Yay for Internet Service in my Apartment!

Guess what? I now have internet from the comfort of my own 9x9 apartment! In celebration, I am offering you a new selection of pictures! At the top here is Takamatsu-jo, the remains of Takamatsu Castle. Most of the castle, and the city for that matter, was destroyed during WWII. This is the Tsukimi-yagura, a watch tower.

Next on the list here is a (one of many) field about 5 minutes' drive from my apartment. Five minutes in the other direction has me at land's end. The city scenery here is a picture I took from my bedroom balcony (yes, a room with a view) on my first day here in Kanonji. I live across a river-ish body of water from the Kanonji train station and the Gem School where I work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Other days I travel to schools in Takamatsu, Yashima, Takase and Kokubunji. I really enjoy the change of scenery and driving in Japan is like a super-advanced (and slightly more dangerous) version of Mario-Kart. (The graphics are excellent.)

On to the next picture: Here we have Jessica and Kira, the two whities in the back who are fellow Gem School teachers. In front from left to right are members of the Marugame branch (where I attend church) Kenji, Haruka, Akiko and Akiye. On Sunday we got together and made American pizza (which means no corn, no nato) and there was much rejoicing.
These last three pictures are of my students -- these girls are part of a class I teach in Kokubunji. Each of them has an American name they use in English class (to make it easier on the teachers -- remembering all of their American names is hard enough, let alone difficult to pronounce (sometimes) Japanese names). So from left to right we have Sharon, Carol, Helen, Jazmine and Julia. And down at the bottom is little Nancy.

More to come...
If any of you did not get an email with my Japan address, lemme know and I'll hit you with it asap.

Karate Kid in Kyoto

Kyoto! Last weekend, my roommate, Amberlyn, another teacher named Candace and I all took a ferry from Takamatsu to the big island and spent three days in beautiful Kyoto...

This is Kinkakuji: the golden temple, for er, obvious reasons. This is a picture that Amberlyn took -- she's a great photog, but really, when the subject is this good, it's hard to mess up... Then we have Kristen and Amberlyn revisit Karate Kid near the river...both of us nearly achieved nirvana whilst balancing for the picture

This is Gion, where geisha can sometimes be spotted...Amberlyn and Candace had high hopes, as Memoirs is one of their favorite movies, but no dice... instead we: Bought our own Kimonos and pretended to be, uh, Americans in kimonos...

This is the bamboo forest -- definitely one of the coolest places I've been. Sorry again, that it's taken me so long to post! I was waiting on these super-cool pictures....I'm off to eat shrimp!

Smell you later.

Holy Shrimp!

You guys! Guess what? Okay, you'll never guess what happened today, so I'll just tell you:

I have an adult class every Thursday night from 7:40 to 8:30, that's purely a conversational class -- all we do is talk the whole time about everything from politics to favorite foods.

So today one of my students (I use the term loosely, because he's like 45-50 years old) came into the class holding a big styrofoam box, and so naturally, I asked him what it was. He opened the box and showed me a case of shrimp! He said that he bought them for work. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, that's pretty random...but whatever -- and I just started the class and everything went as usual until the end of the class, when HE GAVE ME THE CASE OF SHRIMP! The whole thing! I tried saying no, but he pushed the case of shrimp (did I mention that it is a CASE of shrimp) into my hands! (!!!) I am so giddy! A case! I came out of the class room after the students had all left and showed off my new gift to all the office staff -- Meme, and Shino are my friends, I'll tell you all about them later -- but they explained to me that the guy actually works with shrimp -- I don't know if it's like a shrimp packing plant or a fishery or what, but that's what he does, and that he brought the shrimp from work, not he bought them for work....as I had thought.
Anyway, I will now be feasting on shrimp.
Every day.
All y'all can just be jealous that nobody ever gave you a case of shrimp.