Well, Annaka, despite the foot injury which kept me bound up on Sunday & Monday, it was an incredible week!! Here are a ton of photos to sum up what I did this week. Enjoy!
GREAT day of being climbed on by first graders at Gokan elementary school.Bonded over Pokemon with a third grade student during recess, telling him that my fave was Ditto, which is known as Metamon in Japanese, and then getting him to spell it out in English. He felt more comfortable trying after he saw that I did my best in writing it out in Japanese ;DTuesday night began with these two cool kids, catching up over some Asahi and yakitori at a cool vintage izakaya.
*During karaoke, I was exposed to the full craziness of Kyari Kyari Pamyu Pamyu. Check out her bizarre “PON PON” video here.
Post-karaoke we indulged in some plastic-bottled organic 500yen wine. Hilarious.The next day, Chris and I went for a BBQ at the house of a Japanese family I befriended during my time in Japan. I think Chris was a bit more excited about Super Smash Bros. on the wii than the actual BBQ…And I was super excited to see this guy!! Only ten years old, but brilliant at English.On Thursday, I tagged along with Emily for lunch at Haraichi elementary school and we became celebrities, signing all of the students’ school bags! Amazing.Emily’s a pretty rad teacher!And I’m a pretty decent monkey.
*And if you were wondering, the answer is:
Yes, when you aren’t fluent in the language, funny faces are a requirement for teaching at elementary schools in foreign countries.
More awesome kids from Haraichi.Fave photo of the day, though, goes to this kid, who was actually in about 90% of all the pics I took that day.Thursday night was a delicious dinner and Japanese curling.It also included one more round of taiko practice! Man, I love this group!!
On Friday I went for one last visit to Nichu… where everyone is masked because of hay fever!
Friday night, I went for karaoke with some friends and ran into some sixth grade students celebrating graduation. It was a lovely *guzen* (coincidence).
Claire and the World 
ha,ha….love your Metamon story and your student being emboldened to spell it out in Japanese after you spelled it out in in Japanese!
xoxox Dad