My former students take me downtown
for Japanese food and drink
through  postmodern fashions of Kokubuncho,
the entertainment district.

Hisae is suffering a post-Hawaii virus
after her sister's wedding.
Bikini flu? I ask, after the swimsuit photos –
then I have to explain the joke.

Chiharu shows phone pics of her new budgie.
Call him Red, I say,
you know how Australians like opposite nicknames – 
It's because they live upside-down. Antipodeans.
I can't stop being the English teacher,
even after eleven years.

Akane comes late, orders beer and hoya,
daring me to try this Sendai specialty: 'sea pineapple'
a soft shellfish whose orange flesh
you eat with vinegar, a dash of soy and ginger to taste.
'Sea mango' would be better: more accurate for size
and flesh colour, more palatably oxymoronic.

I want sashimi and order tarakiku,
the soft, whitish, brain-textured convolvulus
of the male codfish genitals. Oishi.

Yuko settles for maguro – burgundy tuna – 
with aromatic shiso leaves, and only pretends to choke
when I hail it as 'marijuana tempura'

Akane asks me for some words for this month's 
food 'n fashion mag's slogan 'Exeo'  –
Japanese latin wanting a youthful urgency. 
I suggest 'break out'.

Haiku Hike

I write in my shadow
a fool in nature.

Curves flatten to lines.
What's a good word?

She'd climbed a eucalyptus fork
over a dead stump,
stretched her arms along the ghost gum's
psoriatic bark,
half a world away
from the snows of Japan.

That was summer –
dryer, browner, greyer.

Now, in winter's nervous sunlight
a single green blade splits a crack
in the lichened rock.
Crowshit olives.

We stand on the hill
like silent haiku: strange
birds in dead branches.

Writing Class Sonnet

One day I was watching TV
suddenly I saw a illustration of a biscuits.
I married a rich man. And my friend won a billion yen in the lottery.
So I plan to go to Australia.
And I am without passport. So I need to obtain it.
The hotel there was more beautiful than our imagination.
At the lunch I eat crocodile and lasagne.
I go to sea and swim enough with a shoal of fishes.
We saw many famous animals.
If I have a driver's licence I drive Ayers Rock,
Great Barrier Reef, desert, and so on.
Finally I would like to play the star watching.
Of course I buy souvenirs for my family and friends.
Maybe one day I become English teacher.