My garden has turned into a veritable jungle in my absence, the tomatoes in particular are obesely foliate (I just made that phrase up). The first flowers (as you can see) are opening their pretty little faces to the world so I look forward to seeing it in full bloom! I also have little baby green tomatoes.
I had an amusing little revelation during my last elementary school class. I kicked off with a song (old MacDonald) and the male kids were not being very genki about it. With some cajoling from me and the teacher they made half hearted attempts at the actions, being the 5yrs I didn’t expect much genkiness anyway (liveliness). However after the class all the boys returned and requested the song again, a tad bemused I consented and my goodness what a difference this time! There were big grins all around and they were super Genki (enthusiastic), apparently (as the teacher explained) they are only shy in the presence of girls. Funny little beggars.
Here's a quote:
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine. Fran Lebowitz

So I ordered a new Kilt! One of a lighter weight material than the one I already have at home. I have been quite excited about it and it arrived yesterday! I was practicing with two students for the story contest when there was an announcement over the PA for me. I little perturbed I made my way to the teachers room and there was my package! A new Kilt and a new sporran! Yippee! I had the afternoon off so I went for a run then donned my kilt and came back for my English conversation classes. As soon as I entered the teachers room I was surrounded by all the female teachers, one even took a picture. I had to endure allot of compliments I did not quite understand but these things are to be expected when a Scotsman dons his Kilt. Actually I think the kids were less impressed with the Kilt. They had no idea what it was and I am sure were just wondering what on earth Kureigu Sensei was doing wearing a skirt! So I spent a good wack of each of my conversation classes explaining the Kilt. The kids were really late for the class, I was about to pack up and go but I am glad they came, even though it meant we stayed until 8:30pm instead of 7:30. There are some matches coming up and they are all busy with their various sports clubs I believe.

Here is the concise version of my trip to Kobe and subsequent travels. The recontracting conference itself lasted 3 days and was in the main allot of fun (of the wizz bang variety). It was good too see some familiar faces I had not seen in quite a long time. As for the conference itself, there were actually a number of very useful workshops or at least somewhat inspiring ones. I am of course not making the most of all the free time I have on my island. A particular highlight was meeting Marshal and Alicia again, two mainland JETs who went to India with us. It was on Marshall’s suggestion that we went to see Hase Dera and although the peonies (it is famous for these flowers) were not in bloom it was one of the nicest temples we saw. After the conference was over I and Kelly went on a relaxed tour of Kansai. We did not have a great desire to see Kyoto again or a big city like Osaka (Tokyo was enough big city for a long time) so we headed to Nara. That turned out to be an inspired choice. I really enjoyed our time in Nara, it is a nice, quiet little city which can be easily seen on foot. It helped we stayed in a pleasant Ryokan (Japanese style Inn) which was right next to Nara Park where most of the sightseeing sites are located. I won’t bore you with details of the trip, it is broadly covered by the pictures in the previous post. However one thing that I’d like to mention is how helpful the people were in Kobe and Nara, if we ever looked confused or lost of one moment, paused and looked around at signs or the guidebook, then someone would immediately try and help us (in English). It was really nice and we didn’t experience anything of the sort in Tokyo or Kyoto. It is common hearsay in Okinawa that mainland Japanese are not as friendly but the experience we had does not corroborate that at all. I suppose it was taken to an extreme by the elderly gentleman (72 year old retired Junior High school head master) who not only personally showed us to our Ryokan from the train station but appointed himself our tour guide for the rest of the day. He wanted to practice his English (which was pretty good) as he planned a trip to the UK later that year. He even wanted to meet us the following morning and show us around again but we had to make our excuses. The rest of the trip went very nicely indeed thank you very much! A quick excursion from Nara to see Horyu ji (Japans oldest wooden temple); a day in the inaka (countryside) where we saw Hase Dera and Yoshino; a night and half a day in Osaka (surprised by a beautiful wild flower garden in the midst of the urban ugliness); Himeji jo (awesome castle) and finally a night back in Kobe (finally getting a good view of the semi-famous Kobe nightscape). Upon returning to Okinawa honto I went to a Hospital to get my finger checked out. My first experience of a Japanese hospital and I must say that the whole thing was very efficient and cheap! I registered as a new patient, saw two doctors, had an x-ray and got the splint for my finger and was checked out in about two and a half hours! It also only cost 3000 yen (15 quid) for everything! Although if I had not had the insurance it would have been more like 10000yen or 50 quid, still surprisingly cheap. So the upshot of all that is I have a metal splint on my finger and will continue to do so for 6 weeks. That has a 40% chance of fixing it and if it fails I will need surgery which has a 98% chance of success. Not bad odds I think, the specialist (who had great English) told me it was a common injury for surgeons, he himself had the very same injury on his ring finger (which encouragingly looked perfectly normal now).