Boredom

I am so bored, and at the same time so angry at myself. I mean, it is the last day of the summer holidays. I have lasted throughout the whole of the summer holidays without too much difficulty, but now on the last day it is too much. I am writing this post simply as a last-ditch attempt to stay awake.

Hmm . . . what can I say? . . . Guess I will talk about the weather.

As I wrote last month, this year's rainy season lasted for a long time. It turns out that the insanely hot season is also determined to go on for a long time. In Japan in the middle of summer, there are a few weeks when the weather is not hot but sweltering. Temperatures rarely drop below 30 degrees even here in the north, and down south they are usually above 35 degrees. It is so humid that the water has trouble staying in the air despite the heat. This weather usually lasts until the obon festival and no longer. But not this year.

It is a week and a half after obon and yet the weather is only just changing today (and it has not changed much). I saw the weekly weather report on Sunday evening, and the weather lady promised me that from yesterday the weather would be alternately rainy and cloudy, bringing a welcome break to the hot weather. On Tuesday, the weather lady gave a more precise forecast. Wednesday - rain in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon. I woke up yesterday all excited with thoughts of cooling rain, and then a second later noticed the lack of pitter-pattering on my window. A glance out the window brought all my hopes crashing down around my ears. It was sunny. On the way to work, two rain drops fell on me before the meager clouds evaporated and the day became hot and sunny just like the day before.

Today there are a few clouds which occasionally pass in front of the sun, but the gaps of blue between them are heart-breakingly large. At about nine o'clock this morning, the heavens opened and I thought This is it! The rain has finally come! But the rain ended again five minutes later and the day warmed up. It it slightly cooler than the past week, but only a little.

Every day when I get home from work it is 37 or 38 degrees inside my apartment. I know this because the ALT before me left me a thermometer. I wish I could leave a window open but I can't. My apartment is at street level with my window right beside the road. My windows have no latches on them. If I leave them just a little bit open, anyone could pull them all the way open and then climb inside.

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Yesterday was my English conversation class. A new student joined us for the first time. I met Saya for the first time not long after I came to Japan. She was friends with some people I went to karaoke with. She knew some English, and because I knew very little Japanese then, I talked with her for a while. I saw her once more in Denkodo, where she helped me converse with the salesperson when I went to pick up my computer Tsurara-chan. A week after that, Saya moved to Canada to study English and to work at a travel agents. Last month Saya came back to Japan, and I saw her in a bar in Honjo. I was talking to her for a while. Although my Japanese is a lot better, I still talked to her in English because she is so good now. I think her English is a lot better than my Japanese, although she says the same thing of me.

Anyway, Saya asked if she could come to my English class during the months that she is back in Japan, because at the moment she has no other opportunities to use English. I warned her my class is low level, but said she was welcome to come anyway. So she did. Between Saya, Toshi and Miwa, quite a rapid English conversation got going mid-class. All the older ladies, however, were utterly lost. After Saya introduced herself (with a level of English even Toshi and Miwa had trouble keeping up with) I asked everyone to introduce themselves to Saya. First they thought they were supposed to ask questions of Saya, and then they introduced themselves with "My name is . . . " followed by an account of what they did the week before. (We usually talk about the previous week at the beginning of class - that was why they got confused). The younger three students were laughing behind their hands. When we moved onto a simple activity things were okay, but the free talk, since it broke from the established routine, was a disaster.

I wish my class could be split into two levels, a high level and a low level. Since younger people joined my class, a definite gap in ability between two groups of students has formed. The older long-time students who come to class for the social opportunity have low level English. The younger people (Toshi, Miwa, Saya and to a certain degree Atsuko) who joined because they wanted to practice English and/or were already friends with me have a much higher level of English, and can even use idioms and colloquialisms they picked up from TV.

What can I do? How can I keep the activities within the older ladies' capabilities and yet keep it interesting for the younger folk? I don't think there is one easy answer to my problem.