Nearing the End

Not much has happened lately- I feel like all I have been doing is going to a lot of birthday parties. I never realized how many summer birthdays there are. So I thought I would just relate this story:
The schools here require that people take their shoes off at the entrance. Most teachers have their own shoes, but because I move to different schools so often, I just wear the "visitors" slippers. They are these slippery vinyl things that easily fall off my feet when I'm walking. I have learned to shuffle in a way that prevents them from falling off (usually). The other day when my students picked me up in the teachers office for lunch, I was carrying my tray and following them up the stairs to the classroom where we eat lunch as a class. Several times in the past, these slippers have almost caused me to fall up the stairs, but somehow I have always avoided it. Until this time. I HAD to trip while I was carrying a tray full of food. Specifically, tea and a large bowl of fishy-smelling soup that ended up all over me. The boy I was walking with looked horrified. He asked if I was ok, then ran and got a box of tissues. We tried to sop up most of the mess off the floor (unsuccessfully) and went to class. All of the students were looking at me sympathetically, and several of them came over and replaced the other food on my tray with dry food. I was embarrassed AND I smelled like fish for the rest of the day. It was funny, though. I wish you could have all seen it.
And that's it for now. I am having my last visits to all my schools, and it's getting pretty sad. I will miss my students and teachers. I can't believe I'm leaving in 2 months!!
For those of you who don't like to read as much as look at pictures, here you go:
On the way home from a birthday party, we saw this beetle being carried away by ants.


A caterpillar that all the students were afraid of. I don't know if it was because it was spiky or it was poisonous.



Some of my students I will never see again. :(

Tokyo

At the last minute (literally) I decided to go to Tokyo with a couple of friends. It was great. I finally woke up early enough to go to the fish market on Saturday. And by early, I mean 5:00 a.m. As you can see from the picture, I was wearing sandals. This was a horrible idea. There were fishy puddles everywhere and my feet couldn't always avoid them.


It was amazing to watch the chaos in an otherwise extremely organized country. We walked around for a while and just soaked it all in, then we ate sushi for breakfast. That's right, after looking at dead (and some not-so-dead) fish for hours, we had sushi. At 7:30 in the morning. It was tasty.

After the market, we walked around the city and took a boat tour on the river. The temperature was perfect and it was nice to sit down for a while. It was very pleasant.

That night, we experienced the other highlight of the weekend- a Japanese Beatles cover band. We'd heard that it was something we really should see, so we ran through the pouring rain to get to this club. They were really great. It was just funny to hear them singing the songs in English (sometimes with a slight accent) and get totally caught up in listening to the Beatles, then get thrown off when they started speaking Japanese in between songs. A couple of them even looked like the band members.
This was "John" (who, in profile, really looked like him). We had huge crushes on him.

Ha ha ha

This is a new flavor at Baskin Robbins that I'm pretty sure we won't get in the States. Or am I missing something?

older

So, as of this weekend, I am a year older. It was a good birthday. I wanted to go camping, but the weather was supposed to be bad. Instead, we had a barbeque on the river north of my city. It was beautiful. Even with the endless concrete walls.
Then, the next day, I experienced my first surprise party. It was a good birthday.


And this is just a cool dead butterfly I found.

A Sad Day in Kakamigahara

Bryan was kind enough to bring me cilantro seeds so I could have a taste of home. I was able to make a few batches of salsa before I noticed my cilantro was dying. I couldn't figure it out- I was giving it enough water and as much sunlight as possible, given it is the rainy season in my area of Japan. Yesterday, I looked at my plant and saw hundreds of aphids crawling all over it! I think it's over. Where are the ladybugs when you need them??