School Festival Cont’d

[Photography Club][Become a Student]

 [Cardboard Tram][Fall Display, complete with fish in the water]

[Play about Casutera, A cake from Portugal][Play about Sakamoto Ryouma, whom a TV drama is being made about][The Biology Club’s Fish and other animals][Spectacle Bridge Mosaic][Calligraphy Club’s Presentations][View from our school][Tea Ceremony where I injured myself][Cinderella!]

I have Internet and am Free to Update Again

Hello, and welcome back.

Last weekend was our school festival.  The students spent every afternoon for the past two weeks preparing for the event.  They only attended morning classes and then spent the rest of their time preparing decorations, planning, and practicing skits.  Unfortunately this also meant that they spent hours in close contact and many of them contracted the flu in the process.

As for me, I didn’t have many classes to teach at all, so I was able to use this time to walk around and meet students whose classes I hadn’t visited yet.

The festival was held on a weekend (so parents could attend) and the teachers got Monday and Friday off as a result.  But, it seems our school has built a reputation as the sickest in the city and many parents and other schools’ students were cautious about coming to our festival for this reason.

Even so, I had tons of fun, and even embarrassed myself in front of lots of students and PTA members during the tea ceremony.  As the first person to enter the room and only male, I became the default head of the ceremony (clearly a mistake).  I proceeded to miss many of my cues, drop my food, and finally rise from the squatting position only to find that my legs were asleep and crash back to the ground.  I’ll update with the other pictures, finale, and afterparty later!

[Class Banners + Central Courtyard]

No Internet, but plenty of swine flu!

Looks like it'll still be some time until I have Internet in my
apartment.

One of the bigger differences in Japanese high schools compared with
US ones is that students stay in the same classroom all day. Instead
of moving about the halls to a teachers room, the teachers move around
to the students rooms. From year to year the classes stay the same,
and thus students will be with the same group of 40 throughout their
highschool career.

Recently, this has allowed the school to cancel specific classes where
the rates of infection are too high, without having to resort to full
cancelation. But it seems it was all in vain as 25% of our third-
years have the flu and the numbers are growing steadily.

No internet

Quick update. I'm without Internet for the next week or so due to
some issues with the change in residents at this apartment.

For now enjoy this tram picture. The trams are real classics ( some
dating back to 1921 ) and I love watching the conductor work all the
levers with his hands and feet.

Money Troubles

One of the stranger things to adjust to in Japan is the currency. I emptied my coin purse today and it had 44$ worth of coins (pictured) It's quite easy to spend your coins without realizing their value (they can go up to 5$ and the smallest amount pictured here is still .50$).

I love my coworkers!

I'm on an island!

And it's all beaches and hotsprings.