We've moved!

Oh yes we have. Locking our blog is lame. The new address is:
www.overworkedandunderpaid.org.

monkeys

We went on a drive to Nikko yesterday, about 200km away. While up at Chuzenjiko (Lake Chuzenji), we ran into some of the local fauna, snow monkeys.

guests!

Our guests arrived yesterday, and we've been busy ever since. This morning (well, at 11 when we finally managed to get everyone out of the house), we hit the road for Kamakura, where we saw a giant old buddha and washed our money in a temple for good luck. The Kamakura Daibutsu is one of Japan's oldest surviving large Buddha statues, dating back to the Kamakura period in the 1200s. The bronze statue is joined to the ground with a fairly sturdy foundation, which is why the statue survived the 15th century tsunami that washed away the temple that used to house it. After everyone admired Buddha in all his glory (he's pretty fat, there's a lot of glory to go around), we went on a medium-length hike to Zeniarai Benten, a shrine contemporaneous with the great Buddha. It was constructed by the shogun in the 1200s, and quickly gained favor with merchants, who went to the shrine to wash their money. Somehow, the locals came to believe that money washed in the spring waters of the temple grounds would double (or better) in value within a year or so. We took out a couple hundred dollars worth of yen and washed them thoroughly.

Afterwards, we headed to Chinatown in Yokohama for dinner. The prawns in chili sauce were tasty. Tomorrow we were going to go to Nikko, but the weather is supposed to be lousy, so I think we're going to stay in.

More reports from the field to come later.

Christmas Concert

For the third year in a row, Sam and I played with a group of local teachers in the town's Christmas concert. Sam continued this year with her percussion duties, and I was the conductor again. No photos from the actual performance (yet), but here's the group shot we took afterwards. Yes, I wore a Santa suit.

Bounenkai

The kids went home for winter break about four hours ago, and in another two we'll (we being the staff here at Hishida) will be heading out to the Excel Hotel Tokyu for our bounenkai. In Japanese, it's written 忘年会, with the first character meaning "forget", the second being "year" and the last signifying a meeting or gathering of some kind. You can roughly translate the entire phrase as a "forget the year party." I haven't asked if they'll be serving Duff.

Lack of motivation

This blog being private has given me a serious lack of motivation to read it, let alone post here. But, it is the end of the term so I'll be away from my pictures for a while so I guess I'd better get caught up.
We took a hike through a natural wetland (or what is remaining of it just outside the airport gates). It is apparently very relaxing or whatever. I personally find the LOUD JET ENGINES to be the opposite of relaxing. Anyway, cute sea of yellow hats.


After the hike obviously we had lunch. Kids have to eat. But Japanese parents have no clue how to pack a lunch. I am serious. They pack 10 times more rice than their child could ever eat and then at least $10 worth of candy. I understand that everybody eats school lunch so they never have to learn how to pack a lunch but shit, that's just dumb. Serina and Konoha ate some gum that changes the color of their tongue. Here they are comparing.



Greg found Miyu, one of my first graders, at the town Sports Festival. Miyu does, I think literally, fart sparkles. She is so cute and happy, as you would expect from her smiling face in this picture.










Aaah, the Halloween Party. As you can see, I am a pirate.
Nothing to see here. Just a pirate.













Haruki bobbing for apples. We used mini apples because the kids just can't stand to get their faces wet AND bite into a whole apple.







The 4th graders made a puzzle game. Anna, Kouki and Yurie try to sort it out.










This picture fulfills two needs, which is great because I am sick of this formatting game already. On the left, the bowling game. In the center, Tsubasa with what looks like a sling-shot. Oh yes, we had a shooting game.


We made a jack o'lantern.













Decorated the halls to make Halloween Town










I don't seem to have many pictures from inside the ghost house...









Really, that's pretty much it. Nobody uploaded the Christmas party pictures yet (we performed It's Christmas, Charlie Brown) and pictures of the kids running is boring.

It's cold

This was the view from our back window this morning. Pack your long johns, Irving (you too, Jonathan).

 

mikan!

Though it's easy to forget this time of year (because it's damned cold), the Narita area is pretty far south. We're at about 35 degrees north latitude, which puts us roughly on par with Santa Barbara. A good reminder of this are the mikan trees that sport beautiful, bright orange low-hanging fruit this time of year.

The mikan is essentially a mandarin orange (in fact, mandarins were introduced to the US via Japan). They're a bit smaller than a tennis ball, have very thin skins (you can peel them with a fingernail), and the fruit inside is very soft, and from time to time very sweet (though sweetness is hit or miss, like oranges back home).

Anyway, my school has a tree, and a couple of weeks ago it was determined that the fruit was ripe enough to pick and eat with lunch. The fifth and sixth graders managed fine on their own, but my first and second graders are sadly too short to reach any of the fruit themselves. You can see what our solution was.

That's Airi, a very cute first grader.

Miki, a very big first grader.

Naoki, a very big (but very happy) second grader.