Irasshai: July 2007

last day

today is the last day that i will occupy this apartment. i woke up this morning feeling really weird about all of it. starting tomorrow i'll be moving in with lindsay in tainai and jon will move in here. of course i feel rather protective and territorial about my place, so it's going to be very strange. however, much better jon than some new JET i don't know.
as lins doesn't have internet access, this might be the last blog posting for a little while. not sure what i'll get up to in nakajo, but it being close to the beach is a good thing.
sigh...

it's the justine show!!!! ...SAYONARA PARTIES!

me and kouchou sensei at my saruhashi goodbye nomikai

me and eriko san at the BOE goodbye dinner

me and natsuki

me and tomo-chan

boe group (jon and katie)

me and toyoura teachers at my toyoura goodbye nomikai

teachers and kyoutou sensei

fe san at BOE party

the english department from toyoura JHS: murayama sensei, maeda sensei, and katou sensei
**all great teachers**

toyoura JHS goodbye party: teachers of Toyoura Junior High School

those of us remaining at the after-party

ajirohama

sunday anna, lins and i went to a bbq organized by lindsay's private student. they had hired a large fishing net which was in the water when we got there. and for - at least 2 hours, dozens of people were at either ends of the rope reeling it in. when it finally came to shore everyone gathered round to put all of the fish into bags. there were 6 or 7 big ones (i have no idea what kind), a couple of squids, jellyfish, a blowfish, and tons of little ones. the kids had a great time picking them up and trying to get them into the plastic bags before they wriggled out of their tiny fingers.
afterwards we had a big bbq...though no fish. (weird??)

fishing at ajirohama

i don't even know why...

...i got so emotional doing my goodbye speech at toyoura chu. but bawling in front of the entire student body and all of the teachers etc was chooo embarrassing. i think it really shocked a lot of the kids. whenever i passed them in the hall over the next two days they would always say "hello!" or "see you!" or "thank you justine sensei!" which they wouldn't always normally do. always normally?
when i left the teacher's room yesterday they all stood up and clapped and bowed and i booted it out of there as fast as i could because i could feel the tears springing up again. the english teachers there this year are really great, and i've had a really good semester teaching with them. i've taught with dozens of english teachers over the years and the three at toyoura now are really some of the best.
i've got monday off and then tuesday is my last day at saru chu. another leaving speech (gulp)...

my last day at toyoura JHS...

the Ajisai class: koumi san, shiori san, and ryo san

1-nensei class with maeda sensei

jeopardy

"my mother likes ~"

kickboxing bbq

last weekend i went to a bbq kazeta organized for the guys from the gym. he brought 20 kilo's of meat. i guess these guys like their protein.

kubota showing shunya some moves

stealing adventure ideas

last week a bunch of us were sitting around anna's living room and talking about the next few weeks. a group of people we knew had gone canyoning several weeks before and said it was a lot of fun, so we started talking about doing the same thing.
before we knew it, everything was organized. set off sunday afternoon (only took us 2 hours from shibata), stayed in a really fun lodge sunday night, and went canyoning on monday morning. there were 30 other people staying at the lodge which made for a fun night. we were blessed with sunshine during the first part of the day (the whole time we were hiking and sliding) which was really lucky since we're still in the midst of rainy season and we hadn't seen the sun in weeks. i loved the sliding down rocks bit but the best thing about it was just spending the weekend with everyone. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo