THE PAST TWO WEEKS

Some random events the past two weeks ...

- Rolled by lil Shu on my bike on my way to school in the morning. He asked if he passed my oral English class. I said probably. He was a bit worried being on the border. Then he went on saying it was kinda easy this time. I said, "yup, lucky!" then lil Shu replied, "thank you!"

- The other week stopped by the gym at school to see the bball boys, then my boy Mr. Nakata came up to me and said one on one. Mmmm .. Nakata is probably the Allen Iverson of our school team, but I said what the heck. Of course he whooped my ass, quick little bastard. Then to try to recover my pride I challenged him to a game of free throws, best to 10. But damn he matched me basket for basket, then came sudden death. Then damn I lost again, ha ha ha. It was fun.

- Its test time, and its been CRAZY! Had to give tests to all the 1st grade students, thats 12 class times 40 or so students, which equates to alot of fuckin tests to correct!!! Lucky there is Teranishi Sensei, my favorite guy at school, he is so nice to always help me out, probably my life saver. Even the other teacher Noma Sensei said oh did you finish correcting all the tests yet after one day? I laughed and so did Teranishi Sensei, who the hell can finish all those tests??? Then I asked him if he could help, of course he bailed and said he had other tests to do, whatever lazy foos.

- Damn I gotta input all those damn grades!!

- For the 2-4 class, luckily Mr. Miyahara Sensei is helping me out there. He is only a part time teacher and only about 70 years old but still genki and active! Plays golf like a young man every week. A good guy retiring this year, got him a nice black Nike Golf jacket for his retirement present. Nice guy, I like him. He even helped out to do all the grading for the 2-4 class. Nice!

- Well its a lot of fucking tests to correct, been trying to pace myself and relax, had a hard week last week preparing for the tests. Once in awhile I still think about Miyamoto Sensei. Even the teachers talk about him to me, slowly the memories come out. Sometimes I get some chest pains like I used to back in the days. I think its probably because of the death of Miyamoto Sensei and all this test stuff, so I have been trying to take it easy lately. Maybe I will check out a doctor over spring break.

- Snows been good this year. Went up 3 times this year. Brought some new rookies to the slope so they could feel the pain. Pretty good job, Dillon and Masa learned pretty fast, I think they can be pro in no time. As for Kayo we got her the finest state of the art snowboarding equipment in addition to the shortest legal board available, sometimes it looks as if she is riding a skateboard. A master of the leaf style. Next stop is the turn.

- Before the 2-4 test I asked the kids if they needed some help, but no one showed up. So I tracked them down. This isn't exactly the most diligent class but they got potential, they just need some help here and there. Tracked down Jimi and made him memorize a bunch of sentences. He did remarkably well, he went from a low score of 28 on the previous test to 49 on this past test. Pretty good I thought! Its a good start, because the average of this last test was 47, so he was a little over the hump. He is a good kid and Mr Miyamoto always looked after him. I will do my best to take care of him, I think he can do it.

- Lastly I was just chatting with the boys and girls bball team members. They are a funny bunch. Imade, Shuhei, Jun, and Saki. I was just clowning with them, teaching them about nicknames for body parts, trying to spice up school life. Then I remember the news that Jun is going to carry the sign for the baseball team at Koshien. So she is going to be on every TV and newspaper in the country. So I was just clowning with her about how the camera paparazzi will be after her and made some funny cameraman gestures, of course the boys were cracking up. Hahahaha. Can't wait til Koshien.