The past week has been a nice break from the usual routine. Last Thursday was a public holiday as well as coincidentally being American Thanksgiving. Seeing as there's so many Americans around I thought I'd embrace this new holiday. Anything that involved eating and drinking a lot while falling asleep in front of Disney films seemed to me to be a worthy holiday. And I was extremely thankful. In the evening some of the boys (Matt, Bryn, his friend Richard and I) went to the local onsen (hot springs) to enjoy some relaxing times sat outside by the river in hot water. It was a brilliant day that felt like Christmas.

Mike (all dressed up for family) and the "candied yams" he made, this is sweet potato and marshmallow, proving how any American can take something quite healthy and make it incredibly bad for you!.


Matt with his instant mashed potato (it wasn't the healthiest dinner!).

Meredith

Friday I went back to work and had a brief visit to elementary school and then jumped on the train for a few days in Tokyo. On Monday we had been given a day to visit the city of Koriyama on the way to our teacher's conference in Fukushima city so I got the Shinkansen (bullet train) up. We needed to visit Koriyama get a special stamp in our passport allowing our visa to be effective when re-entering Japan.

The conference on Tuesday and Wednesday was great fun because it was filled with people I hadn't seen in months. This prefecture is quite big and its not easy to get around to see everyone. The conference itself was not particularly useful as they didn't seem to want to deal with any actual issues or problems people had, which was supposedly the point of it. Anyway, we had a brilliant party on Tuesday night, and it was a really nice change.

Nikko...Nikko is a UNESCO world heritage site half-way between here and Tokyo. It's about 2 hours away and part of the national park actually borders our area. It's one of Japan's most famous attractions, mainly due to the fabulous collection of temples and shrines. As well as being a working monestery and tourist attraction it is also home to the original carving of three famous monkeys. These date back to about 1650 and exist due to a simple play on words. Old Japanese grammar for "not listening/speaking/seeing" is very similar to a common word for monkey. So far from being anything to do with "speak no evil" it is apparently a 17th Century joke.

These are sake casks. The ones on the right are from Aizu, where I live.

British Hills

This week I went on a school trip with my second year students to a place called "British Hills". Believe it or not there is a British village on a mountain in Fukushima! It was all built about 13 years ago and exists both as a school, hotel and tourist attraction. For the kids it was a chance to practice fun and useful English and enjoy the cultural experience, which was quite significant considering this place is more British than Britain itself!

The village has several tudor-style houses, a kind of stately home, a pub and a shop called "Ye Shoppe" (!). The whole place apparently cost about £60m back in 1993, not surprising considering every single material down to the door-locks was imported. The British builders had to join forces with a Japanese company to make the stone buildings earthquake-proof. The result is a place that feels like an amazing film set (and is often used as such). The activities were great, the students made scones and ate them with their "afternoon tea", they did "British sports", orienteering (while being careful to avoid the not-so-British bears), calligraphy and fun English classes. In the evenings we hung out in the pub and played darts and dominoes. By the second day students who I'd never even heard mutter a word of English were now all getting involved and discussing the weather with me. I got to know all of them really well and have become quite attached to them all. On the last day I took a few groups of them to the tea-rooms for cake. They all had an amazing time, and although they didn't sleep the whole time they were away, they came back beaming with enthusiasm. I was exhausted but thrilled with the amount of job satisfaction I'd gained. I've also made friends with a few of the English teachers up there so may go back to the pub every now and again!

Tea and Scones

Calligraphy

Culture Day holiday weekend in Tokyo.