A day in the life of Tower English

• 7am Alarm goes off. Katherine is first out of the futon (the kids have snuggled between mum and dad sometime in the night).
• 7:15am Adults get up. Yoshie starts breakfast (toast for her, cereal for Dad and Katherine, rice bowl for Emma) Dad puts away kids' and parents' futons and then takes out today's permitted rubbish to the collection point on the corner (today it's burnable rubbish and garden waste). Find six perfectly good plastic plant pots that someone has thown out and liberate them from the rubbish, stashing them in our garage for future use. 
• 7:50am Two neighbourhood kids call for Katherine, they walk off together for school.
• 8am Yoshie walks to Katherine's school to take her turn reading a book to one of the four first-year classes. Dad finishes breakfast tries to read the Japan Times while battling with Emma to get her to finish her food/brush her teeth/go to the toilet/wash her hands/pick up her toys/read her book/stop colouring in her dolly's face with the whiteboard markers
• 8:30am Yoshie back from reading duties, we begin the great cleanup ready for playgroup - washing down the entrance hall and outside steps with salt water, vacuuming downstairs, mopping the floor and laying the ABC plastic mats through the living room, putting out wooden toys, guest book, money tin and name stickers and setting up the props we will need for the playgroup.
• 9:50am First of eight mothers arrives for the playgroup. Crank up the volume with Incy Wincy spider CD.
• 11:30am Playgroup finishes. Fishmonger arrives shortly after. Mother-in-law Michiko buys week's fish with proceeds from today's playgroup.
• 12pm Lunch. Today it's sandwiches and wheat snacks suspiciously like hula hoops, though Michiko can't face all the bread and has rice and seaweed instead. Emma wins how-many-hula-hoops-can-you-put-on-your-fingers competition with her dad.
• 1-1:50pm First class with K-san, a retired lady who is keeping her English lessons a secret from her daughter until she is better at speaking (her idea, not mine).
• 2-2:50pm Second class with K-san.
• 3-3:50pm Have business-English class with lady who is starting her new job at an English-speaking company in Tokyo on Monday. She will be fine, but just needs her confidence boosting. Meanwhile, Katherine has returned from school and Yoshie and the girls have cycled off to Dance Studio Nagaoka for Katherine's ballroom class (she's pretty good at the tango now.) 
• 4:30-5:30pm Give a level-check and free trial lesson to two retired ladies. Get them waving Hello and Goodbye cards stuck to chopsticks to the Beatles song of the same name, before training them to introduce themselves at a party. Yoshie explains what has just happened in Japanese and they sign up for lessons from July.
• 5:35pm Neighbour pops by with June's tuition fee for her son, and box of chocolate biscuits for being late paying.  
•  6-7.30pm I make sure yellow chain has been replaced across entrance to car parking spaces down the road that we've started renting for students. Pop in the shower with Katherine and Emma while Yoshie and her mum get dinner ready.  Today it's seashell soup, fried pork and vegetables in soy sauce, steamed rice and the chocolate biscuits which turn out to be individually wrapped fudge brownie cakes. Put the futons out for kids and their folks.
• 8-8.50pm Teach a very nice lady who lived in London  for a year. Teach new word "stoical" and talk about difficult vocab in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which she has just finished reading. Try to explain "His face was drawn, but the curtain was real." Meanwhile, Yoshie puts the girls to bed.
• 9-9.50pm Teach a salaryman a lesson on directions (go straight ahead/ the massage parlour is on the left next to the bank. Just joking, it is of course on the right). Meanwhile, Yoshie plans two kids' lessons for tomorrow and laminates anything she can get her hands on.
• 10pm I have a can of beer/update our accounts, think about two adults' lessons for tomorrow/look over Yoshie's plans, talk about ideas for the school (new lesson-in-progress sign for gate, shifting some class times) and do a spot of blogging. Yoshie sets up kids' class props. We're doing a treasure hunt tomorrow.
• 1am freetime!
• 1.10am bedtime.