Andrew and Kathleen

Have you ever seen the movie Spotswood? It's about a time-and-motion efficient expert visiting a small moccasin factory in Melbourne. And obviously he brushes up against the quirky and extremely inefficient workers within. A good movie, and an interesting parallel to modern Japan. The expert, played by Anthony Hopkins, would have an absolute field day in Japan, as Time says in this article.

Although it sounds like a drier-than-dry topic, it's actually fascinating. In Kamoi, we can see this in action. At the supermarket, on every floor, there is a girl whose job it is to hold up a sign advertising the in-store point card. It's also done at the checkout counter, but we have 7 additional people alerting you to the fact that a point card exists. I counted at least 14 people who are either cooking and serving food samples, or just holding a little tray. Not really doing anything at all, really. In addition to the fact that, let's face it, it must be the most boring job on the planet, all it really does is bump up the price of all the groceries in the supermarket.

And it's not just me that's noticed.

Yesterday was my final day at Narusedai for the academic year. I was lucky, and didn't get an arse rocket (trust me, you don't want one)! Seriously, it was amazing how grateful the teachers and students were for my work over the previous 6 months - I didn't think I did all that much, but it was nice to feel like I've made a difference, no matter how small.

Unfortunately, I've come down with that flu that seems to have gone all over Japan in the last two months.

Going to war? Be prepared.

"Two people were crushed unconscious after a crowd of about 9000 men wearing only loincloths got out of control at an annual Naked Festival in central Japan."

Believe it or not, I saw this today in the Muckury.

After an extended period of time, Matt Magain has finally got his act together with Opinios, which is back and bigger/brighter/better than before.

Tsurukawa is the furthest school that I teach at - it's a 70 minute trip covering two trains and a bus. Unfortunately, I share the trip with a huge number of people heading to Shinjuku, in Tokyo, and so it is crowded, noisy, and generally not what you need first thing in the morning. I thought you'd be interested in seeing what a typical morning is like here.

In Japan, the katakana title of the Karate Kid is "Best-o Kid-o", which is in itself amusing. We rented out, at Kathleen's insistence, Karate Kid II, the one where he goes to Okinawa, and gets caught up in some turf war and... quite frankly, it's a crap movie, but it has some redeeming qualities. It made me laugh out loud, but not because there are jokes in it, oh no!

Reason why Best-o Kid-o is a crap-o movie:

• Japanese people hate this movie, because it's set in Okinawa. In Okinawa, everyone is a villager and works in the fields.
• All Japanese people speak native-level English. Riiiiiiiiight....
• They speak it with that stupid accent that Hollywood decided all Japanese speak with.
• The big boss wears a suit and dark glasses. If we were playing a movie-cliche-drinking-game we'd be passed out by the time this guy had made his third appearance.
• Ralph Macchio can't act. Our kitchen table is a better actor than Ralph Macchio.

Speaking of crap movies, Jackie Chan's Mr Nice Guy was on tv the other night. You know when the line "There are too many innocent people down there" is uttered by one of the bad guys that the movie is going to be awful. I like Jackie, but he is in some god-awful films.

If you want to see a really cheesy-and-proud-of-it movie, I recommend Forever Fever. Saw it in the early hours of New Years Day, and it was a laugh. Also worth watching is I Not Stupid - saw this last year in Kuala Lumpur and it was great.

While I'm talking about movies, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) was nominated as Best Animated Movie in the Oscars. It is very surreal but an absolutely stunning animation movie.

One of my JTEs (Japanese English Teacher) today asked me to write a farewell letter to the first-year students and their parents. Does he know something I don't?

On the web, there are a truckload of screeds from bitter ex-JETs or ex-ALTs. By far, one of the biggest complaints is that things happen that affect them, and they had no idea what was going on. This is one of those moments.

Headed to the Immigration department today, to renew my working holiday visa. I'm a big blouse when it comes to dealing with The Man, so I was a little nervous.

I got there at 1.45pm, and got the number from the little dispenser. 195. I looked at the number over the counter. 154. Great!

Since they only had one person on duty for my queue, and it was a seething mass of humanity in that room, let me tell you, the queue wasn't exactly speeding along. In fact, after 45 minutes, we'd only got up to number 158. Given that the place shuts down at 4, I was a little nervous. Seems like everybody took at least 15 minutes to process. Finally a few more public servants decided to pitch in and with 25 minutes to spare, I was finally at the front of the line.

"I want to extend my working holiday visa," I said to the Guy Behind The Counter.

"Passport and alien registration card," said the GBTC.

He took them, stamped my passport, and handed me a postcard. "Fill these out."

I wrote my name and address, and handed the postcard back. "When you get this in the mail, come back here." And that was it.

It took a minute to process after an hour and 45 minutes. Unfortunately, the process is only half-finished - I still need to go back!

To be continued...?

Japanese has three ways of writing (four if you include roman letters):

• Kanji - Chinese characters that are really hard to read and write unless you really practice;
• Hiragana - 46 characters that were pretty easy for me to memorise; and
• Katakana - these are used for 'foreign' words, i.e. te-re-bi = TV.

I hate katakana - it's impossible to remember, since each character doesn't LOOK like anything. Unfortunately, it's the most useful, since so many words are written using it. Which leads me to the point of this post.

Running out of milk, I ducked out to the 7-11. Picked up a carton of blue milk, as you can see to the right of this text. Unfortunately, since I have a really bad grasp of katakana, I didn't realise that I hadn't, in fact, got milk, but had picked up some burugaria yogurutu. Takes a bit of effort to translate this to Bulgarian yoghurt. Yum!

Little things like this are, depending on my mood, either really funny or another point on my stress-meter.

The yoghurt wasn't bad, very sweet (like everything in Japan). I really did want the milk, though.

It's definitely voting season here in Japan; every second morning at Kamoi station there's a politician on the megaphone talking to anyone who's interested (ha ha ha!). I have no idea what he's saying; whether he's making promises, talking about what he's done, or maybe even he's telling everyone that if elected, all the foreigners will be out on their ear.

Most politicians are part of a tag-team act; they'll have a few lackeys holding banners, and saying "Ohayo gozaimasu!" to anyone and everyone.

On the whole, I ignore them; but this morning one of the banner holders caught my eye.

"Ohayo gozaimasu!" he yells. I give him a quick nod; it's not everyday a Japanese person acknowledges you in the street.

As I'm going up the stairs, he triumphantly says, in his best, cheery voice, "Good morning!"

I was so impressed, I'd have voted for his guy on the spot!

Ah, we're a cynical nation...

Currently Tsurukawa is having a speech contest for the Grade 8s, where they prepare a speech in English, and I give them some suggestions, e.g. speak louder, watch for katakana, etc.

But I almost fell off my chair, when a girl announced that her favourite thing to do was to listen to music. Her favourite music was Bump Of Chicken. There is a band called Bump Of Chicken. Yeah, I know.