Ikebana

Today Becky and I went to an ikebana show. We saw arrangements by my ikenobo sensei as well as a few of her students.








This one is by my friend Yuko.

Quiz time

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Cultural Creative 88% Materialist 69% Existentialist 50% Idealist 44% Fundamentalist 38% Modernist 25% Romanticist 25% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Toyoura Shogakkou

One of the 2-nensei classes:


and 1-nensei:

Nice to meet you!





"Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes..."

I have given in and learned the English/American version of this song, because I was just confusing the kids by singing it to the tune of "London Bridge is falling down" when all their CDs play it the other way. Fellow Canadians may be surprised to learn that we sing this song to a different tune than other English-speaking countries!

The Hills of Akiyoshidai Are Burning

Last weekend:

Hitchhiking to Akiyoshidai. the next bus from the train station wasn't for an hour, so we figured we'd try. A nice lady made a sign for us, and we had a ride in under 10 minutes (though from a slightly sketchy character...)



Made it to the top!



Every February they burn the grass so that next year's grows better.



Becky, Selena, Becky, Jen


After wandering around the slightly underwhelming burning of the hills, Becky, Selena and I visited the caves underneath.

Largest limestone caves in Asia




Some of the fun signs in the caves:










The evil alien rock




The entrance to the caves

Fun with Japanese T.V.

The other day I was watching TV in the morning while getting ready to go to school and came across a program for toddlers which involved a whole bunch of three-year-olds running around, singing and marching to music with a few adults leading the activities. The disturbing thing about this was that one of the adults (who was a happy, smiley young guy) was wearing a red hoodie with "damnation" written across the front ...

Valentine's Day

From my Valentine. :)



In Japan it's customary for girls to give chocolates to boys on Valentine's Day (though most of my females students told me they just gave chocolates to their female friends), then this is reciprocated by the boys on "White Day," March 14th. For the past few weeks stores have had kits for "making" your own chocolate (molds and plain chocolate bars) because I guess ideally you are supposed to be giving "homemade" chocolates to the boys.

A present from a couple of women at the BOE:
Mmm, your two favourite junk foods combined! (and yes, the potato chips were salted...)

Karato

A few pictures of the district where I live which I took to use up the last of a roll of film:







This girl is climbing one of the many puffer fish representations in Shimonoseki. One of these days I'm going to start documenting them all with my camera...they're on the drain covers, tops of telephone booths, and they even have a puffer fish pattern on the apolstery for bus seats!

Skiing in Hiroshima

a snowboarding lesson...in Japanese! (I was already hitting the slopes while this went on...I have no patience to try snowboarding again, at least not on my one and only day at a ski mountain for the year).



Gillian lends a helping hand.




Yukari


Selena


Sonia














No ski trip is complete without someone ending up in hospital! Our bus very kindly detoured to the hospital on the way back to pick up Sonia et al.

Setsubun at Akama Shrine

Setsubun is the day before the begining of spring according to the lunar calendar (it was sooo cold though, and started snowing during our visit to the shrine!). We were given hot bean tea, long choco cereal type candies, and lots of toasted beans for eating and throwing at the oni (demons).
On this evening (February 3rd), people are supposed to throw beans to drive evil spirits out of their homes. Then you are supposed to eat the same number of beans as your age to have good health during the year. I guess that often the dad in a household dresses up like the oni, then the kids have fun throwing beans at him. At the shrine the kids were throwing beans at each other and anyone else who didn't protest. The oni were very scary looking, and once they came out lots of the younger kids started crying!

with the oni


these look a bit funny because they're pictures of my real pictures: