It occurred to me today that I've taught more than 1,500 lessons since I arrived in Japan (7-8 per day, five days a week, nearly nine months), and I've completely forgotten most of them. I remember the various devices and techniques employed for each lesson point, of course, because they come up again, but the actual content of each lesson is generally gone from memory within a day or two. (That's fairly normal for teachers here, as best I can tell.) In an idiosyncratic exercise, then, I'm going to post one-line recaps of each day's lessons here until I grow tired of doing so or, alternatively, I achieve some transcendent truth in the doing of it. (Language gets to be like modal jazz at times; I use unnecessarily complicated structures just because they can be justified within the scale.)

TODAY'S LESSONS

1. Michiko-2 broke her knuckle falling over 'a stone' at the convenience store, which I agreed is a dangerous place. 2. Chieko and Yuka T. speculated that there would be tension in a hypothetical meeting between Doraemon, the cat-like robot hero from the 24th century, and Napoleon, the former emperor of France, especially when Napoleon tried to steal Doraemon's 'instruments' in order to further his 'ambition'. 3. Instructed to answer only with lies during introductions, an inexplicably aggressive Makiko badgered poor Etsuko with questions like 'Do you like dog food' and 'Is your husband dead'. 4. A half-assed discussion of food took place in the Voice Room, with the main conclusion being that someone ought to sell pretzels in Japan. 5. Sachiko-1, Maiko-1 and I nearly put each other to sleep with a thoroughly boring rendition of the 'force (someone) to (do something) vs. make (someone) (do something)' lesson. 6. Kanae announced that she lives on a ship in the sea of Japan, and Tomomi let that pass unchallenged. 7. The sleepy monk raised the topic of bad poultry and then just listened as Osamu and I chatted about how Americans will eat pretty much anything. 8. Two genial salarymen agreed that both of them work 'well' but get up on Sunday mornings 'badly'.