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?