I went to Summersonic on Sunday with friends Oscar and Takashi. Was great. I saw a wide range of acts, but the highlight for me was meeting Naoko, the singer and last remaining founding member of Shonen Knife!!! I was very excited when I realised they were on the bill (couldn't read the kanji of their name on the printed ads, so I only realised they were playing a couple of days before while watching a TV special). Anyway, I caught Naoko some time after their show at the T-shirt stand and did some dorky fan talk and photo-taking. This Decemeber will mark 25 years of 3-chord style special girl punk from Osaka. It was really cool to hear the words, "minna-san, konnichiwa, shonen naifu desu." (Hi everyone, we're Shonen Knife) at the start of their set. I especially liked hearing E.S.P. (extra sensory perception... she has special powers!).

Metallica were awesome. I think they're pretty silly people, but they are incredible to behold on stage. And I saw a special treat - they played the entire Master of Puppets album (celebrating its 20th anniversary) and other old stuff. Japanese crowds are good - I comfortably got much closer to the stage than I could dare to at a Western show. Anyway... Kirk Hammett is a guitar freak! James Hetfield seems to have stopped adding an annoying wah! or yah! on the end of every line, so all in all... great! He seemed bemused by Japanese audience participation (or lack thereof) ...at one point when the audience was lit up he said: "Wow, there's a lot of people here... ...and it's really quiet... ... weird".

Also saw: Deftones, Ugly Duckling, Puffy Amiyumi, Kururi, M-Flo, The Feeling and a tiny bit of the Charlatans. Due to clashes unfortunately I couldn't see The Flaming Lips, Daft Punk or Devendra Banhart. Daft Punk (who dress like robots) or Metallica was a tough choice, but I'm glad of my decision. After 2 hours of sleep I headed off to work...

Just got back from 2 days of training on Shikoku island, in Naruto - the place with the whirlpools from my very first post. It was a strange time. It encouraged me, frustrated me and overall left me wanting to quit working for this company.

There was some useful stuff taught and some necessary drivel about business plans and strategies and then there was a whole lot of wasted time going over stuff that I've either already been told, or I've had to figure out myself over the last 10 months. I guess it's good for the new teachers though. It was good to meet a lot of the other people doing this caper and hang out more with established friends - quite a diverse group... but the overall community really got to me by the end of today and I was itching to leave.

It became a lot like school with petty clique-forming ... you know, the "cool kids", the clowns, the jocks, the dorks/ugly ones etc. Just like at school, I tried to avoid being in any of them and just mingle with whoever... I'll leave it to you to decide what category I fall under! As you can tell, I was less than thrilled about the training itself, but I was still put off by the whole air of people having a big laugh about their jobs. The company president is a demanding, angry gnome but he is right to demand that we do what we're paid for!

Having said that though, we were made to watch a rather comical speech of his on a large telly... I've never been so fascinated and bored at the same time. It was 90% unintelligble (but he was speaking English) and the remaining 10% seemed to be saying that we're not performing well because we haven't kept the bottom line squarely in our sights... PROFIT! If we don't do so we will "disappear". He exudes a certain something - charisma I guess, but yeah he speaks in a very fragmented, eccentric and undecipherable way. Beeezarre. I admit I did crack up when given a copy on VHS to take back to my school for safe-keeping.

So, in all I just found the whole thing a bit draining. On one hand I have the despot saying "make me more money!" plus the rigid mechanism set up in his image to do that ...and on the other hand I have the wearing cynicism of all the other foreign staff, having a laugh about everything, whether it deserves it or not. In the middle are the great Japanese teachers and managers who work so hard and complain so little, the rare inspiring foreign staff who really seem to care about what they're doing (hi Ian, if you're reading) and of course, above all that are the kids I teach. I think as much as I really like the kids, the end of this year will be long enough for me. I want out. It's been good and I wouldn't rule out spending more time in Japan, but yeah... enough!

When I'm done I'm thinking of seeing a bit of Kyushu (Nagasaki and Fukuoka) and maybe even a little of South Korea (a teacher at training told me that you can take a ferry from Fukuoka to Pusan in no time for a quick look around).

Anyway, I'll keep you posted...