Hana-mi

Toilet

My new apartment's toilet is amazing. Of course, being Japan, the toilet seat is nicely heated and a selection of water jets are available to spray your bum, with hot air to dry it afterwards. What really makes this the Jaguar of Japanese toilets is that it has an electric-motor powered seat. I press a button and the lid raises, closes and so on. What's more these buttons are available on a remote control. Yes a remote control.

A prize to anyone who can visualize a situation in which I might need to close (or indeed open) my toilet seat with a remote control.

There's so many buttons in fact that I'm at a loss at what they might be for. However, as this apartment was built for the Boss, maybe they have powerful functions. Maybe I'm turning the fountain in the quad on or off, or maybe one will reveal a secret chamber where the Harem waits, or will launch the emergency get-away rocket ship.

Charisma Man

A foreign man needs two things in Japan to be successful in love:

1) he needs to be foreign, and

2) he needs to be a man.

Check out Charisma Man , a hilarious and oh-so accurate piss-take:

Working in Japan

I didn't realise I'd actually sent that last post. So more details...

Basically now I'm going to be a Primary School teacher, in an immersion English school where I'm staying in Southern Japan. I start teaching in April, but am already going in every day to make name places and buy new play carpets for my classroom.

It's a good opportunity for several reasons. First, in terms of career, this is really good experience. Many people thinking about and designing government policy have never had to implement or deliver it, whereas after this if I want to work in Education policy, I can actually say I've known what's it's like to face a hoarde of children every morning. Front-line exposure straight away, not having to wait around for another year studying.

Plus I can get fluent in Japanese too. It's like building a house: go half way and there's not much point. I've spent the last year building walls, but unless I get a roof secured, I'm still going to get wet when it rains. My main interest is still foreign policy, and a languages still seem the only thing (other than luck) that really sets you apart in this area.

Oh yeah, I get a big apartment for free and a real wage for once. Small, tiny, tiny, factor. Honest.

At the end of the day though, the actual job itself is going to be really good. A big part of my CV seems to have been taken up children (YMCA, youth work, Barnardos etc) and with two teachers for parents (and one for a sister) it's clearly in the blood. It's going to be challenging (children will have zero English to start with) but satisfying I think. It's a good school and being a private school, they've got the resources to support the staff. It'll be a good job.

I come home for holidays in the Summer, Christmas and Easter. So don't worry Clare! (I miss you too. Really - so much to talk about)