Making a good first impression

My first day of teaching a brand new class at a university where I've never worked before coincided with the tail end of both an interminable series of 12-hour days and a typhoon that has been whipping hairstyles around Japan into a range of startling shapes. As I was wading across the road in front of the building, the latter snatched the umbrella from my grasp and hurled it inside out and into my face. Suffice to say, I was not looking my best by the time I reached the classroom. In the photos I got taken for my faculty card, I have one bag under one eye while the other half of my face appears normal, if somewhat pale - the overall effect being that of someone struck down by a virulent palsy. At the end of my class, one of my students grasped both my hands in hers and cried, "I am so happy to have teacher like you. You are cutie!" It's amazing what counts as cute in this country.

Brown-eared bulbul

Outside our window, Beast and I have some lovely trees and bushes. Thus, we are often serenaded by the whistles, chirrups, and squeaks of various birds. One in particular has a loud, whirring squeal that I've spent many an hour peering into the shrubbery from the bedroom window trying to ascribe to a species. At the weekend, we finally spotted it. I asked Knowledgeable Stephen at work about it today. He knowledgeably answered, "Sounds like a brown-eared bulbul to me" And he was, as usual, right.

Business bullshit

"...becoming a board member of a consultancy group that helps corporations leverage their internal diversity, develop effective corporate citizenship strategies and find creative means to develop successful paradigms for corporate and social interaction..."

This is an extract from an application essay for Harvard Business School. The book I read it in described the essay in question as "providing a poignant illustration" of how the HBS MBA program would aid the applicant in achieving his goals. The essay was, thus, successful and the applicant was accepted onto the Harvard MBA course. To me, it is a poignant illustration of the kind of meaningless crap that passes for communication in the business world. What the fuck is "leveraging internal diversity"? How does one go about "developing a paradigm for" any kind of interaction? What is it the writer actually does? Perhaps these people can't risk speaking normally in case others realize that they are earning a fortune for telling us nothing of any obvious value in a language we don't understand.

Puffy

I'm not dead, just horribly busy. I'm a bit worried about how I'm going to manage when those third-year essays start hitting my inbox.... Anyway, in the last moment of free time I had, Timorous Beast and I set out on our third attempt to hike from one mountain to another, but again got there too late and realised that we'd still be deep in the woods come the witching hour. A swift change of plan saw us climbing three mountains and still getting on the bus home before dark. By the time we reached Tokyo again, my ankle was puffy, my face grimacy and my belly rumbly, so we hobbled to the lovely Fujimama's for a plate of char-grilled veggies and eight glasses of wine. What? I had to numb the pain.

Menage a trois

The weather in Tokyo is simply not condusive to a good sex life. For 4 months of the year, it's too hot to touch another human being and for another 4 months, it's too cold indoors to remove any clothing. Imagine my delight then, at the sudden change of seasons, bringing torrential rain and temperatures of 18 degrees. Ideal weather for spending Sunday morning snuggled up in bed with Timorous Beast, Dan Rhodes (me), Henry James (Beast) and a nice pot of genmai cha.