I have some very sad news.  JJ’s English Cafe is no longer. 

I’ve just gotten off the phone with my partner, Junko, and after a long conversation we decided that the best thing to do is disband the whole operation.  It seems that there was a lot of trouble regarding the various members, some of whom simply couldn’t get along with each other and kept bending Junko’s ear about it and demanding favourable treatment.  There was also trouble regarding the lack of parking spaces.  I’m sorry to say that Junko kept most of it from me, hoping that it would resolve itself in time, but now she can’t take any more and has decided to bow out.  I don’t want to give up, but obviously I have no choice, as technically speaking JJ’s existed only on her property and the clientele was composed mainly of her friends and neighbours, and naturally she’d rather stay on good terms with them. 

Bizarrely, the two opposing “factions” want to continue taking English lessons with me – obviously in separate locations, and on separate days – and also the mums-and-babes want to start an English playgroup.  We are all going to work out the details next week … it looks like I’ll be even busier than ever from now on.

With Junko’s blessing, I’ll keep JJ’s alive.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Feeling sad, but kind of excited, too.

I have a brand new friend-of-a-friend-type-friend who sometimes confides in me about her unsatisfactory marriage. That’s no problem, I’ve heard it all, especially in this land where most people still believe that even a bad marriage is better than no marriage at all.  Nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, according to her, hubby is something of a wastrel who can’t hold down a job for more than a few months at a time, and regularly racks up debt betting on the horses, whereas she’s a university lecturer who works at three different teaching jobs to support their little family and pay off the money he owes.

To me, she seems like such a superbly capable woman, and he seems like such a tosser, that the other day I curiously asked why she stays with him. Her reply: “Well, he’s great with our kids … and the sex is so damned good.” I nearly fell out of my seat with laughter! Imagine one of my stuffy Kobe matrons saying such a thing! No, you can’t imagine it, and neither can I.

Unfortunately for me, that very night we all went out to a restaurant for my birthday party (well, one of them), and the husband happened to be sitting adjacent to me. All I could do was stare at him – paunchy, balding, and very shy – as he quietly sipped his beer and think: so you’re a sex machine, are you!

How I wish she’d never told me that.

You know when news of swine flu broke out? Well, the first thing I did was rush straight out the supermarket to buy all the pork cutlets I could carry. You see, I had a feeling that pork would be marked down by 20-50 percent, and I was right. Now my freezer is stuffed with it.

But the truth is, I don’t really like pork. I prefer chicken. So I’m kind of hoping for a resurgence of the bird flu thingie. Hey, lemon = lemonade. What’s wrong with that?

The world’s most liveable cities are also the world’s most boring?  I’m afraid I agree with this assessment, at least in the case of Auckland.  Dull place, dull weather, dull history, dull culture, dull little monolingual people living dull little monochrome lives (which can’t necessarily be said about the other main contenders, save Vancouver). It’s a great place to retire … but not a great place to live.

Stormclouds are brewing, along with the coffee.  Recently two distinct cliques have formed amongst the customers (keep in mind that they’ve all known each other casually for several years, but were only thrown together in close quarters since we started inviting them to JJ’s) and now they’ve started to turn on each other.  Accusations of favoritism have been bandied about in my and Junko’s direction, which is utter bullshit – on the contrary, we bend over backwards to avoid showing favoritism to any one customer or clique.  I think it’s connected to the outdoor lesson we had in a local park one day a few weeks back, in which some of the customers took part, but others didn’t.  There’s a lot of other stuff swirling about too, that I know nothing about and don’t especially care to. 

The situation is not that bad yet, but it’s gonna get that way if they don’t work it out.  I plan to stay well out of it. 

Women!  Bah.

I have updated Ken’s web page Ken Can (which one of Dan’s friends dubbed “Ken’s Can”). It has info on our upcoming (tomorrow) trip to Seattle, and the Purple Stride race this past weekend. Things are rocking along very nicely, provided we don’t all get the swine flu. I’m getting prescriptions filled today for Tamiflu, just in case. Ken’s actually going to wear a mask on the plane and in the airports. He really can’t take coming down with flu.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an alarming missive in the post. It purported to be from a legal firm in Tokyo, and informed me that I was being sued by some unknown party, and would I please contact the firm at the first available opportunity! I was extremely shocked when I read it – it’s the kind of threatening official letter that makes your heart stop for a few seconds, while you rack your brains thinking of who you’ve managed to piss off in the past few months (a considerable number of people, in my case). After examining the letter, I realised that although my address and contact info was correct, my name had been misspelled, and that in all likelihood the document had no legal validity at all.

I didn’t understand most of the legal terms, so I showed it to the Sonbeam, who laughed and told me it was a scam. To prove his point, he checked a Japanese scamwatch website which brought up exact copies of the letter, along with other official-looking forms commonly used in scams (unfortunately these scams almost always target lonely old folks sitting on large life savings, and are often successful in swindling them out of vast sums of money). I laughed too, relieved, and ripped up the letter.

One thing that still bugs me immensely is that my “wrong” name (Sumiko Cross) is one that I used on one occasion to register in a hotel last year, when the desk clerk got the spelling wrong and I couldn’t be bothered to correct him. It’s obvious that my personal information was sold, either by the registrar, or the hotel. There’s no other way that the company could’ve gotten hold of my address. Shouldn’t this kind of information be private? Aren’t there laws about this kind of thing? Should I complain to the hotel?

One of my ladies had a troubling and embarrassing experience, which she was good enough to share with the class last week. 

Recently an old college friend contacted her out of the blue, and said that she was going to be in Osaka on business for a couple of days soon, and why didn’t they have lunch and catch up on old times?  My student (whom I’ll call Reiko) was extremely pleased to hear from this friend (whom I’ll call Seiko).  Even back in college, Seiko had always had a glamorous and mysterious air.  After graduation, she had moved to Tokyo and begun working for Japan’s biggest lingerie firm.  Reiko – by her own admission a “boring housewife” – was in awe of her, and flattered that Seiko even remembered her at all, let alone wanted to meet up with her.

On the appointed day, Reiko duly went to meet Seiko at the bullet train station, and they took lunch together at Kobe’s oldest and best-est backerei restaurant.  Seiko was as beautiful and elegant as Reiko remembered, but disturbingly could talk about nothing but work, money, work, money, work, money, and the business world in general.  Reiko, a full-time mother, is not really a part of that world, and felt uncomfortable discussing these matters – not that she managed to get a word in edgewise (for example, when she quietly mentioned that her beloved father had died last year, Seiko merely shrugged and continued talking about herself).  Finally, as lunch wound up, Seiko invited Reiko to come and take a look at her room in one of Kobe’s most luxurious hotels.  Full of curiosity, Reiko eagerly went along. 

What happened next was very upsetting for her.  As soon as they got into the room, Seiko unpacked dozens of items of very expensive lingerie, and began to subject the hapless Reiko to what I can only describe as extremely high-pressure sales tactics.   To cut a long story short, Reiko finally emerged from the room two hours later clutching several hundred dollars’ worth of undergarments that she didn’t especially like, want, or need.  

She felt very bruised by the experience, and told us that she was especially hurt by the fact that Seiko had been a “friend.”  The whole class sympathised, and I told her gently that it could’ve happened to anyone … which led to a most interesting discussion, in which all of the students insisted that it was a Japan-only thing, while I insisted vehemently that it wasn’t. 

However, when they challenged me to give them specific examples of this kind of thing happening in other lands, I was stumped!  I said I’d get back to them about it.  Help me out here.

Okay, I thought we had a leg up on trashy weddings in the Southern US. But, this one makes a redneck wedding look classy. Apparently, the streetwalker look is the newest fad for the bride. I’ve never seen such a display of hideous dresses and mammaries. Please note the mother’s outfit, too. It looks as if she has on a bra that’s attached to a skirt. I swear, I’ve seen something that looked just like that top in the lingerie section of a Sears catalogue in the 1950s. I’m putting in two different links, so you have the best selection of photos of rampant trashiness.

Daily Mail

Closer Online

The makeover.  You know how a few days ago she looked like your spinster aunt?  Well, now she looks like your spinster sister.  Pretty soon she’ll be looking like your spinster BFF.