today

was a most eventful day. for some reason so many teachers wanted to discuss lessons, and me having to cycle all the way from school to the bank and back took a fair bit of time too.

i’m going home in dec/jan, and the SGD is so low now! or perhaps the yen is strong, but whatever.

much time was spent too, on recording my answers for the CLAIR translation and interpretation course. seriously, who these days still records to cassette tape? it’s such a huge hassle, and i had to go around the school finding a tape recorder that actually could do that well. and when i found one which another teacher had used before, i sat there for quite a while fiddling with the controls so that my recording could actually be heard, not to mention the time taken to rewind and playback to check the recording.

somehow, 2 drivers today also tried to knock me down by turning – dangerously! – when the ‘green man’ was on. that has to be one of the things that annoys me A LOT about japan, because all these idiots assume that just because the first batch of pedestrians have crossed, no other people would be using the crossing. i mean, cant you at least look both ways before driving?

ah ha, another thing that has been bugging me – classrooms with windows and doors wide open, yet with the aircon turned on. just about all the classrooms on the 4th floor in my school are like this, which is such a huge, huge waste of resources. and you have students complaining that they’re cold when the aircon is on, or students grumbling that they’re hot and stand up to lower the temperature while they’re in 3 layers of clothes in summer. or classrooms with the aircon set at 27, when simply opening the windows and doors would give you a nice, cool breeze that’s less than 27 degrees.

yet japanese keep talking about being “eco”, or environmentally friendly. pish pash.

* * *

on a happier note, the weather has cooled down – the nights are really cool and require a cardigan of some sort, and that basically applies when there’s no sun!

anyway, here are some pictures from outside my front door on a beautiful summer’s day. i’m glad the heat’s gone, but i know i’ll be miserable when winter arrives: