photooooooooz.

chirstmas party dinner.... .. complete with an English play...
...and a crazy meatloaf.
My English board at school: an English Christmas tree!!..
...well mostly English...Our new Katashina Junior High School Championship belt.. my English teacher decided it was totally worth the $50.. really.. how did we survive without it?

great sign, ne?Christmas at my friend's nursery schools... notice the girl on the right..
Santa-san!

beginning to look a lot like christmas??

Christmas season in Japan...
Haven't been too good about this blogging thing this past month and i seriously apologize.. let's see what ive been tooooooooooo..
1. Climbed a mountain.. actually a couple of them in ChiChiBu National Park. We adventured there not really knowing what to expect and im pretty sure anything that we did expect was completely wrong. we stayed up on the mountain side in a tiny but touristy village in a hostel. It was a pretty sweet hostel where we met some great random japanese people.. by the end of the nite we had found ourselves a hiking partner for the next day (actually he found us). His name.. not quiet sure but told us to call him Yama-chan (mountain child?) and loved american tv shows. in planning for the next day he said he was thinking about starting at 7:30 and asked what time we would start. I responded with a indefinite 8 o'clock at which he expressed a shock and almost appall that we would start THAT late (30 mins later than him?). Anyway, the next day we had a great full day of hiking, even saw Mt Fuji and at the end parted ways with our new friend. The next day we found a sweet fishing area, almost summit ed another mountain and finally headed home.. thats when the real adventure began as, after traveling 4 hours in opposite directions, realized that my car and house keys were in my friend's bag. oops.

Mountain Child and LoganMt Fuji.. its even cooler in real life

Man harvesting wasabe
Fishing place.. i think? not so happening in the late fall though..
2. had my face rocked off.. went to daft punk in tokyo.. it was.. in.cre.di.ble. topped as one of the best shows ive ever been too. danced so hard straight for 3 hours.. felt like 3 seconds. i feel like a new person..

our new friend.. he had really sweet sparkly converses... on the way back on the train he traded his with a japanese salary man for a little... made that sad sad man's day i think...

this was taken with my friend's phone so not the best quality.. but how could you really capture that life changing moment?


3. the season of bonenkai's have begun. bonenkai=end of the year party with people your are kind of acquainted with.. usually overpriced. but always interesting if not damn fun.

4. and christmas? its been thrown in here an there. went to visit nursery school plays with my friend dressed as santa.. they either cried or were really happy.. most times it resulted in us becoming human jungle gyms. I had a Christmas party with one of the english speakers of the village, a couple of my students, and parents. This combination resulted in an over zealous but pretty awesome play in english, waaaaayy too much food, and lots of conversations i didn't understand. and!! there was a yankee swap which I conducted and was actually really fun!! Also, I have been "teaching Christmas" to all the elementary schools. This often resulted in very little english being taught but lots of fun making christmas cards and snowflakes!! my family can speak of the high quality cards some of my 3rd graders made... (im not a slave laborer.. really)

.. pictures to come !!