little britain

jon doing his best 'margorie' impression...

some saturday playing...

iwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan 

'nother video. hehe lins might kill me this time...hehe

pottery class tonight

casanova hard at work...and then the teacher, sakazume san. to see the video click here.

this is the outfit that i bought for natalie while i was in vietnam in july. handmade by the hmong villagers of sapa. i think she likes it. ;) 

la fin de semaine...

...found me doing lots of stuff including attending goodbye parties, kickboxing, watching the guys and their footie at the big swan, having a thai curry dinner with the crew...
mina san, onegaishimasu. encourage kittykat to come with me to canada. :)

just seeing if this works

ok, just testing out video hosting. this is just a short clip of lins, anna and me at Big Swan. check it here.
hehe soz lins ;)

me and mari-chan 

lins and anna at the big swan stadium 

a mother's lullaby

it always makes for a depressing day when the time comes for the 3rd graders to read the short story "a mother's lullaby" in english class, about the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima. if the highlighted vocabulary written at the sides of the pages such as "bomb", "lost lives", "injured", "burns", "bodies", "dead", "weak", "mommy" and "rest" aren't bad enough, the lines in the story such as "after a while the boy stopped crying and quietly died....but the little mother did not stop singing...morning came and the sun rose, but the girl never moved again."

some of lindsay's photos...:emma hahaha 

anna hehehehe 

more trampoline fun (lindsay) 

hahahaha i love this one. lins and emma...spiderwomen 

not much news i'm afraid...

so the weekends are drifting into the weekdays and the weekdays are drifting into the weekends and suddenly it's...almost the end of september. i think that i always felt as though my third year would pass by slowly. but now it's almost as though i'm looking it as only a matter of months left. shinjirarenai.
clap your hands say yeah are coming to tokyo and we're thinking about grabbing some tickets. the more the merrier so if anyone's interested...however, they will be performing on a wednesday, so nenkyu is required.
i posted some of the yosakoi photos from the weekend festival in the city. you can check them out here.
i like this linking thing. hehe.
i'm starting a ceramics class tonight taught by Sakazume Katsuyuki. he's apparently quite a world famous potter and lived in NY for about ten years teaching his techniques. thanks to anna for hooking me up.
last night i taught my weekly eikaiwa class. after, five of the older ladies invited me to one of their houses for some tea. one of the women is a farmer and lives in an (apparent) huge, old, traditional japanese style farmhouse. she was saying that it even has one of those bamboo-coal burning fireplaces in the middle, where you can cook nabe pots. she said next time she will invite us all over for a nabe pot dinner.
monday it went up to 30 degrees and we spent the day at the beach. but it's slowly getting colder, and it's hard to believe that in a matter of weeks niigata will look like this.
ok, that's enough hyperlinking for one day. 16 more minutes...

(photo courtesy of martin) 

CIAO, GIACOMO!

our favourite little italian is saying sayonara to niigata and heading to tokyo.
let's send him off with a bang! party at shame this friday, everyone's invited - the bigger the better!
anytime after 9pm!
spread the word!

 

anna, lins, me, kate and emma. tokyo night out (perched on the steps of the harajuku Gap...) good times 

all made up and ready to go out: me, anna, lindsay 

 

i hope this will be therapeutic

i'm stressed. i feel as though i've got so much to do and i don't even know where to begin. or not even so much to do, just so many things kind of hanging over my head. things with people left up in the air...
i just spent my lunch break running around trying to prepare my JLPT application. i thought i was teaching 5th period, but i hadn't spoken with the JTE yet so i didn't even know what i had to prepare for it. (it's now four minutes past the start of 4th and he hasn't shown up so maybe he's absent today...?) anyway, i feel a slight satisfaction at having SENT my JLPT through registered mail 10 minutes ago. one thing i can check off of my list.
the other major thing is sorting out the holidays at xmas. i am just so torn and i keep being pulled in two directions. stay here and see more of asia while i have the money and the freedom to...or go home and see my little niece who i haven't seen since she was born. (among other people!!!) i just don't know what to do!!!!!!!!!!! i feel like i'm on one of those midieval torture machines, being pulled by my arms and legs in opposite directions. muzukashiiiiiii!!!
and i've been told i'm to do ANOTHER medical check + x-ray. i told them i was absolutely categorically NOT going to do another x-ray...the 5th in two years. (at least!!) why am i the only one who seems to be told she has to do these routine check ups and x-rays?

GUESS WHAT!?!?!?!

I UPDATED THE PHOTO BLOG AGAIN!!! SO PLEASE CHECK IT OUT AND FEEL FREE TO COMMENT! GO HERE

anna 

*NEWSFLASH*

updated the photo blog so please take a look.

taiikusai at toyo chu

yesterday i went to toyoura JHS's sport's day festival. this time i actually enjoyed myself. i spent all day taking photos and feeling proud of my students. it makes a big difference now that i've been teaching some of them for over two years. some photos:

FAITO!  

 

smiles 

3 of my favourite toyoura 3-nensei boys 

red team captains after finding out they won 

proud winners 

trophies and happy faces 

 

another random night out...

celebrating emma's last night out in the city :(. the usual izakaya, immigrant's, followed by shame...

ems, anna, lins, me. izakaya, niigs 

laura, anna, ems, lins 

me, anna, ems and lins. this is one of those places that will always remind me of japan. the dank immigrant's hallway.