the last supper

I stayed with my friends the Nishis in Tokyo for my last night in Japan. They took me to this lovely Japanese-Italian restaurant.

It was so strange - I often stay at their house when I go to Tokyo so it just felt like I was leaving Japan after a short visit to Tokyo, rather than 2 years in Tochigi.

bye bye minamikawachi

Last Wednesday night I went to a farewell party at my calligraphy teacher's house next door with some other students. There were plates of ingredients to make our own sushi.

you rock my world

An earthquake, that is. A big one! We're lucky here in Tochigi because we're not directly over any major fault lines. So whenever we have an earthquake here I know that other people are getting it worse elsewhere.

Tonight was the first time that something BROKE in my apartment. A glass candle holder fell off the bathroom vanity and smashed into the sink (good shot!).

Most damage was felt in Tokyo. Check it out here. The trains were delayed there, which even affected us this far north! I took my friend Satomi to a party in Utsunomiya and we got stuck in Nowhereville without a train!! She had to ring her friend to come and pick us up from Jichiidai! Even though it's only a 16 minute train ride, it took him more than half an hour to get there by car. Satomiごめんなさい！！そんな所に連れて行くなんて。。

bye bye engrish crub

Friday was the English Club farewell party. There are about 14 girls in the English club, and they're a lively crowd! We ate heaps of food and played some games. It was weird at first - we were all sitting around the table but none of the girls were talking or eating! They lightened up later when we played Pass the Parcel. They gave me this big card to say goodbye. One of the girls drew Mickey and the flower.

They gave me loads of presents, like a cute pink Japanese fan, a vase from Mashiko (a town near here famous for pottery), a windchime, other stuff, and a kaleidoscope! The grade 7 girls also made me this origami. Isn't it great? I couldn't believe they made it themselves. They said there are 100 paper cranes.

balloon stomp

Each team had to stomp on the other teams' balloons while protecting their own. The team with the most balloons left at the end was the winner!

~ The 3 Teams~

Pink and Blue are grade 8 students, and the cuties in Green are grade 7.

The Green Team claimed victory with 6 balloons!

Action shot

it's real

Today I had my first real goodbye. Real, because it was someone I actually care about here.

I had to say goodbye to the teachers and students yesterday, but if you've read my previous blogs you might know that I wasn't doing so well at my school towards the end! So although there were a few great students, I generally couldn't wait to be done with the rest of them! But today I had my last Japanese lesson and had to say goodbye to my teacher of two years. I had a private lesson every week and although we never socialised outside this time, I think we really grew on each other in the end! I was surprised at how reluctant she seemed to say goodbye.

Then this evening I went to the house of one of the English teachers. I'll see her again before I go, but not her two children. We did hanabi (fireworks - they don't have a separate word for sparklers) after dinner, then we played lots of card games. They kept starting a new game so I could stay longer!

I always feel like something special should happen at a farewell, but I guess all you can do is say goodbye.

where there's smoke...

...there's fireworks! This is me and Mrs. Tamura.

By the way, totally random, but this post has reminded me of something I've only noticed since I've been teaching English here. In about chapter 4 of the grade 8 English textbook, the grammar point 'There is/are...' is introduced. Using these sentences in class made me realise how often we (native speakers) use them incorrectly in daily conversation. For example, don't you think you might easily say, "There's two books here," even though it should be "there are"? When you see it written here of course you can see that it's wrong, but I think you don't notice when you're speaking. I only notice because I have to take care to say it correctly for the students. I made this mistake once in class last year and didn't even realise until the other teacher corrected me! There's lots of things like this that I've come to notice about English usage... gotcha! Should be 'there are'.

I brought this up because I had to incorrectly say, "...there's fireworks!" in order to keep the style of the proverb, "Where there's smoke there's fire."

Does anyone even care??!

smokin'!

Start the engines...



















.............................................Ignition...

..............................................................................................Take off!

random photo...

...of all the birds lined up on a powerline near my apartment. I think they look like a great perforation across the sky. I have some serious powerline action going on right beside my place, don't I.

I also like the cloud!

Every evening at around 6 or 7 the birds flock to certain areas in town, mainly to the trees near my local supermarket. They're so noisy! They fill up the sky like an evil squawking storm cloud. I'll try and capture that on film for you before I go, even at risk of serious bird crappage. Wish me luck!

bye bye

I was the happy recipient of more flowers on Wednesday!

It was the last day of school before the summer holidays, and my last official day at school, so they had a farewell ceremony. I gave a speech to the students in English and Japanese, then a student read one back to me in English. He must have been so nervous up there on stage in front of everyone speaking English - I was touched by his effort. They then gave me these flowers.

In my last lesson with a grade 8 class they gave me these cards covered back and front with notes from students. Let me share my favourites:
"Thank you Anna! See you again. I harded your English. It's so happy."
"You taught spel for we. Thank you!!"

Awwwww!!!!

belated

Kind of late, but here is a card I got from some students. I was surprised to get it from them. They also gave me some cute bling with my name on it to hang off my keitai ("kay-tie" = mobile phone). I love keitai bling!! I have stocked up so I can decorate my new keitai when I get home.

summer festival

I went to a summer fireworks festival in Yokohama today with Leah, her sister Caroline, and her friend Yuko. It was so crowded. SO crowded! More than you can imagine!!

I'd never been to Yokohama before and it looked like a really pretty place. There were lots of interesting buildings and it all seemed new and clean.

I think fireworks shows are a little different here. They go for a long time, an hour or more! And they had so many great shapes and effects.

Crowds gather on the banks.

But this is just one small section of the crowd! There were people all along the river, on the bridge, on the other side, on the streets, EVERYWHERE. And we weren't even right under the fireworks, so there would have been more viewing areas with more people closer to the action.

On the grassy knoll.

A special grassy knoll with a ship growing out of it!

There were plenty of stalls selling beer and snacks.

The ship behind the grassy knoll.

Show us yer mast!

Waterfront fun!

Across the water was a small theme park with rollercoasters and spinny things and a big ferris wheel. Near us were pedal boats and more spinny things.

I took the previous photo on my way to find the bathroom... By the time I found it and worked my way up the queue nighttime had happened!

They had a light show going on the ferris wheel. I like this photo because the time is also my birthday.

This is it! The fireworks - what we came to see. They were kind of far away and there was a hotel partially in the way for the lower ones, but big, high ones like this were clear to see! They had some really great effects - love hearts, smiley faces, and interesting shapes like this one. Another style I really liked was where a big one exploded in a traditional round shape, but then the individual sparks would suddenly zip off in random directions like a startled school of fish or fireflies.

Plenty of girls wear yukata (cotton kimonos for summer) to festivals in Japan. Some of them go to a lot of trouble with their hair and so on. Leah and her sister both wore yukatas but I was happy in jeans!

Look at the mooooon!

I took a timeout from the fireworks to snap the moon.

happy birthday to ME!

A special delivery from a special someone!

These flowers were the beginning of a happy birthday for me. Later I met Li Li who had more surprises for me! She had been recruited by a sneaky someone at home to deliver special surprise gifts! We went shopping and saw Episode 3, then took home some cake from this amazing store with beautiful cakes piled high with fruit and watched the season 1 finale of Lost.

Thank you thank you both of you for a lovely day!

Biyatch!

We had a rare encounter with this beast of a woman next to Li Li on the train home! Rare, because Japanese people are not usually rude & aggressive to strangers. This woman was both! We had spread ourselves out over 2 facing bench seats on the train, with our shopping bags on the empty seats. There were plenty of other spare seats around but this woman charged over and demanded a seat. We were so surprised and just stared at her (and the nearby free seats!), and she kept on, ordering us to put our bags in the overhead rack. We didn't, but she still managed to beef in next to Leah. Then she put her head down and slept the whole way!

Arf!

memoirs of a work party

I was belle of the ball tonight for 10 minutes when they dressed me up in this yukata (my farewell gift) at our work party tonight! Work parties are so strange here - you can get totally drunk, be a complete fool, talk to people you never usually talk to, and then it just goes back to normal the next day at school as if nothing ever happened.