It is snowing (predicted: 20cm), I have all my lessons planned for the week, and Mr. Ishizone wants to take me out for expensive sushi! It can't possibly be a Monday.

Mr. Ishizone, the aforementioned old-school, good humored but pain in the butt new teacher on the block, is bugging me more and less each day. We have come to something of a truce in the classroom. It only took him three weeks to realize that he was way too busy with his non-team teaching classes to continue trying to take over ours. One day, after approaching cautiously with lesson plan in hand, he simply sighed and asked me to just "do my thing" (translated & paraphrased) because he didn't want to die of stress. So now I am back off the benches and have returned to the front of the class (to the relief of the students, which in itself is a compliment). He still likes to assert control and his age by interrupting me at any given point during class. Typical: Me, explaining the directions to an acti...Mr.Ishizone: "Wait! One moment, pureeze. (to class in Japanese:) Did you hear that? Did you hear how she said 'a pen'? She said 'ay pen' not 'aaah pen'. She speaks English very, very well. Listen to her say it again' (to me in English:) Sha-man, pureeze again!". After one round of this a couple of weeks ago, I let my sarcastic side take the upper hand and grinned at the class while saying very, very slowly and enunciating very, clearly "I can speak English!". They loved it. Ah yes, the games we play.

Anyhow... outside of class he is just your typical mumbling Japanese grandpa. He doesn't drive so he has to walk to and from the train station every day (on both ends of the commute). He teaches English on the weekends and it seems perhaps the weekday evenings, too so he is ALWAYS exhausted, stressed and running WAY behind schedule. Yet he is always laughing at himself. I think that's why he hasn't driven me completely nuts (that and the fact that I only have to teach with him 5 times a week...). He is always laughing and sighing about how tired, behind, sick, busy, etc. he is. In addition to this, he continuously can be overheard coaching students in math and other subjects. He likes to invite them out to dinner (in groups) for academic extras and practice. I don't know how he does it. The students don't really like him a lot, particularly since he replaced a terrific, user-friendly, young, female teacher who was much easier to understand in both languages. But he keeps puttering through day after day. No one really knows if he will be here again when the new year starts (I bet you can guess how I feel about it), so if he holds to his promise to take me out to sushi, I will definitely go.