Well, not really Hallowe’en, but it was the Nagoya leg of the Nellie’s Bookstore tour. And that was really good. The room filled to capacity when my presentation started and everyone had a great time with the Phonics CD ( showing off all the styles seems to work well, especially the James Brown, Fatboy Slim and techno style tracks!!). Plus of course the card game went across really well. Sales of the Superpack weren’t too hot, but that’s to be expected as most of the teachers in Nagoya already have the CDs. One interesting thing was chatting to the people on other publishers stands, of course they have to talk about their materials, but as it turned out most of them use Genki English when they go to elementary schools! That was quite interesting.

During one of the presentations I fired up my laptop with Ableton live and started jamming a new song. When I looked around everyone was crowded around looking at what I was doing. “Wow, that only took 20 minutes” was the common response, yep, 20 minutes plus 20 years experience!! But it is really fun so I’m definitely going to buy Live.

I also played the Teaching Guide Video on the stand, and that was really popular. I haven’t seen it myself for a while and it really does capture all the genkiness. This year was supposed to be the year of the Genki English DVD, but that failed miserably as most teachers are terrified of the technology! But I’m really thinking that it’s maybe worthwhile doing the kids videos on VHS! That should prove popular, but producing video tapes is a considerable investment to make. Certainly something to think about though.

Then in the evening I got round to tidying up the site and taking down the Halloween decorations. And as soon as I dead that a load of CD orders came through. Over the last couple of weeks internet orders have been a bit down and I’ve only just realised why, it’s because everyone was doing Hallowe’en lessons for the last month!! But things certainly look good for November as teachers start teaching other themes.

Then a bit more music work and finally to bed at 3 o’clock.