Ely's gone back home yesterday and the weather's turned warm all of a
sudden. Trying to get back into the reality of life again after 10 days off
travelling around with my buddy. We went up to see Take, and among other
things, we:

-saw a samurai battle in Yonezawa
-onsened in egg smelling water
-drank a beer on the beach in Matsushima
-had a few nights out in Tokyo and slept in tubes
-saw the big crater hole inside of a volcano named "Okama" (if you know
Japanese, that's funny)
-saw the monkeys and Zenkoji temple in Nagano

I don't have a lot of energy back at school and a lot is on my mind with
being kinda homesick but wanting to be here at the same time. Classes are
OK, and today we did a lesson on "I like ___" and "I don't like ___". I
decided to show them a bunch of different samples of different styles of
popular Western/American music (here it's pretty much all J-pop) to see what
they liked and didn't like, and threw this together.

Rock
"Hard to Handle", The Black Crowes

Hard Rock/Grunge
"Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nirvana

Metal
"Fuel", Metallica

Punk
"Tough Guy", The Beastie Boys

Country
"Folsom Prison Blues", Johnny Cash

R & B, Soul
"I Got a Woman", Ray Charles

Blues
"There is Something On Your Mind", Buddy Guy

Jazz (Vocal)
"Autumn in New York", Billie Holiday

Jazz (Instrumental)
"Giant Steps", John Coltrane

Hip Hop/Rap
"Oh My God", A Tribe Called Quest

Electronic/Beats
"Kalifornia", Fatboy Slim

Funk
"Atomic Dog", George Clinton

Reggae
"Buffalo Soldier", Bob Marley

Ska
"Lyin' Ass Bitch", Fishbone

I thought they were pretty good examples ... anyway, surprisingly but also
not surprisingly I guess, it was the Coltrane tune that seemed to get the
highest ratings :)

Other than that, things are slow...but at least my students are keeping me
entertained, particularly the spikey-haired chunky kid who puked all over
his friends in the lunchroom yesterday - he was totally entranced by my
blonde arm hair today.