Merry Christmas from Japan

Here's what's been taking up our time back at the ranch:

Did you spot Emma and K-chan? Me as Father Christmas?

Katherine's piano show

Sorry to be late posting this, but here is Katherine playing La Ra Du (is that spelt right? - only know it in katakana). Take it away K-chan:

Did I forget to mention...

...it was Katherine's birthday last week? To celebrate, we went to the karaoke, but I promised Yoshie I wouldn't post the compromising video, so instead, here are the girls with the cake. You have been spared the worst.

Sweet dreams

Younger daughter: Mum, my friend has hip hop every Thursday. I want hip hop too.
Mum: Well, we'll see. Are you sure you like hip hop?
Younger daughter: Pleeeeeeeeeeease mum, you know I like any kind of sweetie.

Meet the new member of the family

It's a nine-year old Nissan Tino, which the kids have christened "Pandi" for its resemblance to a Giant panda. Hope the world's oil supplies last for a few more years.

Please do it at home. Like Tower English!

Wow. Has it really been since August that I've posted anything here? Sorry folks, if any of you are still reading this.

Well, I've been doing my bit for Queen and country, running the Teganuma Eco Marathon at a snail's pace and been a bit busy with other stuff. While I've been using the internet to - how you say - goof off? I've had a brainwave and thought, why not use my newly acquired knowledge of cheap digital cameras and free uploads to YouTube and do something worthwhile-ish for the business (You know, Tower English? The best darn tootin' English conversation school in Kounoyama no less).

Here's my latest wheeze. I do look a bit pasty and I was a bit subdued as it was after midnight when I filmed myself, but I'm hoping I'm onto something with 3-minute English lessons once a week as a way of promoting the school on its blog (over there on the right) and having fun making them. Whaddaya think?

Something else that's been taking up my time...

Here's what's been taking up all my time recently...

(Oh, best if you click on one of the buttons under the video to make it full screen!)

Why did the snake cross the road?

...to get to the other side. Oh, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Look what we came across the other day on our way to the lake. The fellow in the video told us that the snake is a regular visitor and all the neighbours are used to it.

You're not in Leicester anymore, kiddoes. 

Ode to enjoyable wastes of time

It's been a while, huh? Well, here's a little ditty that K-chan has been working on, y'all may appreciate:

Happy meals

Who says McDonald's is bad for kids (errr....)? Here, the girls demonstrate the play equipment at the Abiko branch. It always strikes me as odd that the packaging on the Coke and Double Quarter Pounders with "Cheese" have pics of Olympians engaged in heroic pursuits. Still, the kids enjoy it and the Happy Meals with free toy must keep thousands of Chinese peasants gainfully employed. Oh, Emma's sweatshirt was a present from Ba-chan, so no nasty comments please.

Don't throw Easter eggs in grass houses (or something)

Hello folks. Happy Easter, I'm a bit busy (as always) but check out the pics here of yours truly and the "double kids" of Abiko doing an Easter egg hunt on the roof of the Abiko library (it's a grass roof - you gotta see it - right here).

Rocking and rolling (the dough)

Hey there, betcha thought I'd forgotten about you? Nahhhh, 'course not. Here's a little Sunday bread-making to warm your hearts.

I told you there would be fewer posts and more of the kids...

One year older, one year wiser

As the kids say, OMG OMG - I've only gone and missed a key anniversary. Yep, this blog was one year old as of March 2nd. Dang.

This blog has been theraputic for me, allowing me to find my feet in this odd brave, non-English-speaking new world I 've found myself in, and it has allowed me to keep contact with the old one. Recently, the posts have been fewer. Does this mean I'm more at home now?

Maybe.

Certainly, the newbie "Wow, look at this crisp packet, isn't it peculiar" phase has passed. And I've lost any appetite for boosting hits at this site. If I may lapse into a little French, the raison d'etre has changed for this blog. Now, I'm not quite sure what the raison is for it, it may be completely d'etred, but T-Tales is still a loyal friend, and one that I am happy to return to when my other blogs are not the right place for my thoughts. Don't wish to sound pretentious, but, dear readers, you have a right to know what's what.

So what to expect for the next 12 months at T-Tales? A little more introspection and maybe fewer posts, and more of the kids. Don't say you weren't warned.

Message from the President

Recovered from the rock and roll archive...

Yes, there it was in all it's faded glory. Here's a transcript of what Sherriff-sensei said (or meant to say):

Sherriff-sensei: Hello (applause). Let me introduce myself, I'm Patrick Sherriff. Nice to meet you. In 2007, I escaped from Britain (laughter), that's why my Japanese is not very good, my guitar playing is not very good and my singing is no good. But, I'm very good at being taught, er, teaching English. My conversation school, Tower English's phone number is 04-7100-1235 (laughter). Do you understand?  Let me repeat... do you have a pen? 04-7100... OK, with apologies to Mr Lennon...

Miyauchi-san: Got to sort my strap out... time for a commercial break. Let Mr Sherriff talk to you...

Sherriff-sensei: Nice weather today, isn't it? ... OK, Let's start the lesson.

(Well, despite battling a drooping microphone stand and an urge to sing flat, it wasn't too bad...)

After dinner entertainment

In a little over 36 hours (that's a sun-down and a half in old money) I'll be strutting my stuff as a bone fide Foreign Entertainer, singing and dancing for my supper. But before I do my take on Hey Jude by the Beatles and Sing by the Carpenters (there was no avoiding it) here is a warm-up act with Emma's own version of Hey Jude and Katherine's Ponyo Ponyo routine she is learning at school. Take it away girls:

 

The week that was

Well, what news to report? It's been a week since the last post, has there really been nothing worth mentioning? Probably, but that never stopped me before. No, I've been helping out Our Man in Abiko at his blog so there's been little of the candle left to burn at either end. Anyway, here's the week in review chez Sherriff:

• Taught loads of lessons.
• Ran round the lake twice (once with shacho)
• Giri-no-shacho has also discovered the joys of walking round the lake and has one of those step counters. She maybe overdid it a tad, coming back after six hours one afternoon - her step counter read 40,000 and something.
• Found a guitar shop in Kashiwa - the nearest big city - and rediscovered the joys of staring at beautiful guitars I can (still) never afford to buy.
• Rehearsed twice for the upcoming gig.
• Watched the final episode on cable of the first series of Life on Mars (was there a second? Yes, yes, we're a couple of years behind over here).
• Had a Valentine's lunch at our local Indian (actually Nepalese) restaurant with 13 of our students (so they could practice their English! No, really! (And it was fun, too - see the pictures here.)
• Went round the lake with the family (see above).

That's it. Hope to get back to you in less than a week...

Take a sad song and make it, er, better?

Sherriff-sensei's stage debut nears (just a fortnight to go) so he got his guitar and blues harp out for a little pre-practice practice (the organiser was coming round in 30 minutes). Maybe you are supposed to practice more than 30 minutes a week, still here's the show so far:

By the way, Yoshie remarked that usually parents video their kids, not the other way round. There's probably a darned good reason for this, as you can see. Roll on the 22nd!

Once more, with feeling

Just figured out how to upload to Youtube, which means this here video is now global, baby. Wow. Anyway, it shows a bossy but quite good older sister showing the ballet ropes to a younger, but quite forceful sister - all in our living room/classroom. 

Compare with here, from half a year ago.

Mission less impossible

News just in, I've been given a reprieve from my mission impossible... I just have to mime along to "Sing" (La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la). Then, one blast of me blues harp (that's harmonica to you non-Mississippi Delta blues aficionados) and the boss of the show agreed to my sheepish request to jettison some of the more difficult B sus 4 F#Minor-0nce-removed chords in Hey Jude, and turn it into a (simple) bluesy romp ala Status Quo. Rockin' all over the world! Just got to work on the singing part. Why'd McCartney have to sing so darned high anyways?

My home is my castle

So, you don't post anything for a week and when you do, all I get is a picture of the side of a block of flats? Yes, rubbish eh? Well, I've been a bit busy what with teaching (got three new students signed up this month - don't they know there's a recession on?), doing unpaid work for Our Man in Abiko (go on, cut and paste that into google and see what you get) and now practising to play Hey Jude in front of hundreds of people (maybe). I got roped into playing in a family's community-centre variety show after my protestations that "I'm not very good" were taken as modesty, rather than the truth that they really were. The organiser, the father of one of my students, then told me I also have to play Sing by the Carpenters. In Japanese. The Beatles have a song for it: Help! Oh, and I ran a 10k race on Sunday - time was 52 minutes, since you ask.

Anyway, so what's with the side of a building? Well, I noticed it while dropping the youngest off at nursery the other day. Just thought the, how you say, utilitarian nature of the corrugated aluminium walls contrasted oddly with the flowery name. Allow me to crop a little closer...

So long, W.

I don't know if I should stay up for the Obama coronation - it's at 2am local time - but I think I probably will, there's so little else worth watching on TV, don't you know. In the meantime, ya'll might enjoy this little game I found on my virtual journeys. Will Obama prove to be a let down like Blair? Probably, but then he doesn't have to do much to be better than the last guy. Here's hoping for the best...

 Goodbye Mr. Bush
Bush goes away from the White House... Tell him goodbye YOUR WAY (throwing boots, eggs, daisies or candies) This is a multi-highscore and cumulative-score game!

First day at nursery school

Sorry for not posting much recently, hope this makes up for it.

Natural selection

Here's a picture I snapped at about 4.45 pm on the seaside at Kamakura on New Year's Day that I forgot to share with you all. It's a little taste of the forces of nature, which we gave thanks to at Kamakura's largest shinto shrine below, wishing for a lucky new year in health, business and miscellaneous life, with several thousand other folk. In order to do that, we were shunted around by loudspeaker, in a very unnatural way:

Far better was a little local shrine a stone's throw from where we were staying, where, apart from an impatient foreigner (me) we could get on with it at our own pace:

Compare with the shrine round the corner, back at the ranch, by clicking here.

What we did on our holidays

1. Followed a map. Abiko is the red station with the arrow. Kamakura, our destination, is the last but one station on the bottom left. The journey took two and a half hours. The big circle in the middle is the Yamanote Line which circles Tokyo and is a bugger to get off when you have had a few. 

2. To get to our friend's house, we crossed over a river, and look what we saw. Nice colourful koi (carp). Can you see his black brothers? Can you see the photographer's shadow?

3. Watched the surfers waiting for their wave to come in.

4. So, this is the sea. We've heard so much about you.

5. Can you make out Mount Fuji? (Hint: It's the snow-capped mountain in the distance to the left of my head, between the green cliffs).

A very belated Happy New 'un

Here's the pesky video that refused to upload, anyway, without further ado:

A belated HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We just got back from Kamakura, a former capital of Japan back in the olden days before foreigners had been invented, so I haven't had a chance to wish you all a Happy New Year, allow me to do the honours:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I did spend the last hour trying to upload a nice video of the beach, but the system is conspiring against me, I will try again another day. As you would have been able to see, it was lovely, sunny, warm and full of middle-aged and elderly surfers. The place had a Bohemian feel to it, and was much like Brighton, apart from being sunny, warm and full of surfers, who incidentally would ride to the beach on bicycles with their boards held on purpose-made panniers. Oh, and Kamakura has a big Buddha. (Remember him?) It's been a full year since we were last there, so it is becoming something of a family tradition, though next year I'd love to be able to come back to the UK before I forget all my English.

Picture that, Mk iv

Picture 4: How old did you say you were?

Picture that, Mk iii

Picture 3: The only way is up

Picture that, Mk ii

Picture 2: Katherine all made up for her end-of-year ballet show

 

Happy New Year, all.