I taught my first four classes on Friday and Saturday. I could have had more, but they're going easy on my until I get on my feet. Two classes were private lessons, one was a three-person class (it was supposed to tbe five, but two students didn't show; there's a flu bug going around) and one was a two-person class. Next week I'll have larger classes of six or eight. There are basically two types of classes. Round-Up classes teach specific grammar points, and tend to be smaller. Group classes centre around learning useful language for specific situations, and are called function-based classes. The point of both types of lessons is to get the students speaking as much as possible, and facilitating and correcting their conversation. I think I like Round-Up better, because it has more smaller activities and so doesn't get boring, and also because it's easier to help a smaller group of students. I was nervous for the first two, and the third was okay, but I mixed the order up a bit and Miyumi-sensei (the head teacher) was observing, and my last private lesson went really well.

On Thursday night after work Neal, whom I'm replacing here, took me out with his friends from the school to a place called Shirakoa (sp?), a late-night restaurant. Two of his students, Nauko and Yuko, from Encounter, a high-level group class, came and we were joined by another girl whose name I didn't catch and Hironobu, a good friend of Neal's. Ryoko, the school's Branch Manager, joined us later. Nauko, a small, round, bespectacled woman, took charge of the menu and soon the table was covered with plates of food to share: fondue, tomato and shrimp salad, sushi, sashimi, yakitori and stuff I've never seen before. I snacked on edamame (salted soybeans in the shell; you squeeze them out like peas from a pod) and ate a lot of organ meat, washed down with Kirin draft. The conversation moved back and forth from English to Japanese. Neal made a farewell speech in Japanese, which he translated as saying he had been nervous about his replacement, but that he trusted me and thought I would do a great job. I needed to hear that, and I was grateful he said it. The students were really warm and friendly. I get the feeling social life for foreign teachers tends to revolve around the school, especially in a place like Matsue, which is described as a rural city and doesn't have: a) a lot of foreigners, or b) a lot of English-speaking residents. Most of the other foreigners in town are teachers for rival companies like NOVA, and AEON kind of discourages hanging out with them, or for JET, the high-school foreign teachers program.

Last night (Sunday), I went to see one of my university students, Yuri, in a break-dancing show and contest at Shimane University. Wow. It was fun, but I felt very different there, a Canadian woman in my thirties in my decidedly unfunky clothing, compared to these young, hip Japanese kids. So I felt awkward at first, but got more comfortable watching the show, SCRUMBLE 6, a university break-dancing club in its sixth year. The dance groups, with names like O.K.GO, VIRGIN IN PANTHER (a girl group), YOYO and EXPLOSION, danced to American hip hop and dance music. The girls, for the most part, were doing the sexy, synchronized rap video thing, but some broke out to do some really cool stuff. Yuri's group, CLAYMORE, was an energetic group of guys with probably the most skill and style of the evening. In black and red shirts, jackets and pants with streaks of paint on their faces, they took turns breaking out of coordinated dance moves to do individual solos. At the end, there was a break-dancing dance-off. No girls took part, I noticed. Two teams would stand on either side of a circle, and taking turns, members of the team would "do their thing" in the centre, trying to top the others. They would taunt and pose in full testosterone mode, but at the end the losers congratulated the winners like buddies. The dancing was extremely athletic; I was impressed. I left before the end, but Yuri's team had won their first round; I'll have to ask on Wednesday how it went. Yuri seems really quiet and introverted in class, but he's "all in" when it comes to dancing.

I didn't make it up to Lake Shinji yesterday, so I'm going to go this afternoon. The weather so far today is nice; the sun has come out and the river is sparkling. I've never been in a place where the weather changes so rapidly, though. Yesterday, in an hour-long walk, it was sunny, then it rained, then the sun came out, then it hailed, then it rained, then it was sunny again. I walked through Kiti Park and stood on a sunny bridge watching the bluish, rounded mountains to the north draped in rain and wisps of mist. The tennis players in the park ignored it all and just kept playing. I'm picking up the things I still need here and there. My kitchen supplies are pretty basic; I boiled spaghetti this week in a wok. So I'm an a mission to get everything I need this morning.