Real language teaching
I can’t take credit for it but found it somewhere on the depths of the internet.
It however captures a particular side of British culture that definitely exists, as well as nicely nailing the text book style that Japanese schools follow.
Japan is full of lots of crazy, cute little characters to cater for everyone’s taste. But by far the strangest i have found is the ‘kobito’ (小人 meaning dwarf in Japanese). I find it hard understand exactly who these little beasts are marketed at; too cute for purely an adult market, too twisted to be solely for children. But despite their scary appearance, the kids love them still. I overheard an elementary school boy saying to his friend, “It’s so scary. But I want it!”.
It’s probably best to fill you in on a bit of background for these elusive little fellas, so here’s the line up of the usual suspects.
From what i understand, kobito are small elf like creatures that inhabit the natural world around us. Similar to fairies in some respects, they are the sort of thing you will only see if you are very quiet and believe that you will see them. But they don’t just keep to the hills and the valleys. Many shops selling Kobito goods have instructional videos on how to catch the different varieties, with tactics ranging from luring it with some tasty toilet paper, to suspending a peach from a weak piece of string above hole in the ground. But after looking a bit closer at what the Kobito get up to, the only reason I can find for wanting to catch one would be to burn it and return it to depths of hell from which it surely came.
Lets look at some evidence. 
This Kobito likes to strangle frogs for kicks.
This fella likes to make out with blades of grass.
What better than feasting on tomatoes like they were the corpses of your latest murder victims.
How about raping a sheep?
Or getting together with your pals to spy upon the boy next door taking a shower? Not getting you going yet? How about a golden shower?
Or maybe what you need is a nice ass shot. カクレモモジリ obviously puts his time in at the gym doing squats. 
It really makes you hungry for ass shaped peach, although I would question whether the taste would be pleasant. I was in fact lucky enough to spot one of these in the wild whilst at a bar last weekend.
Scared the life out of me.
So to conclude, the evidence suggests that they are far from your usual cute characters you stumble across in Japan. I recommend you watch your back, because next time you don’t they’ll be there, watching you in the shower, wanting you to urinate on them, or waiting to force themselves on your beloved pet. You have been warned! They are the stuff of nightmares.
So it has been a while since I posted anything long, but life has taken a busy turn with most weekends being booked up, and then karate and private students on weeknights.
Last month we had the blossom viewing season, and so like everybody else we went and viewed some blossoms (cherry if i’m not mistaken). People in Japan really seem to dig ‘viewing’ things. Pretty much, they like to plant cherry blossom trees everywhere, and then wait until the beginning of spring for some hot viewing action. In amongst it all is some jazz about life being fragile, but beautiful and fleeting (just like the blossoms); but really it’s just an excuse to get your blue tarpaulin out and drink during the day.
People can take it a little seriously too. A lot of people arrive early in the morning so to reserve the best spots with big, blue, plastic monsters. Sometimes people will even sit with tarp, guarding it until the rest of the party arrives.
Being foreigners, none of us had a tarp, and people looked pityingly at us as we sipped our drinks, and wished for it all to end soon. Luckily it did, when some people working for Kirin (the beer and other booze) company invited us over to their tarp. They plied us with some free samples and we had the usual conversations, whilst they looked on, vacantly smiling, and looking like they had all just escaped a house fire.
Just the smell of a beer will turn most Japanese people into what can be best described as very peace loving sunburn victims. One of the guys also had a very charming teeshirt to break the ice.
But no one obliged. It’s certainly a bold opener….
Everyone seems to also spend a lot of their time taking close up pictures of the blossoms, so i tried too.
And some not so close ones too.
Unfortunately, all the festivities and shear amount of blossoms got to Tammy and she tried drunken style chinese boxing on me. Luckily my friend ‘the bush’ helped me over power her, and some friendly passing Japanese people helped me pull her out of it. Japanese people can be really friendly at times.
