It is my second to last day at work. I have one free period today that I should be using to get myself organsied but here is a blog update instead. I think that I am going to receive a lot of presents today. I have already had my last days at elementary school. I was very sad to leave them! I had to give a very crappy speech in Japanese at both of the schools. I hate speaking into a microphone. I asked the grade two class afterwards if they could understand what I was saying and everyone responded with an enthusiastic Ok!. That doesn’t mean they understood they just like saying Ok! to everything. They are so genki. (Happy excited). I have received about 300 letters from students and a lot of gifts. I love the people who have given me flowers because I don’t have to pack them. The amount of luggage to bring home has doubled since the end of school and private classes. I went shopping for a boat load of thank you gifts as well. I wish my private classes were still running though so I would have a little spending money. I still want to do some traveling and I don’t want to spend too much cash. Tom is leaving on Friday and I am so sad to see him go! Thank god I know I will see him again in the new year. I am still trying to find someone to microchip the cats. Bringing them back is a pain but it is worth it. They have continued their reign of tyranny over the neighbourhood with 2 more bird deaths and the harassment of our neighbour's three legged cat. Enjoy it while it lasts! You’ll be house bound soon. This week is a salute to liver damage as I attend a good bye drinking party every night of the week to culminate in a trip to Tokyo on Friday morning. I have been informed that we will be having a morning kampai (toast) at 5:40 AM before the bus leaves. I don’t really want a beer at that time of day. All this beer is going to make me gain weight. I don’t have loads of time for exersize this week. I want to get some tennis in on the weekend though if I can find a partner. Actually, this weekend, I will have a pretty packed schedule. Friday, I will get back from Tokyo around 9 and then try and salvage the house from its state of disaster. Saturday is Shiojiri’s town festival. I have never been to it because it got cancelled last year and I don’t know what happened in my first year. I just didn’t attend. So I really wanted to wear yukata for the festival season this year. That is the light summery kimono. But I couldn’t find something that fit properly. The tallest height available in my town was only 155 cm. I need about 170 cm. I met a man in town though who is currently sewing me one! I got to choose the fabric and everything! He saw me looking at them at a store on main street. I said I wanted one but they didn’t have my size. He was a very nice man and had spent some time in America about 20 years ago. The shop was actually his family shop. He brought me in and measured me up and then we had tea with his mother. I am going to miss that kind of thing. His mother will help me dress for the festival on Saturday. I am really excited for that. It would be hard to dress myself in it. I could probably put it on someone else though. And I will when I get home.
So Saturday is the festival. On Sunday I am going back to Tokyo to go busking in Yoyogi Park with Dec. It will be our début in Tokyo. We will play piano and guitar and sing. Hopefully next week we will make a CD together at my friend’s house. Should be fun. Other recent happenings…lets see. I can’t think of anything. I am trying to plan many homestays in August as I soon will have no where to live. I hope to take advantage of the free flight on your birthday deal that exists in Japan. You can go anywhere in Japan on your birthday. I will see if I can get a booking but maybe I don’t have time. I can hear my teachers talking about my final drinking party. It sounds worrying. There is a lot of speeches they are going to make to me and I would imagine they won’t be in English which will equal a lot of vague understanding and nodding and smiling. They just put a list of different types of alcohol on my desk. Are we ordering in advance? We had another fairly large earthquake last week. The apocalypse may be coming. Time to leave Japan before total destruction occurs and we are all sucked into the ocean. I think we would take Korea and the small island countries like Guam and Saipan with us.

Today's photos are of last everythings. The first one is of some monsters I made with the grade one kids. In the next photo they are displaying them. Can you spot the kid who is substantially larger and looks like frankenstien? His name is Eiki. He is a very happy boy. Next is the giant bug that the kids play with at recess. Then we have Tom and Luke helping to set up the photo exhibition. We were in the paper for it but I never saw it. Then we have a little taiko drumming that Tom and I have been doing. And last is a girl with a frog. Her t-shirt says I cry for joy on the last day a school.