Socialising

You might be thinking lots of beer and dancing. Nope, this is slightly different. Last Friday we had a formal meeting, a pre-mid year conference meeting. Basically an excuse to meet people we hadn't yet met. The after party was a group of 20 of us went to an Izakaya.








This is Alice, afraid at where Rich's hand was doing...






Saturday night, Mike and Kirk's band was playing in Matsumoto. That's an hour train ride for me. They were really good, and i manged to see people i dont often see, who live around that area. The bar was called Old Rock, and its pretty much an immitation on an English pub. The only one in this city. On the left is a picture of Andrew and Colleen. A funny couple, can you tell?
Below, on the left is Leah, from Ireland. On the left is Alice and me.

Jetsetter

If you didn't know already, I am the new Jetsetter editor, since August. Jetsetter is a monthly magazine that we have for JETs in our Prefecture. The magazine's contents includes anything that fellow JETs want to write about. There are 3 editors in all. Alice, our associate editor, and Sarah our creative editor. I, the editor also have the responsibility of doing 'The Interview'.

This month was a busy month for us. We had plenty of articles from our readers in our inbox. I had to chase the football boys to do the interiew. In the end i managed to find them on Saturday night watching Mike play in his show. Luckily I was going to suport Mike's band too. I interviewed Tim Piper (UK), Tim Kalmer (US) and Marc Baladi (UK).

Now Alice and I also play football, so we were there supporting these boys while we went playing. In the end the lads won, the came 1st place, beating 16 teams, and had a very tough final round. This is a picture of Piper with his girlfriend Michiko, and Kalmer with his.

Here are photos of me and Marc messing about trying to get pictures to put in the Jetsetter. Also that night, it was Marc's last night in Nagano. He's moving to Tokyo. These photos were named, 'having a banter at the bar'.

Current English

In my Current English class, I have the power to do whatever I like with the 10 students. We can have a chat about anything, from our weekends to debates about ipods and Sony mp3 players.
A while i decided that we needed to get out of the classroom. So we went for a walk into the city to do an interview with a foreigners. But unfortunately, late morning on a Thursday, foreigners were a little scarce. Still we had a good time, but the weather was a little too hot to walk for about an hour in total.
The students were really happy to get out of the class and to spend this rare chance to get out of a class.
Take a look at the pictures. The student in yellow pants, Kazutoshi, is the funniest boy in school. He really lifts the atmosphere in this class and another class that I have with him. The girl playing with my hair, is Ami, we're pretty close, i get all the gossip from her.
Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

School Festival

The summer is well and truly over. Although the weather was a little too hot for comfort, it was the best season at school. The reason being the school festival, Kajinoha Bunkasai. The students took more than 2 months preparing for this most exciting school event. I had heard do much about last year's that even I was looking forward to it.









So that's the entrance for the 3 day festival. This is the outdoor stage, where a cross dress competition is taking place.









Above is 2nd grade students, class 7, the international course. They're amazing students. With their great English speaking ability, it makes it easy for me, but that means my Japanese isnt getting any better. So, for the festival, I am part of them, and i get to wear this green t-shirt, chosen by the class. Stange i know... but they wanted bright!!!










Above are some of the 3rd grade boys, dressed in pink. Im sure the girls in the class chose that colour. But they look cool in it anyway. Right here are more crazy pictures...


















Here is the whole class, sitting in front of their hard work they spent weeks doing. It is a peace statue on the Island of Okinawa, very south of Japan. This class will actually be going there on a school trip at the end of October, and i can't go!!! :(
Oh, by the way, i think you can click on the pictures to enlarge them. Feel free to leave comments...

My Birthday

This is a little late to write about... but it's better late than never. So I turned 22 on July 15th, and I love the photos that Alice took, so I wanted to share them.
For my birthday, I had a BBQ at Alice's house in Ueda. Her house is more of a party place than my apartment, and of course has a garden for the BBQ. It was a lot of fun and a lot of people came, and I was surprised at some new faces. Everyone was so sweet, even the boys.

So this photo, taken by Alice, is when I was opening all the presents I received, and Alice was also throwing party paper at me. Its a little but like the party poppers but without the pop, and more paper.

These are all the people that came to the party.

After the house party... we all went to Karaoke, without fail. Everyone had fun, it was drink as much as you want, and the karaoke place had soft cream too... which we took advantage of... yummy...