Friday, February 27, 2004

Ossssu. Yesterday I came home early from work because apparently I had been working outside of my hours the previous saturday when I went to Owani with the teachers for the afternoon, skiing. I went because it was an afternoon of free skiing, and they decided to give me yesterday afternoon off as well. Sweet? I think so. Then I went to Japanese club in the evening, as always. I go every week now, almost religiously, as it's the only good Japanese conversation I get. Aki only speaks to me in English and when she does speak to me in Japanese it's super fast.

That's right, I think it was Jamie who asked why this site was called Biffa'sblog and not something more appropriate, like, the El Badboy Blog, or, Blog of the Boy of his Royal Badness, etc. It is, that is the name, what my Dad used to call me when I lived at home. The name comes from Biffa Bacon, who was a character from a British youth comic called Viz. The Bacons were (and probably still are) a family from the North East, where during the 80's unemployment was probably very high and everybody passed their time kicking each others heads in. My dad read the skit once and thought it was funny, ever since he has primarily referred to me as Biffa. I refer to him as Fatha, and we both refer to my mum as Mutha. The Bacons were accompanied by other cartoon characters, such as The Fat Slags, Cockney Wanker and Rodger Melly the Man on Telly. Click here for a raz around the Viz website. Highly recommended are the archive cartoons, where you can find a very entertaining sketch featuring the young Biffa Bacon.

I'm probably not going to do anything very interesting tonight because I've got to put the finishing touches to the NoreSore magazine before the weekend. If you didn't know, I foolishly volunteered to be co-editor of the local JETs magazine for the year and I have a final publication to bang out this weekend. It's looking better than the last one I did, not by much though. It couldn't get a lot worse; the last one had pages missing and all sorts. But don't think for a minute that I'm going to be sat around the house all weekend! I'm going skiing both days as well. Gonna slip my snowshoes on and escape into the wilderness on Saturday, then on Sunday I'm going to ride the Hakkouda mountain side like there's no tomorrow, or the next day.

And here are some pics of the actual ski school (suki-kyou-shitsu) I did with the first grade students the other day. Have a click and see what you can find. What a beautiful day it was! I couldn't believe our luck for the second year running.

Right, back to my editorial responsibilities.