hey folks, long time no speak. sorry i've been so slack on the update front. guess i have developed an allergy to my desk and all it's attachments.

i have been going through employment hell but due some unexpected repercussions to some previous frangipani content i have been reluctant to make comments here about it (and in fact reluctant to blog much at all as it's not the first time i've had unpleasant incidents as a result of innocent blabs on the site). and besides, i had been moaning about jobs for a few months already and goddamn it gets boring reading someone else's moans.

but you're gonna cop it anyways. so the cool ALT (assistant language teacher) job i had lined up with the cool little company managed to slide from my grasp after a whole month of postponed, postponed, postponed waiting and a weeks worth of training. seemed they failed to negotiate the finer points of the contract with the board of education for that area. you can imagine how that made me feel. i had not budgeted for a month long holiday and living in inner city tokyo is not the cheapest of living conditions.... so some of my lovely flatties went halves in my rent for me and i hit the job boards again.

it is not a totally tragic situation as about halfway through april i realised that i could not survive any more no-income waiting. i applied to one of those shall-remain-nameless big english conversation school companies for a part time job in the evenings, which i started 3 weeks ago. and to be honest, for all the outlandish myths that circulate japan about these big companies, i have found this one refreshingly professional, fast, upfront and no bullshit - unlike the vast majority of piddling english education companies in tokyo.

i have spent weeks feeling like the star of a bad b-grade movie traipsing from one interview to the next, all over this huge city, on sardine packed trains and in dingy offices listening to appallingly bad english and reading badly written info packs, contracts and outlandish "rules" for teachers.

but last week, i struck a little piece of - temporary - gold. 2 days a week in a prestigious high school in one of my favourite areas: kichijoji, for excellent money. i love everything about this job! the location, the teachers, and most importantly: the kids. i am co-teaching with japanese teachers to 8 different classes in the 10th grade. the classes are huge - up to 45 per class, and it's really fascinating watching the way the dynamic works with that number of kids. there is still a remarkable sense of order, productivity and respectfulness. a lot of the kids at this school are "returnees" - kids who have lived OS, so the general level of english is quite high. a lot of the returnees love helping out their classmates with grammer and vocab, and having spent time OS they seem to be a lot more switched on than a lot of their peers. i was kinda scared about doing the high school thing, but i have been very pleasantly surprised by the liveliness and fun that both the teachers and kids have in class. really quite a wonderful experience.

anyways, this little piece of gold turns to brass in july and august when the school has it's big exams and then summer holidays. and i don't get paid when i don't teach. so..... i am scrambling together a motley collection of agencies and private classes to try to get me through till september. i really want to teach at this kichijoji school full time, so i'm going to be a model teacher for the next 6 weeks (have even brought home about 90 essays to mark before monday) and hassle them for something full time come september. please keep everything crossed for me. i don't want to keep working for the factory conversation schools for the rest of my time in japan!

in other news, everything else is hunkydory. my japanese is getting better. and my living situation is very excellent, it's so nice to have this little family to come home to every day. i always enjoy hearing other peoples stories, and these boys i live with all have very full lives. we spend a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table talking about life and recounting our daily adventures and misadventures. tim went drinking with miss japan last night, dave has a gorgeous boyfriend with whom he is madly in like with and a band that is getting heaps of gigs, gabe is having all sorts of girl/stalker/true love dilemmas, fern is enjoying a large range of date options for the first time in his life - and playing some great gigs, and seth really banged up his ankle at karate training 2 nights ago, poor fella.

been taking truckloads of photos and like i mentioned in the last entry, it's time to start culling the existing gallery. it's gonna be tough, it feels like pulling down some of the fujiyoshida photos will be pulling down the links i have to that beautiful time. but it has to happen, we all have to move forward.

now that japan is not all so new to me, i see that my photos are not so much about *japan* any more (sorry all you far away japanophiles). they are photos for the sake of a (hopefully) good image. but by default it is inevitable that most of my photos will be flavoured in some way or another by japan.

i've been really impressed with marks photos over at the new look vudeja lately, and my other two fave sites these days are a photo a day and making happy. it breaks my heart to see that mr j has pulled his site my private tokyo down. why, mr j, why?!!!!! anyway, for a list of other photoblog sites that have been rockin my world of late, check out my favourites list at photoblogs. you'll see a lot of lomo and toy camera sites - i find myself more and more entranced by the dreamy images produced by the toy camera range. and yet at the same time i fantasize about owning a leica digital slr. *drool. oh god damn how i need a full time job again.

ok, time to abandon the computer and make my way over to katherines place in kichijoji for a night of downloaded sex and the city and queer eye for the straight guy. thanks god for fibre optic and cable.