I had rather a long weekend this weekend, for one reason or another. One reason was the India fundraiser which was held on Saturday. All the Okinawa JETs who went to India in December have been working on throwing a fundraiser at the popular JET haunt, Paul and Mike’s international bar. The night was a success despite a disappointing turnout and we raised a total of 8man (80000 yen or 800 US dollars) after all our expenses. This money will go to the anada marger (however that is spelt) organization to be used to fund their schools in India. The harrowing highlight of the night was the live slave auction; the five boys who had gone to India offered themselves up for sale as slaves/dates for the night. Another big hit were cookies cooked by the hottest gal in all of Okinawa, sold with the slogan ‘better than sex’ they raised almost a 100 bucks on their own. Other goings on over the course of the weekend involved a Gumball rally which despite acts of gross public indecency my team did not win, I suppose second place is better than a kick in the pants. The weekend was topped off with a visit to Nakagusuku castle, an ancient Ryukyu castle dating back to the 15th centaury and a world heritage site which boasts impressive masonry and panoramic views, one can see from one side of the island to the other (maybe). After exploring the castle we explored a haunted hotel which was built right next to the castle. I don’t know any of the details of the story; suffice it to say the hotel was build recently but quickly abandoned after it got a reputation as being haunted. This reputation arose by an alarming number of unexplained deaths which plagued the hotel. I don’t know the actual number but it must be assumed it was alarmingly large enough to cause this large and probably once impressive hotel to be abandoned. It is quite derelict now and covered in graffiti. It does have a certain spooky charm and include a picture of me pretending to serve a drink from behind what used to be a bar (I think). I was also very sick this weekend, terrible migraines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4781688.stm
This is an interesting article. A bit sad and troubling but I post it because of the Japanese students who helped the unfortunate lady when no-one else did. My Japanese English teacher was happy when I told her about the article. It is my observation that Japanese people are very kind and eager to help and seem to view life with little malice. I have not noticed any bullying or nastiness between students at my school, I would definitely expect a little of that if this were a Scottish school. Another character trait I have noticed is a tendency for Japanese men to get stark naked when drunk. A phenomenon I experienced in the confines of my very own home last night. I am sure you are wondering if I participating in this activity, as a cultural experience perhaps? I am also quite sure I won't be telling ;).

A fun weekend but another one where spending time with my Japanese friends got in the way of actual Japanese language study. Ah well, such is the way of things. On Saturday four people from Tokyo visited Izena, one of them had traced her ancestry back to King Shoen and the others were just along for the ride. We threw a barbeque at Yoshiaki-sans house in their honour (any excuse for a party). I mostly brought this up because I wanted to post a picture of me eating a pig’s snout. A whole pigs head (minus bones) is typical Okinawan barbeque fare and upon spying the snout I claimed that delicacy for myself. It was a little chewy but not bad!

A Picture of me and Percy the Primula about to depart Unten port for his new home on Izena island! As requested by 'e'.

Aww cute, could you find anything better on your desk when you come into work?

On the front it said:
Letter for you kureigu
And inside: It is the cookie which we made. Probably, good.
Were you already used to Japan? from students 3 grad

I don't want them to learn english well, it's way cuter this way.

I finally fixed my internet! For two weeks now it has been semi-broken, not going to certain sites or loading up pictures, very annoying! I was pretty much restricted to gmail and bbc.co.uk but anyway is all good now cos I fixed it! Something to do with the IP and DNS addresses. I have had this post lying around waiting to be posted for a while now and finally, without further ado, my post:
Another update to my blog with nothing of immense importance to convey. But I say since when has important been a part of fun? I had a fun weekend on Okinawa honto (and if you haven’t picked up on it yet, that is the main and largest Okinawan Island). On Saturday I went to see the new Narnia film and I thought it was jolly good! I did love the books are a child so I am sure that had something to do with it. It really was the ultimate fantasy for a young boy, getting to go to a magical world and be given a sword and shield and told you could be king! Anyway I thought it was pretty good. Later that same evening I went ice-skating at Okinawa’s only ice rink. I was terrible but then I expected that, however since when has terrible not been a part of fun! Mmmm I am not sure that one works but I did have fun! On Sunday my ferry was cancelled again! I really hate it when that happens…… (Yeah right!). So that day was spent exploring the heavily forested mountains of northern Okinawa honto in the search of waterfalls. For the second time running the trail to the world famous Hiji falls was closed so our only option was to bravely set forth and discover hitherto unknown falls in a brave (some may say foolhardy) adventure. And yet find falling water we did! See above picture for photographic evidence! We also came across strange beasts lurking in the leaf litter (newts). So that was my weekend. Ah yes I also made a new friend, Percy the primula, he’s moving in with me. I also bought several helmets and a hammer that goes squeak, students of Izena beware! That’s all I have to say.

Teraryo, their eyes amuse me, I think they look quite startled to have been taken out of the water.




This Saturday (the 18th) I lived the day in the life of a mozuku fisher man on Izena Island. Mozuku is a brown sea weed which is something of a delicacy in Japan, it and sugar are Izena island’s main exports. My friend Koshin and his father are mozuku fishermen and two weeks ago Koshin had offered to give me a ‘workshop’ on his work. The day started early (I woke up at 6.30am) and we were in their boat heading out so sea by 8am. It was a small 25 to 30 foot boat, Koshin and his father work together in a two man team harvesting the mozuku. At the South West side of the island (off Izena beach) a small uninhabited island (Yamaho shima) and several rocks linked by reef form a large, shallow lagoon; this is where the mozuku is grown. It is grown on nets suspended about a foot above the sea bed. Once we had reached their nets we anchored the boat and set about harvesting the mozuku. There were several other similar small boats in the lagoon also harvesting mozuku, Koshin tells me there are about 50 fishermen (uminchu) in Izena village. It was a two man job, one member would dive down with a sort of hoover and suck up the mozuku. The mozuku and sea water was pumped up to the boat and then out over netting suspended over the side of the boat, the other member of the team would then brush the mozuku into crates while removing any other seaweeds or sea grass which was mixed in with the mozuku. I offered to help with the brushing and Koshin’s father seemed only too happy to let me, I ended up doing 6 out of the 7 crates we filled that day. I was determined to prove (to myself?) that I was up to the challenge of this work and I expect Koshin’s father was delighted to have a bit of a holiday. The mozuku fisher men work seven days and week and typically spend all day out at sea, hard work! I also went down and snorkeled to observe the ‘hoovering’ process. While I was down there I saw a white moray eel swimming along, it was perhaps 3 or 4 foot long. We harvested the mozuku without break until about 1.30pm when the compressor broke and Koshin was forced to surface. So that brought an end to the mozuku harvest for the day and to be honest I was quite relieved! We brought the mozuku to the packing plant and then had a quick lunch (bento) before heading back out to sea to do some shell fish collecting. For the record 400kg of mozuku brings in 7 man (350quid) and each crate weighted about 70kg, judging by the number of empty crates on the boat I think they would be able to fill 15-20 in a day. By now the lagoon was about 1 meter deep, perfect for collecting shell fish. A type of cone shell called teraryo is in season right now so that was our chosen prey. Now you those not in Okinawa may not be aware but cone shells can be very dangerous as certain species are extremely venomous (potentially fatal) and one is recommended to avoid all cone shells. So my first lesson was how to recognize the different species. Fortunately the most common species is the edible variety and the venomous species have a distinct pattern (triangular blobs instead of stripes) and are conveniently bright orange or purple. We collected toritsu from roughly 2.30 to 4.30 and after a while I got my eye in and collected quite a few, all together we must have collected several hundred at least. I also spotted some weird and wonderful marine life along the way, I have jotted down descriptions of them and will endeavor to find out what they were. Once back on dry land we boiled the shells and shelled them, quite a task as well! We split the teraryo equally three ways so now I have quite a lot of them in my fridge! Later I and Koshin met with Teru at Nakagawakan (the restaurant/hotel near my house) for dinner and drinks. I was pretty exhausted from the day’s exertions and had to pass on karaoke, I think I was sound asleep by about 11 o’clock. So that was my day in the life as an Izena mozuku fisherman, it was hard work and to be honest rather monotonous, it makes me even more grateful for the wonderful job I have now. I am very grateful to all those factors which have conspired to give me an education and therefore such exiting prospects and opportunities in life.

So today was Valentines Day! Valentines Day in Japan is a little different to Valentines Day back home. Instead of being mostly about couples where usually the man makes the effort here in Japan on the 14th of February women give men chocolate. Not only do they have to give chocolate to their lover/partner but also to male co-workers or any man they like/are close to. Then on White day, the 14th of March, Men return the favour giving chocolate to any women who gave them chocolate, although this may not in practice happen. So anyway the female teachers banded together to give all the male teachers chocolate and I also got chocolate from some of the pupils. One came with a cute note saying ‘happy valentines Craig, thank you for teaching English for us for half years,’ pretty sweet I thought. Oh and also we had chocolate cake with our school lunch (valentines cake) and as there was some left I got an extra slice, wicked! To make things even better when I popped down to my elementary school at the end of the day to check on the topic for Thursdays lesson (review!) I got more valentines chocolate and they were opening their valentines cake so I had some more, double wicked! In other news I got recontracted today and while up at my BOE (Board of Education) the head of the BOE offered me some tea and over tea we were chatting about running and working out (he is a decathlon athlete) and he offered me the use of his weights at his house. In fact he was so kind as to drive me to his house then and there so I could look at his weights, he had a nice old traditional okinawan house. So one of these evenings soon I will drop by and lift with him. Not sure I want to get into lifting again what with my running thing right now but a little won’t hurt and it would only be polite. So all in all it was a good day, I also only had one class to teach all day.

My blog goes political! Not entirely sure why I am inspired to do this but in light of recent events I feel I would like to share this cartoon with you all. It has been stolen by me from www.b3ta.com . I expect I will delete this post after a while but for the moment here you go:

Well to continue in the vain of random posts about relatively mundane goings on in Izena Jima I will tell you what I did last night. It was actually quite a fun night. As of late I have been avoiding drinking during the week, it is definately not good for my school performance. The locals seem to be able to deal with it just fine, but not poor old me! However I got tricked into it last night. After having finished my own dinner (made myself some onigiri) I got a call from Koshii and Nagi and all that I understood was that he could be at my house in five minutes. I quicky get ready and jump in his car when he arrives. He takes me to his house where I meet his parents. I had mentioned I like sashimi on saturday and that day he had caught a tuna so tonite we were to feast on mountains of tuna sashimi liberaly washed down with sake and beer. Yoshiaki san and his family also turned up. It was a very fun night, I managed to get alot of the jokes (the impersonations of some of the teachers was pretty easy to enjoy), the food was good and the drink plentyfull. I was amused upon entering their kitchen to suddenly feel tall, mmm what's this strange sensation. Their kitchen ceiling was only a few inches clear of my head, I am assuming it is a old japanese house! Koshii's father is a fisherman and we have set a date for him to take me out to do sumogeri (not quite sure on that word), anyway it mean skin diving and hunting fish and collecting shell fish. Last time I did that it was nice and hot, not entirely sure how fun it will be in the cold, oh well! Ganbarrimasu!

I realise I haven’t blogged in a while and to be honest there hasn't been anything exiting to blog about. However for the sake of those folks at home who like to know what I am up to I will briefly detail my shenanigans. I spent last weekend on Okinawa honto, Saturday was a friend’s birthday party, which was suitably Kronk. It was nice to see a lot of fellow ALTs I hadn't seen in some time. There was a case of a missed ferry but it was due to wholly unavoidable reasons. I worked solo on Tues/Wed as my JTE had business on Okinawa honto. My exertions were noticed and I got a comment about being a hard worker on Wednesday night and went out to dinner that night with my teachers. Thursday was a very busy day at the shogakko (elementary school), 5 classes but they all went well. On Friday my Junior High had it's ekiden (relay marathon for the students) for which I sacrificed my half day off but I think it was worth it as the teachers seemed keen for me to attend. Afterwards we had our 'Otskaresama' parti (wow what a good job we did party!). I left that party after about 3 hours to celebrate an islander's birthday. A rather intoxicated night of Karaoke ensued and much fun was had by all. The weekend that followed was characterised by a severe case of lethargy from which I am just recovered from. I had dinner with some Japanese friends on Saturday, managed a run on Sunday, throw in some painting and a little Japanese study and that's all I managed. Ah yes, how could I forget, throughout this past week I have been IMENSLY enjoying watching the original star wars trilogy kindly lent to me by a fellow outer islander Brett. A ripping yarn backed up with wizz bang graphics, crickey! OH! How could I forget, I must mention so you ALL know, Scotland just beat France in the six nations rugby tournament (20-16) first time in ten years!!! I am only sad I wasn't back home and able to watch the game at Murrayfield, ah well.

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Gentle Dancer. Where You Lived: Japan. How You Died: Consumption.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

I decided it might be nice to make some sort of poster about India to stick up on a wall (or window) somewhere. But being the sort to make full use of the resources avialable to me I decided I should have my students make it. So I had them do it in my english conversation night class. It did have some educational aspect as they had to translate the english into japanese. What wonderful little mites they are! Doing work for me and of course not only being the reason for my getting paid here but also making my job most enjoyable. I do plan to add a bit of writing of my own but that japanese translation will take some work, unless I just ask my JTE to do it for me.

Sakura! The cherry blossoms are out on Izena! They are indeed quite pretty.

Well I am officially a little bored right now. I had one class this morning and that was it! I have to plan something for my English conversation class tomorrow but I have a pretty good idea of what I will do and I have alllllllll day to do it. So as a result I am going to write an entirely random entry on my Blog. Were to start... ah-hah! On Friday the teachers at my Shogakko (elementary school) had a new year’s party. I accepted their kind invitation even though it meant I could not go to Iheya with Teru, boooooooo! It turned out to be rather quite fun and I was glad I went. It was held in the yochein (kindergarten) room and we sat on their tiny, tiny chairs, barely enough space to fit half one’s derrière onto! The sight of all the teachers (the headmaster and vice in particular) perched on these dolls house sized chairs was something I will treasure for some time to come. I had the honour of being sat to the headmaster’s right which meant extensive and repetitive use of my limited Japanese vocabulary throughout the night. Being a party held by elementary school teachers we of course played a game. The game involved being blindfolded and drawing portraits of teachers each taking it in turn to draw one feature after another. For those of you who don’t know Japanese try and guess which one is me! For the rest my name is written in Katakana. It was a fun night anyway. The rest of the weekend was rather quiet, Izena seemed to be on shutdown. It took three attempts before I and Nagi found a place which served beer so we could study our respective languages over a cold one. Unfortunately the place then closed at 11 so it was a short study session. Well anyway, nothing much exiting happened so I won’t bore you. I think like the rest of the ALTs who went to India I have been mulling over my experience. However I think I am being drawn to a more cynical view of the whole affair. Of perhaps drawn between a cynical view and a more positive one. I don’t want to get into it too much but although I felt by going there we did something special for the children and I remember the joy and delight we gave to them and the joy and delight they gave us, I am somewhat troubled by the whole affair. So we definitely touched their lives in a positive way. However I am unsure of what lasting good we have done them. If teaching them English was our goal I don’t think we made a huge difference, their English was already good and due to our lack of Bengali most activities were games. Games were fun of course and having them associate English with fun is good. The importance of learning English is pretty much well established in India though and the standard is very high, it is essential for a good career there. If our aim was to promote this method of teaching as opposed to the very old fashioned methods commonly used in India, all fine and good, a noble cause but should we not have been teaching teachers then? Ok so the only tangible lasting effect I could see that we left was the things as a result of the money we donated. The new well shaft and water tank and wall for a classroom I think. And of course they will have money left over. So if they money was the main thing as I expect it was then it seems a fair point to me that our personal expenditures on the trip were vastly more than the sum we donated. I can’t help wondering if we might not have better served these children and the whole cause of better education for underprivileged children in India better by simply sending them more money and less people having actually gone to teach. What did we gain by having so many people go there in person over less people and more money? Nothing that I can see apart from our own personal experiences of the trip. So was then this whole thing as much about us getting to experience India as helping the children? I now imagine having sent more money and not having gone to India personally and even if I had detailed accounts of the trip and how the money was spent I would have personally got less out of the experience. I would have felt less good about what I had done. But now I realise my error, I was viewing the whole trip as entirely to do with helping the children. When it was also about being an opportunity to allow us to experience India and see the children first hand and in as such it was an undoubted success. With this realisation my above rant is unnecessary but I think I will post it anyway, also now I feel especially guilty that in effect Elvira, Corry and John did so much to organise what was partially a holiday in India, well I can offer them nothing now except my gratitude, you did a splendid job! I hope no-one is offended by my cynical take on things; it’s not entirely how I feel about the India trip. It was amazing, the kids were amazing and my fellow ALTs were amazing, I have a considerable amount of admiration for you all. Bear in mind I tend to feel uncomfortable with going along with the groups opinion on things (or whatever I perceive it to be) and am somewhat reactionary as a result. Well this turned into something I didn’t expect, so much for a little random post in my blog to pass the time of day. Actually in hindsight I think my frustration (and a little confusion) lay because on the one hand I felt very good about the amazing thing we did and how the kids and people reacted to us and on the other hand frustrated at the huge disparity between what we achieved and the scale of the problem(s) we saw there. I suppose India's problems and indeed one small schools problems are too big to solve by one 9 day visit by 23 people.

I am back in Okinawa now and still coming to terms with what I experienced in India. Perhaps that is a little melodramatic but it was definitely a memorable trip which gave much food for thought. The first thing I noticed almost immediately after walking out of the aeroplane in India was that the air seemed smoky. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Delhi is very, very polluted. The inside of our nostrils were permanently black due to all the particles we were inhaling, goodness knows what it was doing to our lungs. I shudder to think! So the first shock was how polluted the air was, the second was how Indian India really was. I had various preconceived images of India (what I thought were stereotypes) in my head which suddenly became reality moments after leaving my hotel, in the streets around our hotel, people slept, cooked, ate and washed, right there in the street! The street its self was basically mud with the odd bit of paving showing through. There were several holy cows just a hundred metres from out hotel and feral dogs wondering around unchecked. Without anytime to take it all in we were accosted by rickshaw drivers, people trying to sell goodness knows what and of course beggars. It was almost too much to handle but as the days passed I became used to the hustle and bustle of the streets and it no longer phased me. I soon got stuck into haggling while shopping or for rickshaw rides while touring the sights of New Delhi. Just to give you an idea of what sort of place Delhi is, Delhi has an international airport, soaring glass office blocks and Indians driving Mercedes surrounded by muddy streets crammed with people and animals living in abject poverty with no refuse collection system and a very rudimentary sewage system. At one point I saw on one side of the road a nice looking university building and some shining glass fronted technological institute while on the other side of the road people were living in makeshift dwellings of dirty cloth and branches surrounded by small hills of rubbish! While in Delhi we saw the Jama Masjid (India’s largest mosque), the Gordwara bangle sahib (a very peaceful Sikh temple), Ghandi’s house and site of his assassination and the India gate. We also took a day trip up to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which was just as beautiful as one would expect, which is very. On the 19th (I think) we took an overnight train (19 hours) to Calcutta and then another local train to Panskura where we would be teaching English for the next 9 days. Panskura was very much a rural backwater, as we left the train and walked to out ‘hotel’ literally everyone there stopped what they were doing and stood silently watching us. For our time in Panskura we were to remain celebrities, constantly being asked to sign books and even clothing. Never for one moment were we not the centre of attention! This did get somewhat tiresome but all was made well by the enthusiasm and general wonderfulness of the children we were teaching. It was really heart-warming to meet such great kids in such a place and also heart breaking thinking they will have to grow up and live in such a place. Apart from the poverty northern India (especially the rural areas) suffers from many social problems. The group of 20 or so orphans that lived at the school permanently in particular won our hearts. This is not to say the teaching was easy, it was as draining as it was chaotic but we pulled through as a group due to many sterling efforts despite misbehaving bowels! I think everyone on the group bar one lucky girl suffered from the dreaded Delhi Belly to varying degrees. By the time the camp had drawn to a close we were more than ready for a rest, hot showers and clean beds! It was not to be so! Instead we went on a boat trip down the Sunder bans (a delta of the Ganges River). We perhaps had the possibility of seeing the infamous Bengal tiger and relaxation on the river but this is India and we had 20 young children with us on a rather small boat. We also missed a day on the river due to some typical Indian planning but let’s not go into that, things never EVER run smoothly and on time in India. One just has to accept these things with as much grace as one can muster. Which I admit at the time was not much grace at all. The boat trip was survived, just, and we retired that night to a rather nice hotel in Calcutta. Although the hot water wasn’t quite all there the bed was large and clean. Western food for breakfast (toast and eggs) was about the best thing I could think of at the time. I didn’t go into the food we ate in Panskura but suffice it to say it was terrible! I tried at the time to be positive about it, positive right up to when it started to cause regular and violent visits to the squat toilet. That was when I refused school food and ate only pre-packaged white carbohydrates. The food was plain (rice and boiled vegetables) and carried the very real risk of diarrhoea. Back to Calcutta, we spend the following day enjoying Calcutta which seemed very civilized compared to Delhi. I am almost afraid to say but I am sure some of this is due to the much greater British presence in Calcutta. Visiting the Victoria memorial in Calcutta was one of the highlights of the trip for me, as was St Johns church and St Andrews Kirk. Actually seeing the writers building where much of the East India Company’s administration was done was also quite amazing. Rather than endure the train again we took a flight back to Delhi, although this was a flight at 6am new years eve (well I suppose really it was January the first, 6 hours into the new year) so it took some enduring as well. As a result we were back in Delhi where due to weariness and low funds we relaxed for the remaining 3 days of our trip. During this time much shopping was done by people and much western fast food was eaten. We also saw some more amazing historical sites; the Jantar Mantar, a huge set of astronomical instruments and Qutb Minar an ancient mosque/palace which boasted a 73 metre high tower (perhaps minaret). To end it all of course there was drama during our exit from India. We had booked taxis to the airport in good time but as we began trickling back from last minute shopping (getting rid of those last rupees) we were informed that we had to leave immediately because of a large traffic jam, not only that but we had to take a detour to avoid it and so had to pay extra. After some pretty insane traffic (I don’t think there is such a thing as the highway code in India) we made it to the airport in time and boy were we glad our adventure was over and we were on our way to lovely clean Japan! My adventure was not quite over as my ferry was cancelled for three days in a row after I arrived so I was trapped on the main Okinawa island a little longer. Not a great hardship though, in fact I am pretty darned please it worked out like that.

Well I am afraid to say there won't be any posts until the 5 or 6th of January. On friday I leave for India and will be there until I fly back to okinawa on the 4th of Jan. I am going with a bunch of other JETs from okinawa and we will be meeting even more JETs (from mainland Japan) about 6 or so days into our trip to volenteer at an orphanage, teaching english mostly. Why we are going to torture the wee mites with our terrible langauge I am not sure, but hopefully we will make it fun and do some Christmas stuff for them. Well here's hoping I'll make it back disease free, with my ass relatively intact and with lots of stories and pictures to share with you.
Have a Good o'l Christmas and a Happy New years
Craig

I hope this 'making craig be a pink fairy' is a tradition that is nipped in the bud.... or do I, maybe I kinda secrety enjoy it. Maybe...

The message on my cake made me smile alot, thankyou all involved!


I and David enjoying the cake

I arrived back on my island today (Wednesday) having missed two and a half days of work and wearing the same clothes I had been wearing for the last five days. Also I was a year older. What on earth had happened to me to bring about this situation? I was also the happiest I have been since I got to Japan. The best bit was that when I rocked up to school, no-one batted an eyelid. Well not true, I got some smiles and even an ‘otskaresama desu’ (good job!). Of course you are going to be disappointed when I describe how this situation came about but I don’t think I can leave you hanging. The simple truth behind it all was that I went to the mainland to spend my birthday with my good friends there. But once there terrible storms descended from nowhere and caused my ferry to be cancelled three days in a row (Sunday through Tuesday). I was perhaps a tad worried that I might face some trouble, but all is quiet so far, it is quite possible my supervisor does not even know. I baught them some pretty nice chocolates as omiyage and they have just decended on them en mass as I type and seem very happy with them. I also noted with a little relief that there were some other BOE employees also on the ferry, I was not the only one stranded on the mainland. Stranded on the mainland trying to get to a small island, a reversal of the usual position. So there we go. I had a wonderful birthday weekend and I say thank you to all those involved in making it so. I also thank the gods of the weather for whipping up those nasty looking waves and having the ferry cancelled for me. I had a jolly good time on the mainland and even accomplished some useful things. That is to say I got my vaccinations for India completed, that was due to another serendipitous happening! On the Tuesday because my phones battery was empty I had to take the bus up to nago on the speculation the ferry was running, it wasn’t but as a result I bumped into Elina in the Nago Jusco just before she was off to meet Ben to go down and get their vaccinations in Naha. I also made a Christmas wreath but that’s by the by. Ah yes we also went to the peace park but I don’t have anything to say about that, it was quite nice. Oh and then the icing on the cake, when I got back to school on my desk was a parcel. Always fun but especially when it’s a birthday present and a graduation present, joy joy happy happy joy joy. Ahem yes well. Anyway it was an awesome gift which has heightened my admiration of the Japanese. It is a marvellous example of technology fused with art, and innovative technology at that. The Japanese do make good stuff, they really do.

Look Mum I finally used the finger puppets you sent although at the junoir high not the elementry school. I had the students in my english conversation class act out some little plays I had writen while the others filled in sheets with questions based on the plays. It was pretty amusing, so much so that the my Japanese english teacher ran to get her camera and another teacher to watch. I am still not sure how to use them in the elementry school. Any ideas?