It's cold inside
It's ridiculously cold in Toyama, and there's no escape. Neither our house or the schools are heated. I bought my ticket to Hong Kong last Friday. It's going to be sweet...can't wait to flee south for the winter- right now in HK its in the upper 70s :) Too bad I'm only visiting Kim for 3 days :(
While teaching the 3rd years the other day I was starring out the window and noticed the mountains surrounding the valley are all snow-capped now... just a matter of time. The snowfall is so heavy in this region that they're building bamboo enclosures around all the shrubberies and trees here to keep them from getting crushed under the weight of all the snow (!) crazy.
I wear my coat and scarf to class now. I feel sorry for all the students who have to wear their skimpy uniforms, especially the girls in their skirts.
The sun came out briefly yesterday for our day trip to Kanazawa. I've befriended a woman who works in the office at my junior high- she helped me buy the aforementioned HK ticket since I couldn't navigate the Japanese travel website on my own.
Kanazawa is the closest large city to where we live located in the neighboring prefecture. Kumiko (my office friend) went to school in Kanazawa so she gave me, Ivy and Mika (CIR JET from Finland) a lovely tour of the city.
We started the day with a 1st class traditional Japanese lunch at a fancy restaurant she used to work at. After that we took a stroll around one of Kanazawa's feature attractions: the Kenrokuen Garden. While walking around we coincidently ran into 3 other Toyama JETs touring the garden (we ended up running into them a total of 6 times that day).
Also on the day's agenda was the Kanazawa Castle, Museum of Modern Art and shopping in the old Geisha district. tanoshikatta :D
pictures from the museum:
one of the exhibits at Kanazawa Museum- view of pool from above and below. The little dog children were one of the exhibits also.
ivy and big stuffed dog. this is the room where the japanese children were getting the dog costumes.
That same night one of my coworkers, a 1st grade teacher at Chubu Elementary, was having a party at her house that me Ivy and Amanda were invited to. Most of the people there were fam friends I think, but there were also a few other teachers from the school I knew. It was a pretty sweet party- good food, fun people, and cute Japanaese kids. Another highlight of the party was one of her husbands hobbies: drawing samurai swords to scale for professional documentation. He had a stash of extremely old katana that collectors had lent him to draw for publication. He showed off some his drawings (worth a few hundred each) and even let us hold a couple of the swords. I can now honestly say I've held a 700+ year old samurai sword worth over 4000 dollars :D He even sent us home with a complimentary "practice" sketch of a few of the katana and a published book with some of his drawings (!omg) Sorry I didn't take any pictures. I thought it'd be sacreligious or something...
Last weekend went out a lot but nothing new or exciting. Saw my 2nd movie in a Japanese theater (since Howl's Moving Castle). It was called "Iwo Jima" or "Flags of Our Fathers" directed by Clint Eastwood. I'm usually not much into war films but it was well done and I learned quite a bit about a part of WWII we didn't cover in my 2 semesters of Japanese history courses at UPS. It felt a bit awkward watching an Amer-Japanese war film made from an American perspective, surrounded by an audience of Japanese people. There was a trailor for a 2nd movie coming out of the same war by Clint Eastwood again, but this time different story and through the Japanese perspective.
ok, should go to bed. Tomorrow's another Monday and I've got 6 classes on the schedule :\
While teaching the 3rd years the other day I was starring out the window and noticed the mountains surrounding the valley are all snow-capped now... just a matter of time. The snowfall is so heavy in this region that they're building bamboo enclosures around all the shrubberies and trees here to keep them from getting crushed under the weight of all the snow (!) crazy.I wear my coat and scarf to class now. I feel sorry for all the students who have to wear their skimpy uniforms, especially the girls in their skirts.
The sun came out briefly yesterday for our day trip to Kanazawa. I've befriended a woman who works in the office at my junior high- she helped me buy the aforementioned HK ticket since I couldn't navigate the Japanese travel website on my own.
Kanazawa is the closest large city to where we live located in the neighboring prefecture. Kumiko (my office friend) went to school in Kanazawa so she gave me, Ivy and Mika (CIR JET from Finland) a lovely tour of the city.
We started the day with a 1st class traditional Japanese lunch at a fancy restaurant she used to work at. After that we took a stroll around one of Kanazawa's feature attractions: the Kenrokuen Garden. While walking around we coincidently ran into 3 other Toyama JETs touring the garden (we ended up running into them a total of 6 times that day).
Also on the day's agenda was the Kanazawa Castle, Museum of Modern Art and shopping in the old Geisha district. tanoshikatta :D
pictures from the museum:
one of the exhibits at Kanazawa Museum- view of pool from above and below. The little dog children were one of the exhibits also.
ivy and big stuffed dog. this is the room where the japanese children were getting the dog costumes.
That same night one of my coworkers, a 1st grade teacher at Chubu Elementary, was having a party at her house that me Ivy and Amanda were invited to. Most of the people there were fam friends I think, but there were also a few other teachers from the school I knew. It was a pretty sweet party- good food, fun people, and cute Japanaese kids. Another highlight of the party was one of her husbands hobbies: drawing samurai swords to scale for professional documentation. He had a stash of extremely old katana that collectors had lent him to draw for publication. He showed off some his drawings (worth a few hundred each) and even let us hold a couple of the swords. I can now honestly say I've held a 700+ year old samurai sword worth over 4000 dollars :D He even sent us home with a complimentary "practice" sketch of a few of the katana and a published book with some of his drawings (!omg) Sorry I didn't take any pictures. I thought it'd be sacreligious or something...
Last weekend went out a lot but nothing new or exciting. Saw my 2nd movie in a Japanese theater (since Howl's Moving Castle). It was called "Iwo Jima" or "Flags of Our Fathers" directed by Clint Eastwood. I'm usually not much into war films but it was well done and I learned quite a bit about a part of WWII we didn't cover in my 2 semesters of Japanese history courses at UPS. It felt a bit awkward watching an Amer-Japanese war film made from an American perspective, surrounded by an audience of Japanese people. There was a trailor for a 2nd movie coming out of the same war by Clint Eastwood again, but this time different story and through the Japanese perspective.
ok, should go to bed. Tomorrow's another Monday and I've got 6 classes on the schedule :\
Comments
Nice blog, BTW. Hope it's archived someday.
By the way, that pic. of the pool at the museum is insane!
Hope your trip to Hong Kong goes great!