Nicole Kidman is a witch??

Ever since Jo noticed this on the back of the Yomiyuri, I have been trying to work out what it could possibly mean...assuming that there hasn't been some occult scandal involving Nicole that I have somehow missed...

Paper making

In the afternoon we made recycled paper out of milk cartons. The girl in the picture here was so cute. She took a liking to me and then made me go with her what ever we did and kept hugging me and stroking my hair. She was really quick to pick up English words and soon learnt "let's go" and "ready...go". It was a tiring day because they need attention all he time, but I can understand why people do the job because they are just so adorable and it is a really nice atmosphere to work in.

Curry

After our entertainment, we all made curry rice together and then ate it for lunch. The school has a vegetable garden, so the potatoes and carrots used were all grown on site.

Momotaro

Today I went with 8 first year boys to visit a special ed school in Okunakayama. The school itself has 16 pupils, and 6 of them were chosen to spend the day with us. First we had an opening ceremony and did our introductions. Then our school did some entertainment. The boys acted out a traditional Japanese story called "The Peach Boy". Then Kawamura-sensei and I taught them "head, shoulders knees and toes" and read The Very Hungry caterpillar in two languages. They were so interested in the story, it was really nice. Even the boys from our school who normally sleep through English were captivated by the word "caterpillar". Afterwards, one of the boys wanted to sing all day, so I spent 6 hours touching my toes, very tiring.

Health and safety

In the evening I went to Ichinohe to meet Mike and go to a "curry fest". Sounds very exciting, but actually included only 6 variations, so not really a fest. It was also the town festival, so the town was quite busy and everyone was very happy. On the way back home we saw this lovely example of Japanese health and safety; not sure what they were going to do if there was actually a fire.

Pub Quiz

All the new JETs have arrived in Morioka now, so all this week there are lots of AJET activities being organized. Tonight we went to the pub quiz. Quiz was fine, but more importantly there was a nomihodai for two hours on all the beers we normally have to pay 900yen (£4.50) each for!! Hence everyone made sure they got there money's worth and it all got a bitrowdyy.

ok, this is really sad i know, but I am so excited about my new shoes I wanted to share them with you all. Aren't they soooo cute!!!

Our last night celebration at the Indian.

Class productivity

This is the dorm I stayed in in the second week. It was amazingly similar to our uni halls, but had a fantastic bathroom on the ground floor. I doubt anyone could have called Waveney bathrooms fantastic. It also had a really good "school dinners" canteen, where everything had been heated at least three times. Wonderful!

Getting here was fun though. I asked a girl at the school how to get there and she said take a 31 bus from this particular station, so I went to the station and low and behold, there was no 31 bus. So carrying my luggage and feeling not happy in the 33oC heat and humidity, I dragged myself off to find a little man. He looked at all the timetables for a while and having established a lack of 31 buses, he took me to the "control room" to look at the BIG bus map. The two little men conferred for a while and then decided it was basically impossible to describe to a stupid gaijin who didn't know where she was, and so drove me the whole 30 minutes in the company car to the dorms!!! They were so kind.

This is Shien who I did my homestay with. She is from Singapore.

One of the better aspects of the chocolate factory.

Maybe one of the bigger let downs of Sapporo was the chocolate factory. It was interesting enough, but not where near the amount of free samples we expected (ie; we expected more than NOTHING!!!), and then we bought some chocolate at the end and it really wasn't that good. All was saved however by the clock the struck on the hour and "pig town" came alive with three little pigs making strange "bu bu" noises in time with the music. And there were miniature houses you could sit in!!

On the Saturday, the school organized a beach bbq. I got very very sunburned, and now it is brown, but not in a nice way, but in a strappy, didn't really dress for the beach way. Oh well, live and learn.

At one point, Jo was convinced she may be able to swim back to Iwate and escape doing the speech contest, but George the Frenchman talked her out of it.

Near our homestay house was this interestingly named hairdressers. Would you get a hair cut here??!!

This is the ski jump itself. Occasionally rather foolhardy little Japanese men threw themselves off the top.

And Jo became not only a bob sleigh rider, but also a figure skater!

On the first Wednesday afternoon, the school gave us a break and took us all off to the museum at Okurayama ski jump where the Olympics were held. Inside the museum you could try simulations of various sports. This is mike skiing.

Of course, then we ordered a beer tower and a little time turned into a long time, host families were told we would not be coming home for dinner...

Every summer the Kirin factory opens a beer garden in the middle of the main street park. So after a hard day of study we took a little time to relax before heading to respective host families for dinner.

My class at the language school.

(l ->r) Johan from Sweden, Mike from Iwate, Emil from Sweden and Don from America (now living in Chiba). The two Swedes were in Japan on a choir tour and decided to stay to study a bit before heading back to Sweden. They were two very funky geezers.

At first I got stuck in a scary JLPT Level II grammar class, and I am so glad I moved to conversation with these guys!

This is my host mother, her niece, her niece's baby and her niece's friend. Her niece studied in America for a few years, so her English was really good. Hiroko, my host mother was so cute. She studied in France for a few months and was really interested in Europe and travel. She was training to be a pastry chef, so her cooking was amazing!!

Mike studying hard.

Jo not studying quite as hard as Mike was.

So Jo had this great idea that we should all use our precious holiday time to go and study Japanese in Hokkaido. It seemed a wonderful plan until the day came and we realized a) we could be on a beach, not at Tomakomai ferry terminal at 6.30am, waiting for a bus b) we were going to spend the next week or more staying in a non-English speaking stranger's house and c) we were going to spend two weeks voluntarily studying!! In the end it did turn out to be a fantastic plan, but at the time this photo was taken I was far from believing it.

The day after our night out in Ninohe, Jo had to go to school. I had the day off, so I did what any sane person would do and just went to a different school instead. After the guided tour, we joined the Japanese archery club's practice and had a go. I think the furthest either of us got was about 2ft in front of us, but it was fun none-the-less.

This is this month's shodo piece. I cleverly managed to hide the bottom left corner with a piece of paper, but you get the idea.

Sansa Odori

Every August it is the Sansa Odori festival in Morioka. This is one of Iwate's larger fests and so the atmosphere is wonderful. Sadly this year it was also the last day that we were going to see Anna for a long time as she is going back to Europe, hence we didn't waste too much time looking at dancing people, but rather utilized it efficiently in the pub.




This is Hazel who is the new girl in Jo's villiage from Glasgow.








This is Freddy from Canada who is taking over Anna's job, house, life and everything. It is really scary.








And they are STILL claiming there is noting going on! Pah!