dinner and on a hot summer day. The Beauty Pair wasn't too bad but it looks like Kei will always be chronically weak in syntax. And the balancing act continues between The Milds and the Poppy.

Looks like that potential day off from The Beehive was a false one. I'm back there next Tuesday. And I've got a bit of a re-scheduling for The Teacher this Friday; nothing major...just a half-hour later start.

Tuesday June 28, 1:34 p.m.

Up until a half-hour ago, I was a wet, not damp, sponge. I think it's fair to say that my dress shirt is done for the day. I may be breaking records today by having my first-ever 3-shower day....may not be a good example to follow since I got The Barmaiden's message that she had to line up for water in her area due to shortages. My city is nestled very snugly positioned next to Tokyo, an area which has seemed to escape rationing for the past several years. I'd heard from The Matron yesterday that the Tokyo reservoir was at 98% capacity, a phenomenal amount saved of the wet stuff. Well, the summer is still early yet.

I actually got my first payment from Speedy today. Hmmm....it seems a bit inflated considering on what we agreed as my salary...not that I'm complaining, mind you.

The Beehive had just one missing member but it was still quite good. We spoke at one point about turning points in our lives. A couple of them were rather deeply emotional so I tried to steer things away before we all ended up running for our handkerchiefs. There's a good chance that I may have a rare respite next Tuesday. I may actually be able to get an extra gym day in.

As was the case yesterday, today will be rather stuffed with classes but things slow down considerably tomorrow and Thursday. I only have 001 on Wednesday and then The New Yorker the day after.

Tuesday June 28, 7:33 a.m.

Getting some laundry done right now since it would seem that this week will be the final hurrah for this year's Rainy Season. Ironic, since The Class Act had wondered aloud yesterday about where the rain had gone. The rains should be coming back later tonight but with the current sun and high temps (it's already past 30 C), the clothes should be dry by the time I get back from Tsudanuma.

Paddy got back to me pretty quickly after I'd given him my update. He wasn't nonplussed at all and thought that the idea of going to the info centre was a good one.

There's been quite a bit of madness about...in the literal sense of the word. A kid murdered his parents last week, there was an old woman who had her neck slit in Paddy's hometown, and we were re-visited by the case of that mentally deranged old woman who'd been terrorizing her neighbourhood for 3 years with her sonic assaults via her voice and boombox. Good lord...the folks took that for 3 years?! In the US, she would've ended up a murder victim herself within a week. Still, there's a bit of pathos with the woman. Apparently, she snapped after the death of one of her loved ones.

I took a look at the first segment of "Star Wars: Clone Wars". Yup, it makes for a good bridge between Episodes 2 and 3. It's nice of the folks to keep the dialogue to a minimum. What dialogue there is still comes off as wooden as my coffee table but at least it seems to fit better in an animated context (all due respect to The Incredibles and William Shatner).

I'd been wondering for some days about this supermodel named Jenny Shimizu who was dating Angelina Jolie. I finally came across her picture on the Net. Uhhh....yup, not someone I'd like to cross...definitely someone I'd call "Sir!"

Well, gotta get some further household chores done before I take off for The Beehive.

Monday June 27, 11:21 p.m.

Another scorcher in the Big Sushi. My collar was already stained with sweat by the time I got up to the Class Act. My apartment has once again resumed its role as oven; well, at least I can say that it's actually a relief to go outside in the relatively cooler outside. However, once I get the air conditioning on, everything settles in nicely.

The Chef didn't provide lunch today so I Wendy'd it. However, I did get to Tower a few minutes and several sweat drops away. I finally plunked down my money and got that DVD of The Cartoon Network's Star Wars: Clone Wars for the grand total of 3,179 yen. Seeing Mace Windu in action against those thousands of droid troopers was the thing that did it for me. Mind you, the animators have made him run like one of the gang from Fat Albert. Not sure how cool that is.

Had another grand ol' time with SIL. We just extrapolated from the text...the best approach with her. We somehow ended up talking about Tom Jones and the odd trend of these women throwing their panties at him. I'm not sure, but is this really a good thing for the Welshman? I mean, let's imagine where these things came from. Does Tom have someone on his staff in charge of knicker picking? Does the "lucky" guy have to categorize these things ("clean..clean...clean...uh-oh, looks like some girl got a little too excited there..)? I did manage to bowl the woman over with my rendition of "What's New, Pussycat?"

The class with The Company started off with a bit of financial housekeeping. The Prez had me come over and reprint on all of the income receipts that I had given him. I was always writing the company name in Roman letters since the name is English. However, I had to write them in katakana and also add the kanji for "Inc." Had to write over no less than 22 of the stubs. I dutifully fulfilled his wishes since he IS the boss but also because I know he has a rather volcanic temper. However, it was kind of him to explain that this wasn't a mercurial decision on his part but one demanded by the beancounters.

Afterwards, I went off to the nearby family restaurant to await The Poppy. It must've been my delivery but the waitress automatically pegged me as a foreigner and asked "Smoking or Non-smoking?" I only had to wait a few minutes before The Poppy showed up. It was a rather pleasant chat with the young lady. The two hours mostly consisted of small talk although the actual look at the translations didn't reveal much in the way of any problems. I did inform her that she needed work on her Present Perfect. All in all, it felt like an uncle/niece type of dinner; I'm sure it'll provide me with some good practice in the future.

The Force's powers of prediction were with me tonight. I kinda figured that Paddy would be contacting me right now about my immigration. Sure enough, there was his message with the usual terse question about how my papers were doing. I'm sure he won't be too happy with me but dang, I've never been too fond of having to deal with computer problems. Well, I told him the truth...that's the best I can do.

Speaking of which...the Star Wars fans did come out in force (ha-ha) on Saturday night to the Yurakucho Mullion to catch the first preview of Episode 3. They were all decked out in their Jedi/Sith regalia. It reminded me when I had caught Episode 1 all those years ago in Shinjuku. GC has already seen it; he has basically given the same review on it that a lot of others have: great wrap-up to the saga, too bad about the acting and writing.

Sunday June 26, 8:14 p.m.

Came back from Karuizawa less than 2 hours ago. Yep, the summer has truly arrived. Scorching today throughout the Kanto.

Well, yesterday, I met my newest student for the first time at the Kiba Starbucks. He's The Manager, a colleague of MK's. He's a pretty nice guy...just a couple of years older than me but with not a lot of English under his belt. After doing the initial level check, I found out that he would probably benefit from the Business English approach, so we gradually built up his sentences and vocab against a background of a pick-up at an airport. I think he was quite happy with what he had learned. But I'll have to find some sort of Business English text for him by the 7th. MK was her usual diligent self; she really is coming along.

I took off for the mountains of Karuizawa at about 6 after spending an hour at Maruzen. I bought a book for my friend's daughter...just approaching 1 so nothing too wordy, and I also got a book on head massage for my noggin. I was lucky that I had followed the OC's advice and gotten that reserved ticket. It cost me 6000 yen but I did get a nice empty row to myself in a non-smoking car. No smelly old men (it's bad enough that I don't smell like a bed of roses in this heat), no crying brats and no smoke.

When I got to the station, it was already dark and a bit cooler but I wouldn't say it was cool up in the mountains. The OC was there at the ticket gate with her baby daughter. She told me even Karuizawa, that refuge from the Tokyo heat for thousands of travelers, was feeling the temps. She drove me to her place where I spent a relaxing evening talking of old times, watching TV and noshing on a menu identical to the one that we'd had when Paddy and I had gone up to her apartment several months ago. It was some special sushi wrapped in large leaves; the topping inside consisted of a large sliver of baked salmon, flaked tuna, soya sauce butter clams and some pickles. Very delicious...I went through 4 of them. But the OC also made up her famous Nagoya Chicken Wings. Amazingly simple to make considering how delectable they were. Just cornstarch the wings and deep fry. Then coat them in the same sweet sauce used to coat grilled eel slices, and just add pepper. It was something you just couldn't stop at 1 or 100.

The OC's hubby came home around 10. His job demands long hours so he was pretty bushed. But he still hung around for a couple of hours to talk with me as well until he called it a night. I didn't bother bringing any pyjamas up there since I stopped wearing them once the heat was on. No particular problems of modesty.

In the morning, I just had the remaining leaf sushi for breakfast before the OC's hubby took off for work. An hour later, the OC, her kid and I went on our tour of Karuizawa. We parked at a lot for a small Catholic church where a service was being held. Despite the relative earliness of the hour, there were already a few walking tours of some senior citizens taking place. The area we drove through reminded me of Banff or even neighbourhood Stouffville just north of Toronto. There were a lot of trees, cottages and quaint shops all lining the streets. We took a walk for half an hour. Along the way, we saw roving bands of Japanese macaque monkeys trying to be frightened off by local government officials firing off firecrackers. I felt rather sorry for the the macaques since they were there first before the humans invaded their property (forgive me if I sound like one of those radical animal rights protesters). However, they weren't all that convinced by the sound of the explosions and took their sweet time ambling off.

We made it to a quaint main street which reminded me of a miniature Omotesando. I could see the trendiness there which included the KFC. We had a light lunch at a bagel shop. The OC had the Classic bagel of cream cheese and smoked salmon. I had something called the Juicy Hamburger...all you bagel purists can kindly move onto the next paragraph; this will not be pretty. Basically, the cooks stuffed in a meatball into the bagel. The "juicy" part was just the excess of mustard and ketchup. I noticed that there were a lot of dogs of various breeds being proudly walked out by their owners. In fact, I saw a banner advertising a contest for the best looking dog in Karuizawa.

After another a bit of a walk, we made it back to the car and this time, we drove to her husband's place of work, some resort hotel where he was the wedding videographer. Unfortunately, we couldn't find him but we did see a couple of wedding processions going on. I kinda wondered what would possess these folks to hold weddings in such torrid weather. Perhaps the weather would be a suitable tonic for some torrid action on the honeymoon.

We went across the street where we cooled our heels for a bit over iced tea and some cake. The restaurant wisely opened both doors so that a nice breeze could flow through without needing air conditioning to freeze us. Then it was back to the apartment for an hour or so for some play with the kid before we made our last stop at a soba shop for a bit of early dinner. I had already bought my return ticket to Tokyo. Again, it was a reserved seat. The ride home was a bit more crowded since I was joining the bunch going back to the big city from the mountains. But again, nothing too bad.

There was nothing too much to report from the e-mail front. I actually got a response back from The Jazz Expert some weeks after I'd sent out an SOS of sorts concerning Jazz Buddy, and a week after I'd gotten word from JB herself. Apparently, she didn't know as much as I and Skippy did about JB'S situation.

I also got word on the phone from the Ballerina. Just a courtesy call from London so I sent back a reply. Well, now that the vacation is over, I've got to finish off that last part of the translation for the Matron's daughter and then plan for the rest of the lessons before getting some ironing done. Man, so much to do.

Saturday June 25, 8:06 a.m.

Friday was rather uneventful. Just had my usual trio of students, albeit in different order. The OL wasn't working yesterday and since she had a dinner party last night, I taught her class in a rather snug fit between The Teacher and SR. But the good thing is that I got all the lessons out of the way by 6 p.m.

"The Phantom Menace" was on NTV last night. It's a rather strange thing but for all the bricbracs that the first prequel has gotten, it still made for an entertaining romp on TV. Maybe that's the key...it's a better made-for-TV movie than a motion picture. "Attack of the Clones" will be shown the eve of the launch of Episode 3. The special previews, though, start tonight.

It's gonna be the first truly hot day today. It's going up to 32 C. Since I don't have my first lesson until 1 with MK, I'll be getting that rubdown and some shopping chores out of the way. I've been getting somewhat stressed out with the various classes thrown at me today. I'll be looking forward to that massage, although it's always a bit of potluck as to who I get as my masseur/masseuse, and the trip out to Karuizawa later tonight. JJ contacted me last night to cancel her lesson for the next couple of weeks. Hmmm...I wonder about her. Perhaps she may not be a stayer. However, I do have that potential new student, the colleague of MK's. At least, I won't have to carry so many texts along with my overnight luggage and I'll have some extra time to print out some more documents for my immigration bid.

Thursday June 23, 11:47 p.m.

Started off with some good news today. I actually fell down into the 92 kg. zone despite only going to the gym just once last week. I wonder what I have or haven't been eating. After my good buoyant workout (my arms are just aching right now), I decided to celebrate inanely by having a Big Mac attack and even going for the cake set at the Tea Room. Talk about your reversal of fortune!

I went into the Tea Room when I was suddenly accosted by a trio of voices calling my name. It turned out to be Scully and a couple of other alumna. I chatted with them for a few minutes before taking my seat elsewhere; there was no need to ruin their good chatter with my presence. But it was nice of them to say goodbye when they were leaving.

Hmmm...the Carolinan was 20 minutes late and she seemed rather stiff tonight; not very effusive at all. Well, she was never all that effusive like The Hawaiian but her responses were terser than usual. She was sneezing quite a bit, though, and did mention that she had caught a cold in Las Vegas thanks to the combination of hot temps outside and freezing temps inside the hotel and casino. Perhaps it was because of that that she wasn't too talkative tonight.

Well, I rushed over to Urayasu to meet that friend of the juku boss'. I got there at about 9:20, a little behind schedule but nothing too serious. I called up the house just in case to let the boss know that I could be a minute late. For some strange reason, there was no answer. So I started my brisk walk down to the juku. When I was crossing the main intersection, I heard my name called for the second time tonight. It turned out to be the boss on her bicycle. She was fairly frantic about my whereabouts and offered to give me her bike so that I can rush over to the juku. I got a bit annoyed at her since: 1) I had already told her that I would probably arrive between 9 and 9:30...I was still well within the range, and 2) I don't ride bikes. So she cheerfully raced back home while I stepped up the pace some more.

I managed to get to the juku by around 9:31. Still, when I got up to the second floor, I profusely apologized in Japanese to the gentleman for my tardiness and he was quite gracious. I was also very grateful for the frostiness of my room. As I'd expected, that dreaded idea of going over 50 pages of contract within 3 hours turned out to be a false alarm. Instead, it was just two parts of the contract that I rewrote and simplified for him within 55 minutes. Still, I was just stunned by the amount of legalistic gobbledygook that infested this contract and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have to go through that. Apparently, the man had to research 5 sources to come up with this contract. Gahh...but at least, I got my 3500 yen and I gave him my e-mail addresses just in case he needs to consult with me again over the next two weeks. So, I'm back home a lot earlier than expected.

Looks like I won't be facing a cancelled class with the OL after all. She offered to meet me between The Teacher and SR. It'll be tight but doable. I also got a blanket goodbye e-mail from Shrek who'll be pulling up roots with his family and taking off for Hong Kong next week. He's having a goodbye party at The Maple Leaf on Tuesday but of course, I do have the juku so I gave him my farewell response.

I faxed over a greeting to that tax consultant whom the tax office was pushing on me. I got a message from him thanking me for my fax but little else. He said that he'd contact me again. I also got some info from my real estate management company today concerning the trash disposal. Recently, the trash area has been looking like the proverbial Elysian Fields for flies and any other insects since the rules haven't been adhered to very well. So the company put its collective foot down and told us to shape up and gave us the lowdown on what garbage can be thrown out on what days. I'm actually quite grateful although I'm not sure if I'll have to adhere to the rule of getting the garbage out in the morning before 8 a.m. instead of pitching the bags out the night before. I would rather not have to get dressed and race out in the a.m. but if it means not having to see a maggot-ridden dump in the evenings, then it'll be a price I'll gladly pay.

Anyways, gotta hit the hay.

Thursday June 23, 12:21 p.m.

I had been sensing that feel of burnout last night so I was grateful that I was able to get some more sleep. And I was able to get some of the household stuff out of the way like vacuuming and send off a model lesson to Speedy. I've got a bit more time before I head out to the gym so I'll get some more translating done for the Matron's daughter. It's frustrating but oddly absorbing.

Wednesday June 22, 10:46 p.m.

Another humid, sweaty day comes to a close. Luckily, the rains were just restricted to the morning.

I picked up my reserved seat ticket at Tokyo Station for the trip up to Karuizawa this morning. Man, I'm looking forward to this mini-trip especially after I run the gauntlet tomorrow and Saturday.

Then it was up to Kinkos in Shinjuku to try out The Teacher's suggestion of how to pull off what's starting to be the near-alchemical transition of converting a PDF to a Word document. Nada on that but at least I could have the PDF printed out so now I finally have some hardcopy. Not sure if it will be acceptable to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs or Justice, though. I still sent off a copy of the PDF to The Teacher to see if she can do something with it.

Luckily, after an hour on the Net I only had to walk down a few dozen metres to Maharajah, the Indian restaurant with the daily specials. I had the Executive Lunch which consisted of a piece of fleshy tandoori chicken, a generously-sized piece of naan, two curries and a goodly pile of rice in the middle. Plus, I got access to some salad and papad. Did the trick.

I made my way across the tracks to Kinokuniya. I hadn't been there in a while. I pulled the trigger and bought myself a book titled "Cruising The Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo". It's been a while since I'd bought a tome on Japanese pop culture and this book looked nicely glossy and up-to-date. I'll be enjoying taking a look this one.

I saw The Hawaiian for her possibly final lesson since she'll be taking off for her homestay in Australia. She just shot me a lot of questions on what to say to her homestay family. Not sure when she'll be back. It could be anything from 1 to 3 months although I've been ragging her awful about the possibility of her snagging a handsome Aussie and sprouting permanent roots. In any case, my Wednesday will be mostly free for the next month at least. At this rate, it's looking like the middle of the week will be the breezy part of my schedule whereas the ends could be the killer days. Fridays can be variable though. I know that The Teacher will almost always be there but SR usually cancels once a month and The OL has the occasional event to attend. In fact, I think that may be the case this Friday since she just sent in a message asking if she can see me a few hours earlier. Unfortunately, since I've got SR in that time slot, I have a feeling that The OL will have to take a pass this week

My lesson with Student 001 was OK, not great, in my estimation. 001 seemed to enjoy it just fine but for me, since the lesson was a review one, it just seemed somewhat aimless. However, we did manage to have a very good talk about her trip to Africa a few years ago in the lounge. And she's expressed interest in heading over to Peru someday. I never pegged her as the adventurous sort.

Despite having that Indian lunch and a Snicker bar plus orange chunks in gelatin for "supper", I still ended up rather hungry when I got home. So, against my better judgement, I opted to get a package of Sapporo Ichiban ramen and a small package of fish cake and ate that. Sapporo Ichiban is the ramen that started it all for me...even before Cup O' Noodles hit the market with a bodyslam. I remember Mom making the stuff on either Saturday or Sunday for lunch when she didn't want to make anything too fancy. I used to throw in some day-old rice amongst other toppings into the soup (now, that'll help you to become a sumo). Well, seeing that I won't be leaving the apartment in the morning tomorrow since I only have The Carolinan and that friend of the juku boss late in the evening, I can afford to stay up a bit longer and digest the noodles properly before hitting bed and sleeping late.

Wednesday June 22, 9:33 a.m.

I've been reading about the death of the VHS and audio cassette tapes. Those rolled-up magnetic strips have been keeping me in visual and audio thrall for the past few decades. Well, I've pretty much made the conversion to DVD when it comes to my home movie viewing habits and my collection is vastly CD in composition but I have a few dozen tapes of my homemade compilations from J-Pop to jazz. Once in a while, if I have absolutely nothing to do (very rare nowadays) and have the urge to be creative, I pull out 24 of my CDs and decide to mix selected songs onto a 120-minute cassette. Of course, it does take me a little more than 2 hours to get it done which also explains why the urge doesn't come very often.

I've often thought about if my days of listening to tapes are indeed numbered. After all, magnetic tapes will eventually wear out over time; that is, if a magnetic surge doesn't wipe them out or the mechanics in the tape player don't end up pulling and twisting the tape like a piece of taffy. The peripherals for proper tape care have become a rare thing to see. I can't easily get a tape head cleaner anymore.

Then again, I still have my trusty ONKYO tape deck/CD system of 10 years plus. It seems as if as long as I keep it in good condition, it won't let me down. And even my earliest compilation of 16 years ago still sounds pretty good. So, I'm not in any major hurry to get that disc burner or an iPod. But I do see that CD/tape deck systems are pretty much history in my local Yamada Denki. The combo is currently CD/MD.

Wednesday June 22, 9:16 a.m.

Woke up to the sounds of a squall outside my window. It does feel cooler than it did yesterday; it's just going up to 23 today, thankfully. Hopefully, the rains won't drag on all day but then again, we are talking about Rainy Season.

My old university friend has sent me his colleague's resume for me to peruse. I took a quick peek at it. The lad's got a TESOL which will help...at least, on paper. But I did notice a lack of university credentials. Mind you, the university degree is just for Immigration as a filter to keep out the riffraff (yes, apparently, if you are the owner of a university diploma, it means that you are a cultured, mature person automatically...uh-huh). He can circumvent that problem by coming over on a working-holiday visa or a student visa and then getting the job with one of the bigs such as NOVA or ECC and switch over to the working visa. The problems are: 1) the bigs themselves...rather soul-sapping, and 2) I think getting a job with a real school may be a bit more difficult than that.

Tuesday June 21, 11:12 p.m.

Managed to get through the juku gauntlet tonight thanks to the very powerful air conditioner in my room. Of course, being a Canadian I was happy as a pea in a pod but I had to turn the thing off at various points for the more thin-skinned students. The New Kid was a bit more sullen today; he was 10 minutes late, the second time in recent weeks that he's been tardy so I'm starting to wonder if he's starting to get a bit uninterested in English. I received a couple of muskmelons from Kei of The Beauty Pair during the second hour; somehow I managed to fit them into the fridge.

The Poppy got both Milds tonight. Compared to the first meeting last week, she started faltering once we got into the text. I'll probably have to use my TLC on her. She looked like she'd been through the wringer by the end of class but at least she kept some sort of game face on. As for the Siberian. he'd been through Hell last week with some sort of bug which throttled him with a 39-degree C fever.

I got word from The Hawaiian tonight. She'll be good to go for tomorrow's final lesson before she takes off for Oz on Saturday. Still don't know how she's gonna fare there with that sensitive stomach of hers.

Anyways, I gotta head on out relatively early tomorrow since I gotta get my ticket for Karuizawa on Saturday night and then check out Kinkos to see if I could pull off that rather circuituous suggestion that The Teacher had given me about how to convert my PDFs into Microsoft Word-friendly files. Well, if I head out to the Shinjuku branch, I can get have lunch at the Indian restaurant on the same floor.

Tuesday June 21, 3:14 p.m.

Yep, summer is here. I've got the air con on for the second time this year. But at least the sun is out so I can air out the mattress. Today's session with the Beehive started off OK but got a bit stumbly at the end. I got the impression that Mrs. Perth wasn't too satisfied with my answer concerning answering a negative Yes/No question. I tried my best but I didn't want to spend the rest of the class obsessing over one grammatical tic. I told the ladies about my plans to go to Taiwan in the Fall, and they picked up on the fact that I used the feminine personal pronoun to refer to my partner. I did say that she was just a friend but their Cheshire Cat smiles could've sliced through metal. Anyways, Mrs. Travel was more than willing to dish out the advice about where to go and I'll be looking forward to those ideas in the weeks to come.

Got back home to see that there was a message from the juku boss. I called back to find out that she really needs me to help out her friend with some 50 pages of proofreading. Well, since I've got my weekend up in Karuizawa, I can only help her out late Thursday night after my lesson with The Carolinan. I will literally be burning the midnight oil but most of my day on Thursday is way open so it won't be too bad.

The Madame is still on the case about researching that trip to Taiwan. Looks like we're both on the same wavelength about what we want in a tour, but then again she did say that we share a common vibe. She said that we ought to have a powwow sometime to talk about the trip. I offered to take her out to the Maple Leaf, that Canadian pub in Shibuya for lunch sometime next week since The Hawaiian will be on hiatus.

I got a surprise message from an old university friend of mine via The Wild Thing. Apparently, he wanted to pick my brain for one of his colleagues who is interested in teaching at a real school here. He apparently doesn't have a university degree. Well, I think his trip is gonna be a short one. He could possibly get something at one of the big English conversation schools such as ECC or NOVA, provided that he got at least a working-holiday visa but forget about a regular school unless he's got some really good friends in high places.

Tuesday June 21, 12:07 a.m.

I gather it's the First Day of Summer. It certainly feels that way in my apartment right now. It felt like an oven when I came in and now there's a huge mosquito hovering over me. I've got my electric insect repellant on but I'm afraid that I may only just antagonize it.

I had the full pair of The Class Act and then SIL yesterday. The Chef was kind enough to whip up lunch for all of us. The dish du jour was cod roe spaghetti with Italian tomato and spinach salad.

The Company class was sloggy as usual but at least the guys are finally getting the hang of answering what they did for their weekends. Threw out some of the kanji that the Siberian had given me as levity. That kanji page has really helped as a much needed conversational tangent.

Then, it was my newest class. The Matron's daughter became the latest sheep in my flock. I met her and her Mom in the lobby of the Tokyo Hilton just a few minutes away from The Company. She's a typical elder teenager but what she needed help on was far from my usual repertoire of stuff. She seems to be heading into musicologist territory so as we sipped on iced coffees in the Marble Lounge, I had to tackle on-the-spot translating of her very university-level articles on the amazing Beethoven from English to Japanese in preparation for her class on Wednesday. To me, I think I did a pretty patchy job but she seemed to appreciate my efforts, at least outwardly. We ended up finishing our first class almost two hours later. The Matron was out in the car waiting for us patiently. She was kind enough to give me a lift to Nakano Station so that I wouldn't need to transfer lines. However, she got a call from her son, the guy that "tried" to help me out with my tax return but ended up starting me on that back-and-forth odyssey between me and the tax office. He was waiting to be picked up at the station and was wondering why it was taking Mom so long to get over. When she told him that I was in the car, I overheard a very distinctive "Why?!" from him. The Matron did say that the two of us did resemble each other; I wonder if the foot-in-mouth disease that I occasionally catch has passed onto him. In any case, I did greet him cordially enough at the station. Man, I just hope that the class doesn't end up going overtime like it did tonight although I'm happy for the extra dough and the fact that my food bill ended up well under 1000 yen tonight since The Matron footed the bill for my coffee. In any case, we'll be meeting next week at the far cheaper Denny's nearby the hotel. I'm gonna send off some translations of her text in advance so we don't have to slog our way like we did tonight.

Alright, I really could use some shuteye right about now.

Monday June 20, 8:00 a.m.

I was prematurely awakened (by 5 hours) by a strong jolt from Mother Earth earlier this morning. It was strong enough that I turned on the TV. Sure enough, after a few minutes, the announcer came on to report on the quake. I think it was a Shindo 4 in my neighbourhood since the epicentre wasn't too far away. Speaking of quakes, I'm kinda wondering how the sisters, The New Yorker and The Carolinan, are faring in shaky California.

Got some atypical e-mail in my in-box. I actually got a message from The Doll. She apologized for her Lenny Bruce profanity. Enh...I took it in stride; it's always more interesting to know a person with different aspects. Then, I heard from The Wild Thing for the first time in a long time. He's back in Vancouver crunching numbers. The Madame updated me on her research for Taiwan trips. I think it'll be a late summer/early fall thing...although I believe the temps will still be set to broil over there.

Sunday June 19, 9:21 p.m.

The entertainment week has come to an end. After the debauchery of Saturday night, Sunday was somewhat more sedate. I waited at the JR Shinjuku Gate for The Satyr but was surprised by the prior appearance of Skippy who'd remembered my open note to the Satyr about where I was meeting him. Once he arrived, the three of us were off to pick up our tickets and then meet the rest of the gang in front of the Wendy's beside the Picadilly. Sure enough, Movie Buddy came up along with his language exchange partner and her friend. We ended up noshing and chatting over lunch for about 90 minutes, and yet there wasn't much of a lineup forming for "Batman Begins". I'm gonna have to re-think about when to assemble everyone although I still think that for "Revenge of the Sith", the earlier the better. Actually, The Hawaiian once again pulled out due to stomach problems. Movie Buddy was a bit disappointed about that since his good friend will probably be taking off on Saturday without a final meeting.

The Satyr's girlfriend showed up shortly afterwards and then some minutes later, we all lined up inside the theatre. There were more than a few dozen people ahead of us but none of these huge lines I'd been wondering about. Skippy informed me that probably the lineups would be longer in the later shows...a prediction that turned out to be fact.

As for the movie itself, "Batman Begins" IS indeed different from any of its predecessors. It does come off somewhat darker although there were a few moments of levity, mostly through Michael Caine's sardonic interpretation of Alfred Pennyworth (hard to imagine now that this was the same actor who had been the original Alfie and the lead character in "Get Carter"). The movie spends most of the first hour going really deep into how Bruce Wayne becomes the titular superhero. In fact, the movie almost threatened to make wonder when or if Wayne was gonna ever put on the batsuit in this movie.

The movie, as a whole, struck me as one that director Christopher Nolan has tried to re-define the franchise. It is definitely a beginning...of not only Batman the character but of this formerly laughingstock superhero series. Gone is the depiction of Gotham City as the frighteningly baroque/art deco/gothic metropolis from Tim Burton's movies, and for that matter, Joel Schumacher's Gotham City as urban day-glo amusement park. The city comes across as nearly normal but as one that's definitely in crisis. Also, the depiction of Bruce Wayne as a mild-mannered boring do-gooder multimillionaire (whew!) through Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney has also been eradicated. Christian Bale really puts hard-edged boundaries amongst his personae as an uncaring feckless Bruce Wayne, the real Bruce and his scarier Batman. I think Bale's roles in "The Machinist" and "American Psycho" have been good practice for his latest one. Skippy and one of the other ladies with me asked about who Bale was. Indeed, he's not a huge name here (ironic, considering that his first role was in Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun") although that could change with this movie. It also helps that he has a lot of mighty supportive help from the aforementioned Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman (he should be racking up the air mileage points with his trips to Japan for "Million Dollar Baby", "Unleashed" and this flick). Of course, having local fave Ken Watanabe in a cameo can't hurt either.

"Batman Begins" ultimately didn't strike me as an immediate classic of the genre. I think it's gonna be one of those movies that will grow on me over time, though. As The Satyr mentioned later, he enjoyed it for the most part but it won't be a repeat viewing. I would agree...the overall movie seemed to have a bit of weight lugging it down throughout its 2.5 hours. My eyes glazed over at times. As had been reported in the otherwise glowing reviews, the movie's first half is a bit slow although Movie Buddy said that he enjoyed it better than the latter half. But the second half also seems to suffer from having too many slight villains to worry about which tended to unfocus things and pretty much pushed any sort of romantic interlude between Batman and Katie Holmes to a far corner. In addition, I wasn't particularly impressed by the much-vaunted first entrance of the Batman on his war against crime. His hand-to-hand combat scenes just addled my eyes like those frenetic fight scenes from "The Bourne Supremacy". Please...if Nolan or any other director who's interested in the franchise reads this..no more super closeup, handheld camera shots durng battle please. The gimmick is over. Also, I'm starting to tire of Liam Neeson(though he is one of the best actors in the biz) in his mentor roles. He's starting to become a genre of his own.

On the good side, though, there are the winning performances by one and all. And the story, without all of the extra weight, is good enough. But as one of our members stated, she is looking forward more to the second movie with this new cast now that the origin stuff is out of the way.

Once our main course was over, all of us walked out into the humid afternoon and made our way westward to a coffee shop to drink and while away the hour before dinner at Viet Huong. Looks like I may have been the harshest critic since everyone else seemed to like it just fine. We went to the Caffe Veloce, one of the local coffee shop franchises in town. Skippy recommended the coffee jelly with scoop of vanilla ice cream on top since she used to work for them in her earlier days. Well, I did get it. In a tip to decadence, the dish came with a tiny container of liquid sugar. Believe me, it didn't need it...something that I found out the hard way. Some of the other things I heard from Skip was that she'd recently got a bootleg copy of the Star Wars movie on DVD but she wisely said that she would refrain from catching it until she saw the real McCoy on the big screen in a few weeks. The other was that she gave me some scoop on the trials and tribulations surrounding Jazz Buddy. Apparently, according to The Kid, JB had actually been in a fractious relationship with some guy which is causing this massive depression. Not quite sure if this is a smokescreen or not.

Well, 5 came around and we all headed out to Viet Huong around the corner. The Madame and the Sylph came later. The Madame was sitting at the other end of the table on my side so we never really talked all that much tonight but I figured that the two of us had talked plenty on Thursday anyways. The food was fine as was the service. Yup, Viet Huong will be on speed dial. As we made our way back to the station, Skippy and I spoke tentatively about getting together for "Revenge of the Sith" although she's weighing that against going to the Expo. Well, I know what I'm gonna be doing on July 10th.

Sunday June 19, 12:41 a.m.

Another long one. I taught the younger sister an English self-introduction for some party at the end of the month so it was rather easy to just work on that for most of the hour.

I picked up that "Batman Begins" ticket and made the requisite adjustments to the reservations at Viet Huong. We've jumped from 6 to 9. The Hawaiian has pulled out due to her chronic stomach problems but it looks like The Sylph and a couple of Movie Buddy's other buddies will join in the fun.

It was another pleasant two hours with M+M before I headed out to meet the gang to welcome back The Okinawan. Man, the area around Hachiko was packed! It was even more crowded than usual; had to use my arm like a machete to get through the "trees". I was lucky that Speedy could find me in front of the dog. It was quite a turnout for The Okinawan. There were a few others from the graduating class of 2005 that I hadn't seen since the grad party all the way back in February...people like The Doll. But there were also the familiar faces such as the Irishman, Scully and The Fisherman. Movie Buddy also showed up. The Coffeemaker and The Barmaiden spearheaded the event. I think all in all we were a party of 17.

The first stage was at an izakaya called Hananoren up in a building across from the station. Pretty good food and drink although Movie Buddy and I agreed that we could still eat some more by the end. The Doll certainly showed a new side to herself after downing several mugs of beer. For a petite girl like her with an appearance of a kewpie doll, she could swear up a storm and look like Yoda hunched over like she was. And she's just 21. I entertained my half of the table with all of those kanji that The Siberian had written down in my notebook. It's been a wonderful icebreaker.

The Okinawan had a good three months in Vancouver. I didn't detect any vast improvement in her English but since her English had already been quite good during her school days here, I wasn't particularly worried. She did talk about a little altercation at the government-run liquor shop one time, an altercation that she won. But it goes to show the difference in service here and in Canada.

The Barmaiden was having a ball of a time, sometimes at my expense. Mind you, wearing my green otaku jacket can make me an easy target for the young ones. Still, I know why she's the life of the party and the perfect hostess.

Next stop was this other izakaya on the other side of the station called Jan-Ken (the first two words used for "paper, rock, scissors" here). It had a more atmospheric vibe with dimmer lights. We got this huge narrow U-shaped table. The interior curve was spaced out for the waiters to get easy access to us, but Movie Buddy, The Okinawan and The Barmaiden basically took over as proxy servers. Between the two restaurants, I blasted away a good chunk of change but the food and company were great. We all broke apart by 11. But the Barmaiden warned that there would most likely be a similar party for another returning student in a few weeks. I shared part of the ride home with Scully. Her English has definitely improved. When I had my few opportunities to see her in class, she stumbled a lot but now she's stringing sentences together like a pro.

Got home to see that the juku boss left quite a few messages about a potential new student. But I probably won't be able to make any contact with him until Tuesday since I'll be tied up for the next couple of days.

Anyways, time to get that shower and then sleep as much as I can before I head out again later today.

Friday June 17, 9:28 p.m.

No rain today but it stayed relatively cool thankfully. Just did the usual Friday lessons. And did my usual round at Maruzen. I was hoping to find something to help the younger sister with her upcoming trip to Oz but I guess no enterprising author has come up with a book on homestay English for youngsters. Instead I just bought my replacement crossword book.

Instead of hitting Com Pho this time for lunch, I hiked it over to Maru Bldg and had lunch at that ramen place up on the 6th floor. It was good to have a change of pace in eating. And at 1000 yen for a course, the price certainly couldn't be beat. I had been thinking about Kua'Aina, that Hawaiian hamburger place a floor below but when I saw the lineup there, I said, nah. But on the same floor, there are some pretty good places. The West Side Cafe seems rather interesting.

Got home to find out that I got another postcard from the Ichikawa Tax Office (don't those guys ever leave me alone?!). I was under the impression that they were offering me the service of a tax accountant and not demanding that I take up the offer. Well, they're not demanding but they're being insistent that I give this guy a call since they claim that I had requested the services of a tax consultant in my survey. I thought the space was just to say that I'd already had the services of one...the son of the Matron. Well, I guess I'll send him a fax. I could use some help anyways for next year's return.

I asked the Coffeemaker last night if I could invite Speedy along to The Okinawan's welcome back party tomorrow. She responded that there was no problem. So I've sent off a short-notice letter to him. There's probably a 50/50 chance that he won't be available but at least I tried.

Anyways, I gotta get ready for the kids tomorrow and then I have M+M. In between, I gotta rush off to get my ticket for "Batman Begins" at the discount shop.

Friday June 17, 9:14 a.m.

Finally got that gym time in yesterday. I was actually surprised that I only gained a kilogram during my sabbatical, and that was considering the debauchery at Tony Roma's last Saturday.

Then I went to the new and improved(?) Coca up on 6th floor of the Bic Camera building in Yurakucho. The Madame arrived a few minutes later. She hadn't changed a bit in over a year. Her circumstances have, though. She's now attached to someone who, according to her description, may resemble a stringbean...rather different from the type that she used to go for, the guy with the massive shoulders and 6-pack abs. I mentioned that she and he must resemble that geek and that stylish lady from "Trainman", the Japanese fantasy currently playing.

As for Coca, I enjoyed the afternoon special they had there. I ordered the pho soup and spicy glass noodle salad as did The Madame. Unfortunately, I found that the Madame isn't too fond of spicy food. Ah...live and learn. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the new Coca. Perhaps it was because of the time (just before 5) and the fact that we were only one of two groups in the place but the restaurant seemed a bit sterile. The owners were definitely going for some sophisticated urban vibe but I frankly prefer the old Coca with its resemblance to the Chinatown restaurants of my salad days. Plus, when I asked, the waitress told me that the new branch doesn't sell the Coconut Milk Shake that was the mainstay at the old Coca.

Anyways, I caught up with the Madame. We easily talked up a storm for about 6 hours. We ended up changing venues from Coca to the bar at the top of the SONY Building. Good golly! 2310 yen for two iced teas! Plus, we had to contend sitting next to this so-called Super Audio Lounge. Apparently, the creators decided that "super" means "ear-shattering loud". The lounge is, in what I consider to be an only-in-Japan phenomenon, a huge room with a stage carrying these just-as-huge speakers. People can come in and select certain CDs for play and then the audo system just blasts them out. I wasn't too bad about the jazz part but when it came to the hard rock selections...

In my talk with the Madame, I found out that her parents are very traditional and conservative (I can only imagine the sweat any suitor might ejest meeting her folks). Also, she has a love of traveling. In fact, she came up with the embryonic idea of having us travel to some place in Asia. Hmmm...considering the current political climate, I was a bit worried about that. Also, I'm not an experience traveler. So I suggested that our (or at least my) toe-dipping spot should be Taiwan. At the end of our conversational odyssey, she confided that she wanted me to be her good male friend since, well, she says that she feels that the two of us have a very good vibe (she has always been a very spiritual sort) and that when traveling we could have a very good time together but have separate rooms to unwind. Hmmm...interesting.

So, while one male-female friendship seems to be blossoming, another seems to be in limbo or fracturing altogether. After a few tries to her directly and to her formerly close friends, I finally got a reply from Jazz Buddy after several weeks of nothing. I even took her name off the contact list. But my pestering finally paid off. Unfortunately, she's still dour as ever and has no interest in keeping contact with us. So I basically let her know that I'll stop contact with her until she feels better while exhorting to get something done about her emotional situation.

Looks like my weekend will be a busy one. The Coffemaker contacted me to inform me of the details over The Okinawan's welcome back party tomorrow. I should be able to make the meeting time and place after my usual chatfest with M+M. Then, there is the movie-and-dinner outing on Sunday. Hmm...I'll have to revise those reservations. We've got three more coming for Vietnamese.

In any case, it's time to head on out.

Thursday June 16, 10:28 a.m.

Past the halfway mark of June, and it feels pretty chilly out there. And yet, I'm not gonna reserve any judgement on what this summer will be like. I've been here too long to know that weather in this burg changes on a dime. Rice farmers can yet have a good crop.

Nice to have another free Thursday. I'm very sorely tempted to not head to the gym and just veg until I meet The Madame but physical duty does call. Still, I've got a couple of hours before I take off. I had my Pancake breakfast...always a nice sign of a leisurely start to one's day.

And I've been reading the reviews to "Batman Begins". Looks like the Japan Times reviewer who hates comic books and comic book movies is in a minority. So far, CNN and EW like what they see, one guy even spouting that this movie is the best one so far this year. Pretty high praise indeed considering how far down the franchise went with George Clooney's rendition almost a decade ago. "Batman & Robin" was one of the most uncomfortable cinematic experiences in my life, that and "Blown Away", that weird movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges.

Wednesday June 15, 10:17 p.m.

Well, continued to slog through the day. The rains just kept coming although there was a ray of hope for a short while during The Hawaiian's lesson. Kept my dinner pretty small at Speedy's. I just had a fruit jelly there. I'd had a double Subway for lunch which kept my appetite from rearing its hungry head. Looks like even at that school, I may be getting a new batch of students on Wednesday night after Student 001. Speedy was busy chatting it up with a potential new student; she didn't look too impressed. Speedy is very earnest in his sales pitch but that could also be seen as a bit of a fast-talking slickness by certain people. Meanwhile, The Receptionist was also talking it up with another man whilst I was entertaining 001 in the lounge.

My jelly ended up not being enough to satisfy my caloric intake needs for today. I bought a small pack of calamari at the supermarket to eat with the remaining oolong. Still, I'll probably hit the hay around midnight. I've got the day off tomorrow so I'll be making it Pancake Thursday. I won't be hitting the gym until early afternoon so there probably won't be any chance of stomach upset.

Wednesday June 15, 11:15 a.m.

FINALLY! It's over....I got those taxes paid. Mind you, it couldn't have been on a "better" day. Miserable rain all over the place...we were only missing the gale-force winds. I had to slog all the way up to the tax office on foot since the bus wasn't exactly too frequent. By the time I got up to the building, I was sprouting plenty of moisture into my dress shirt and coat, stuff that stayed there since the air was already supersaturated with humidity. Of course, as I had expected, they did slip in the fine...a somewhat paltry 2000 yen penalty for handing in the return with errors. But at that point, I was too grateful to care. I ran the meterological gauntlet again; by that time, my shoes were getting rather moist too. I decided at that point that I'd already gotten my workout and canned the trip to the gym (walked a grand total of an hour's worth of pavement while toting a 10 kg bag of books and gym clothes...good enough for me). To add insult to injury, the entire transit system was screwed up to due to some mechanical trouble somewhere on the Chuo Line. I knew we were in for it once I saw the signs didn't have any times posted for arriving trains. That's usually a big oh-oh.

I got home to realize that my round-tripper took 2.5 hours to complete considering that I was traveling within the same city. Now I'm here and I have to take a shower again before I head on out in 75 minutes. My shoes are waterlogged so it'll have to be the sneakers. Luckily, Speedy's school has me take off my shoes at the entrance so at least I'll look presentable in dark socks. Another blessing in disguise, the white socks I was wearing not only got wet but holey as well. I hope the rest of my day isn't as sloggy.

Tuesday June 14, 10:22 p.m.

Had another shortened night at the juku. The Siberian canned out due to a supposed fever although I kinda wonder if he's just doing a bit of hooky. Apparently, the juku boss spoke with his mother (I forget that the man, for all his kanji expertise and his status as a juku tutor, is only 19 years old...he hasn't even gone through the Adulthood Day experience) and found out that Mommy was shocked to see her dearest actually making the decision to take off for that 3-week homestay experience in Australia. Mommy said that he's usually so lazy about coming to a decision (no kidding!) but suddenly he had developed a drive. I think the juku boss was trying to tell me that some of my influence was rubbing off onto him although my impression is that The Siberian simply realizes that my class won't cut the mustard when it comes to English education. In any case, I wasn't impressed when the juku boss told me what the plans were for his homestay. Basically the boy will be just one of a rather massive group of Japanese going over for those 3 weeks and that he'll be bunking with one or two others in a house. Considering his nature, I'm not sure if he's gonna pick up a whole lot of English that one.

The Milds got that new classmate tonight. Well, one of them did. Mr. Mild was absent which rather helped matters in terms of acclimating the kid. I will call her The Poppy. She's this rather adorable high school girl who used to be the boss' student in the other room a couple of years ago. I vaguely recall her back in my early days there. Apparently, the girl was a quivering wallflower back then but she's certainly a lot more giddy now. She's got a job at a neighbourhood McDonalds so after having Mrs Mild and her do a bit of "getting to know you", I decided to go with a role-play of her taking care of foreign customers at her workplace which seems to be one of the reasons that she's hooked up with my class. Not a high student by any means but it looks like Mrs Mild treated her like a surrogate daughter so that's a good sign.

The juku boss had a little talk with me after the lesson. She said she would like to increase my salary...always a nice thing to hear (never heard that at all in 7 years at the old school, although the management finally...grudgingly...raised it a bit a few years ago) but she needs to get more students. She offered to try and get some sort of adult class in the afternoon sometime. Well, since I'm starting to balk about going to the gym between the Beehive and the juku due to the large amount of baggage I have to carry I countered that I could teach during the Tuesday afternoon hours. Man, when I get students, I get them in bunches.

Well, gonna hit the hay early since I've gotta finally pay those taxes tomorrow. And then I hit the gym for the first time in 2 weeks. Then, I've got my usual crew of The Hawaiian and Student 001.

Tuesday June 14, 2:20 p.m.

I finally got in contact with the guy. After a lot of hemming and hawing for 5 minutes, we decided that I'll just come over to the tax office early tomorrow morning and pay the amount there. So hopefully by this time 24 hours later, I won't have to worry about taxes at least until next January. Ugh! Now, it's the immigration stuff next.

Tuesday June 14, 1:49 p.m.

Had the full crew of the Beehive today. Actually got to do some work with the text today. The ladies were shaking their heads in disbelief when they'd heard about the Jackson verdict. And now I'm hearing that a lot of the jurors believe that he IS a molester but that the proof wasn't in the pudding. And apparently about half of the polled also feel the same way. I don't think it's quite over yet. I'm rather wondering where that family of grifters is now. Maybe they quickly skipped town to lay low before trying another con.

My tax odyssey continues. I tried calling that fellow who has apparently steered me wrong by saying that I could just show up at my bank branch and pay the taxes by just asking. Well, he's not there and I've called him twice. I'll give it one more shot and then I'll have to try that tax consultant whose name I got. It's rather frustrating.

Tuesday June 14, 7:42 p.m.

Well, I literally woke up to hear a barely-heard Fuji-TV reporter announce that Michael Jackson was found innocent on all counts. There is joy in Neverland! To be honest, I didn't think that Jackson would have been able to survive but that he did. I got up a few minutes later and switched over to CNN where of course it was a media circus to match all the llamas and Ferris wheels that could be found in Jackson's modest abode. It must've been a huge decision since the news has been given its full court press on Lou Dobbs of all shows. The crusader against illegal immigration ceded to the King of Pop!

Jeffrey Toobin spouted some stuff which made me wonder if he's just as naive as Michael Jackson. He was bleating about the fact that the media had already judged Jackson guilty months before today's verdict due to all the salacious gossip and accusations. Well, in a 24-hour news cycle world, Jeffrey, the sad fact of the matter is that every bit of that gossip fuels the CNN, BBC and MSNBC machines as well as all of those magazines and rags from TIME to The National Enquirer. As long as people's livelihoods are involved, you can bet that all of the speculation or mis-speculation will continue.

In any case, the court case of the decade is now over. Michael Jackson can now go home and play and the rest of us can go back to our originally scheduled lives.

Monday June 13, 8:55 p.m.

Cool but humid today. Still broke out in a good sweat. Despite the coolness, my apartment was back emulating an oven. I think the menu was roast pig when I got in.

Well, it was just The Matron at the mansion today, and she was 20 minutes late. Mind you, I did give her the full hour and a half. As is usually the case when I just have her, we eschewed the text and gabbed. Looks like her daughter will be the newest member of my ever-burgeoning flock of sheep. I managed to squeeze her in for Mondays right after The Company at the nearest Starbucks. My only problem is that I found out that that branch closes up at 8 p.m. instead of the Toranomon's more generous time of 9. Looks like once the daughter contacts me, I'll have to propose another site. Maybe we'll have to make it the upstairs Dennys, although I'm not sure how busy that place will be since it is a place to have dinner. Hmmm...what to do.

I went up to Huong Viet, the Vietnamese restaurant that The Madame, myself and a bunch of others from the old school went to a couple of years ago. I went for the reservations but stayed for the buffet. Pretty darn good, too, for a thousand yen. I had my fill of curry, mabo dofu, pho and assorted meats. I thought the rice was a little overly saffronized, though. However, it's just a small quibble. Not too many people there which was nice but then again I got there around 1:30, probably a good half-hour after the last of the lunch hour crowd had gone back to work. There was a video running of some Vietnamese popsters singing stuff like a cover of Kylie Minogue's recent dance hit. Not too much different from the stuff we get over here. I did get those reservations in at the cashier. I rather like my technique of making reservations directly at the restaurant. I can test the fare before I commit. Luckily, Huong Viet passes muster easily. Also, the place works as an alternate place for lunch on the occasional day that SIL doesn't come for her lesson AND The Chef can't make one of his creations. And in addition, it and Hansens are both within rock-throwing distance of The Company.

Afterwards, I did a bit of a walk to lessen my load; I usually don't hold back on buffets which is why I haven't gone to too many recently. I stopped off at a CD shop before taking a look at the old Kinokuniya store on the main Shinjuku strip. Then, I just walked it back to the Starbucks near The Company for a Tazo Chai Tea Latte.

I got to the Company at about 4:30, my usual arrival time. Junior showed how much of a class act he was by standing up and thanking me for helping out on those translations. There was a story behind that after all. Apparently, the sad sack of The Company, a guy whom The Iconoclast despised and whom The Prez regularly used as the staff whipping boy, finally got the axe several days before. As his last assignment, HE was supposed to have done those translations as The Company's only member with passable English ability. But apparently true to form, he left without doing a stitch of the work thereby necessitating my help. My very cynical mind tells me that the sad sack decided to use of one of The Seven Deadly Sins as a farewell present. As one of my adages goes: "It's always the quiet one..." The lesson itself was a run-of-the-mill operation with the one student who isn't Junior. As usual, not the greatest performance but we kept things going with some amiable talk amongst the work.

Got home not needing to have any dinner. I knew having that voluminous buffet was good for a reason. The Madame called up to say that Coca, that Chinese restaurant in Yurakucho, will be a good place for dinner on Thursday. I've sent out the blanket announcement concerning the dinner reservations for Sunday and even a little note about seeing "Revenge of the Sith" on the 10th.

Looks like I'm gonna have to get started on those plans for tomorrow. And I'll have to talk with Mrs. Travel about my tax situation. I'll see what she says about that tax consultant the tax office referred me to. If everything's OK, I'll see if I can make an appointment for Thursday morning or so.

Monday June 13, 8:22 a.m.

Yesterday was a rather hot and humid affair. I actually had to turn on the air conditioner for the first time this year but in deference to the exhortations of the government to prevent global warming, I've done my part and kept the temperature up at about 28 C. That might sound as if I was using the air con for no purpose. However, when my place actually can go into the high 30s easily, 28 is not too bad at all and it actually did feel rather cool...and not cold. In previous years, I've turned on the cooler at the frigid temp of 15 C and ended up having to shut down the bloody thing 30 minutes later due to frostbite.

Mom called me up...well, gave me a wake-up call. As mothers usually do, she advised me to put all those pancake mixes into the fridge so that the flour bugs don't get at them. She also told me that my sister-in-law is starting to show a little bump now. According to the doctor, there's an 80% chance that the newest arrival to the family will be a niece.

Basically my day just revolved around getting those translations finally done for The Prez. I gratefully sent them off yesterday and I should know the truth of my actions when I go to The Company today.

Looks like "The War of the Worlds" gang is in Tokyo. Spielberg, Cruise and Fanning all arrived with their smiles on "Full" mode at Narita. Of course, tons of people were out there to greet them. I'm sure Dakota Fanning may find her trip here to be a bit like Alice in Wonderland.

And finally, it looks like The Madam and I have started our renewed relationship on a good and fresh note. We are now the proud parents of a friendship. I can't believe all the drama that we've had on e-mail. I haven't even met the lady yet. But that will change since I may be seeing her on Thursday. Still not quite sure what to make of this