Stephen Sensei's Most Listened To # 9

Sly - THE CAT EMPIRE

Nothing much to be said on this great aussie band other than they are awesome to see live! great track! puts u in a great mood guaranteed and u'll be wanting to do those awesome dance moves towards the end of the track. U MUST AT LEAST CHECK OUT THIS SONG! U WILL LIKE IT!!

...On a much brighter note....

at least having scenery around like these fotos i took yesterday at work, puts me in a good mood. While its not cherry blossom season just yet, a few trees have been sprouting up around where i live. here are some awesome pics (if i do say so myself) that i took. please tell me which is the best foto.

i think this one is the best

along with this one with the dam in the background

PISSED OFF!!!!!

Fucking stupid work! The people in my BOE are fucking retards. Last night, I hear a rumour from one of the other ALTs in my city, Erinn, telling me that all of us 3 ALTs' positions are yet to change again. And what i heard has really made me worry about what im going to be doing for the next year or for however long this change is going to last. Today, whilst teaching in Tosayamada, i decided to go into the BOE to see if there was any truth to the rumour i heard last night. It was all true!

So this is what i have been told. They are changing our positions so they can stop me and Erinn from teaching in our towns more than what they are doing now. At the moment we all work at least 2 days a week at the primary schools in Tosayamada, and the rest at the primary and junior high schools in our own towns. And this is absolutely fine, whereas ADAM (AKA KNOBCHOPS) has it the easiest and is only working at one school in Tosayamada. Anyways.....
The changes under consideration are as follows:

ALT JOB # 1
There will be one ALT who will work at all the schools in Kahoku and Odochi. They both have one primary school and one Junior high school. And this will be rationed out to 3 days a week in Kahoku and 2 days a week in Odochi. So this means the BOE (ie the bitch of a BOE HEAD) doesnt like where Erinn and i live so shes not gonna let us teach there anymore.

ALT JOB # 2
There will be one ALT who will only work at Kagamino Junior High School all week. This junior high is in Tosayamada (the bigger town) and will no doubt be going to Adam yet again.

ALT JOB # 3
There will be another ALT who will only go to all the primary schools in Tosayamada, meaning that Erinn or I might have to move there. At the moment i can only see Erinn or myself doing this job so i would really like to know who's going where. This job will entail going to Yamada Primary (which i already go to) once a week, Kuzume Primary (which i go to) once a week, another primary (i dont go to once a week) and the other two days rotating around the other schools.

None of us no where we are going to be assigned as they are still planning the changes. But with less than a month now until the new school starts, i wish they would pull their finger out of their arse because i would really like to know. to them, its not a big deal. hey, they havent even bothered to ask us if we agree or have any opinions ourselves on the change, but hey, were foreigners in Japan and have absolutely fuck all of a say in the matter. i had to go there today to ask them if we could possibly sit down and discuss this and they told us to wait until they had finalised everything and until after all the graduations are over with, which leaves them with the 2 weeks in the spring break before school goes back to tell us. that really is going to help u fucknuts! Most of us ALTs will be travelling during the spring break here so we wont be able to sit down with each other at all during the holidays.

I swear to God this has made my day! how retarded do they have to be to make these kinds of changes at this time of year, just a few weeks away from the new school year. They have been thinking about how they can change our roles for at least half a year now and havent come up with anything concrete or found the need to tell the people in question about their ideas for the change. So fucking unprofessional!

Stephen Sensei's Most Listened To # 8

Monsters - SOMETHING FOR KATE

heres a band i recently started listening to again. they are a great aussie band who i have seen numerous times. they are quite an easy band to put on the stereo and chill out to. To stick em in a genre id have to say they are a rock band with a mellow element. this song is quite good and from their 3rd album Echolalia. I tried to find a song from their 2nd album Beautiful Sharks, but i couldnt find anything to put up. I recommend tho having a listen to some of the songs off their 2nd album coz it really is a beautiful album to listen to and u will find urself singing along to many of their songs.

Hanshin Tigers Baseball Lash Weekend 2007 AFTER PARTAY PICS!!!!

anyways, so after we all got back to flintys we had chilled out for a bit before we headed off to a nice italian restaurant for some food and all the booze we could fit in in two hours. many f an intellectual conversations were had as well as some food and then we headed off for karaoke and went to the booth we trashed the year before after the hanshin game. the owner actually let us pissed gaijin back in. here are some fotos i think noone will get angry at me by putting up.

heres me looking quite intellectual with the reading glasses i found. apparently they keep spare reading glasses in this place so the old people can read the karaoke book. anyways, i may look sober here but i really wasnt
heres a sexy foto of some of the girls!
and i think im trying to lead the people into singing along with me
everyne look at the camera!
ur still not looking flinty!

i think any foto after this one i took i am banned from posting about so....

heres the sea of people who crashed at flintys place. thanks again flinty and karen for letting us stay

....somehow the glasses found their way home with me. ooowwww!! headache

some incoherent rambling...

it had been brought to my attention that all i do on this blog is post about me getting drunk with my mates on the weekend. while everyone is entitled to their opinion, what the hell else is there to do in Kochi other than getting on the piss occasionally with your mates? there is nothing wrong with it unless it is in moderation....hehe. hello people, we do live in the Drinking Prefecture of Kochi so i say do as the Romans do while your here. I've met heaps of great people and friends while being here in kochi because of a few bevvies. doesnt make me an alcoholic now does it? it is just part of the culture here in japan. and while most of the people in my town think i drink every night, i am continuously telling them i dont, which is the gods honest truth. during the weekdays, i never feel the need to touch a drop unless invited to an enkai or whatnot. other than that, on the weekend in order to keep my sanity for being in the sticks all week, i often go out for a few cheeky beers like any other person my age would do with their mates.

I am here to assist in teaching english and to help internationalise some of the people in my town. This cannot be done in the school alone and so occasionally i go to the local waterhole and start chatting with the locals. for such a small village and there being a lot of old people here, i think my village has slowly become quite accepting of its local foreigners who have called this place home over the past 8 or so years. dont get me wrong, there is still a long way to go but just the fact that people come up to me and arent afraid to talk to me, signifies how the JET programme has had some kind of an influence in japan. and being in the inaka, that is a fucking huge step for the folk here.

take this as an example, last weekend while at the local pub, before the place closed, some guy there that i had passed in the street and exchanged greetings with every now and then invited me back to his place to have a couple of beers with his wife. we talked about heaps of cool stuff, they asked me about where i live in oz and what it was like etc. it was probably the closest thing these people would ever have to going overseas. they in turn told me a few things about Odochi here that noone had ever told me about. it was cool. u would never have this kind of experience in Australia, because people just dont trust each other there.

but then u have some people here that just think all gaijin need to be put on display and be made a big spectacle out of. we are sometimes the source of conversation for japanese people and it makes me sad sometimes to be a part of. especially for some of the people here who dont know the local dialect. they want u to speak in english to them and think we're so cool if we say "HELLO. HOW ARE YOU?" and there are others who just blurt out random english to be cool in front of their friends and the foreigner. then u have the ignorant people who think we are aliens and feel the need to feel ur teeth to see if our teeth are similar to the more superior japanese person. but these kind of people can be found anywhere in the world.

anyways i enjoy posting about my nights on the town with the boys as im sure those who were invloved enjoy reading them and checking out the fotos i put up. at least i will have something to look back on when im in another part of the world somewhere doing something else.

They Took Our Jobs!!!!

DERKA DERRRR!!!!