I have been either running around or under the weather these last few days so I haven’t had time to do an update. On the weekend I went to Yokohama with the staff from school. They believe in having a “morning kompei” to start any field trip (morning toast). So we all had a beer at 6:30 in the morning. The male teachers went to the back of the bus and arranged the seats around a table. They proceeded to drink sake for the rest of the 4 hour bus trip. Throughout the morning they kept blabbing in Japanese then saying my name and laughing. They women looked embarrassed and told me it was just drunk men talk. Oh great. I don’t know if it’s good or bad that I couldn’t understand them. The drive was really nice though. The leaves have all finished changing now and we are left with a lot of copper coloured leaves and snowy mountains and fields. It has just started snowing and I don’t think it will last. The mountains still have quite a bit but the fields are all clear now. I got a great picture of Mount Fuji too. Just like a postcard! We drove all the way out to the ocean and around the harbour of Yokohama to our first stop at Kamakura. We went to see the second largest Buddha in Japan. I don’t know where the largest one is but I am sure someone will tell me. It was quite beautiful. We stayed there for about an hour and then got back on the bus to go to Chinatown. These trips are always rigorously scheduled and leave little room for doing anything on your own. There were lots of stores that I would have liked to go into but there wasn’t really any time for that. Plus I had to be in a ton of group photos. The Japanese love photography in a way I have never seen before. They also like pictures of foreigners doing things. I suppose that is why we are in the paper so much. I slept for a good part of the way to Chinatown because I was starting to feel a little travel sick. We arrived about an hour later in Chinatown for a huge buffet meal of Chinese food. I love Chinese and it was a welcome break from Japanese food. We ate for about 2 and a half hours and I knew we had to head back home at 4:30. It was 2:30 at this point. I started to wonder if we had really driven all this was to see a Buddha and eat lunch. Then we got up to go shopping but I essentially had baby sitters the whole time because they were afraid I would wander off. I just wanted to look around by myself and take some photos but it was difficult. I got to go in some stores though. They weigh laid me in a honey store for about 20 minutes which I could have done without but it was good for the most part. I got a little more Christmas shopping done and we called it a day. Someone brought their little two year old on the trip as well. He was cute when he wasn’t crying. After another four hours on the bus I was back home again. So that’s what staff trips are like here. I have consulted with other people and they say they had pretty much the same experience right down to the early morning beer.
I have made up my mind to go back to Yokohama and do what ever I want for the weekend. Maybe I will wait until the spring and go then. Apart from that excitement, I am going to buy a car soon, hopefully on Sunday. It is too cold and dangerous to ride my bike to school anymore. On the weekend, I am going to Nagano city to get my re-entry permit and go to an international night. I will be wearing Kimono and acting as a receptionist for part of the evening and hopefully just hanging out for the rest of the time. There should be some great pictures from that. December is the busiest month of the year everywhere in the world I think. I have my weekends completely booked up right until January. I am so excited for Thailand too! I hope you are all getting into Christmas or what ever it is you celebrate. I taught a lesson on Hanukah yesterday and no one had any idea what Jewish people were (the teachers included). That was a bit of a stumbling block but we made dreidels anyway. The things you take for granted eh?