Cut and Paste

I could have saved Arsenal, claims Jens Lehmann

"I stayed here to win the Champions League and I saw good chances to play, but I have not had these [chances] and that makes me very angry," he said. "For me personally, it is a tragedy, particularly since I did not have a chance to prevent it," he said. I have had such thoughts [about being able to prevent defeats] ever since the coach took me out of the team following the 0-0 against Milan."

"To be sitting on the bench behind somebody who only started to play when he was 30 is not funny," he said. "I am very angry. If the coach had spoken to me before the start of the season then I would have been able to decide if I wanted to sit on the bench. He has a different opinion and I don't really believe he can be happy with it. If he has not seen it yet then he won't see it at the European Championships either if I perform well."

- If you need cheering up, Lehmann's the man to put a smile on your face.
Andy H, Galmorous Croydon

Revelation

I find nothing more challenging, driving, frustrating than expressing myself as precisely as I can, be it creatively, through some kind of medium, or god forbid, another language. I guess we borrow bits of everyone else's languages to make our own. Mums Dads friends old and new, ex-lovers and heroes, pulp-back or silver-screen. That occurred to me a few weeks ago.

THIS MORNING

I arrived back in Yamagata on the night bus at 5.10a.m. and got this far on I don't know what but there's a point when you break through fatigue and then can't see the next horizon until you realize it's already enveloped you and it's just a question of time bef

Tonight we welcomed the new teachers to Nanachu. The Head teacher changed. Out went Yoshida Kocho Sensei, prolific smoker, ex-baseball coach, in came Harada Kocho Sensei, ex-music teacher, prolific smoker, soba master. This last autumn and the one before he taught me and a bunch of other ALTs how to make soba. The year before last, me and he exchanged a bit of banter, as I thought him soba master drafted in for the day nothing more and he him me nothing, probably. We fingered flour and water together and trampelled and trammelled dough 'neath pin between board and all worked out specially well, more for the fact that I'd been paired with a teacher who aspired to retire and set-up soba shop than more for anything else. That was last year not the one before.

And then he ends up at the school I happen to be teaching at. Happy days, pink pinkety views of bulbs silently plucking darkness from the night sky one dot by eye by dot at a time, and we all roll on to the next venue with Abe Sensei leading the charge to I don't know what, he and I were both a a little drunk.

The station, I stopped to say hello to Tsutomu, who I hadn't seen in maybe 5 months. I try to catch up, too late.

卒業会

On Sunday the Third Grade kids will all file into the gym and do exactly like they practised today and yesterday and all week and then file out into the sunshine with a rub of luck, or rain, and then they'll go and school will seem hollow until the next new kids arrive in April.

Last year the teachers had trouble moving along the kids after they'd filed out (into the sunshine, as it happened), as they all hung about in front of the school taking pictures of each other. This year the graduates aren't allowed to bring their own disposable cameras. I thought about sabotaging this and taking and handing out disposable cameras. It's the biggest day of their lives so far for fuck's sake, why can't they frame the memory?

More than last year, I feel bound up with these kids. I'm really going to miss some of them. 咲子 and 千夏 are two, both of whom have kept up a daily English diary since Christmas time or thereabouts. Given their workload, that's a real achievement. They talked about how nervous they were approaching exams, how relieved they were afterwards, anxieties and fears about going to High School and lots about really good Japanese sweet things and cakes and mochi.

Both of them are in 3-2 class, with whom I ate school lunch this week. It's on a weekly rotation but Ogisou Sensei told me on Monday that I could pick the class and had no hesitations choosing 3-2. I ended up sitting near 咲子　for their final school lunch and I could tell she was squirming in her seat, not knowing what to say to me. She'd written once or twice about how she was sorry she couldn't explain herself better in person on such and such an encounter when I would meet her in the corridor or the teacher's room. I guess written relationships don't always translate directly in person, but then, I can't think what else would drive you more to conquer a language and squash it out through clenched fist in slurs and slang and jokes and that.

感謝会

I had two Thank-You Guy Sensei Ceremonies, one at Meiji Sho one at Osato Sho but not one at Dewa Sho don't think they like me too much there and besides, I only visit them twice a month or so.

First they plonk you on the stage, in front of a crowd of kids all buckled zipped bundled up in jackets for winter's last snap. Then there's flowers, some words from one kid shaking more than a rocket on re-entry, some words from the big cheese the Kocho Sensei, some words from you and off to teach the last lessons of the academic year.

Or at least, that's how it went at Osato Sho, anyhow. Note how dignified the exit in the picture above: escorted from the room, applause, smiles. At Meiji Sho, it was a different story. First we played a ジャケン大会- everyone mills like bugs caught in puddles until the music stops, and then rock-paper-scissors with the nearest person. Some of the crafty buggers loitered at the gym doors, avoiding everyone til the end and banking on one good rock-paper. The loser puts his arms on the shoulders of the winner...repeat, repeat, repeat until you have one giant great big long snake rattling around the gym bare big enough to fit everyone in that shape without one kid tugging away a little faaster half-way through and the thing snaps in two.

And finally. My exit. I knew what to expect this time. A long time ago we decided that 'Hope will kill a man in Yamagata' and it's become a buzz phrase these days. Spending a second year in Japan, however, you at least know what to expect, if not to hope for and that's better preparation than before.

So when the Meiji Sho kids formed a funnel between stage and exitdoor I knew what I had to do. One man. 250 kids. 280 some if you count the ones that ran down round from the start and joined the end again. All of them want to enjoy 'Touch Time' while I made my way from one end to the exit of the gym. Hands, slaps, pokes, tugs no don't that's my tie, five of them hauling you down by your arm, any show of strength and I'd probably have ended up hurling two away across the gym along with my cardigan sleeve.

POP ROCKS!

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Pop. Old pop new pop j-pop. And I think I like it!

樹氷