Me and Niwayama-sensei. He's the third-grade English teacher (equivalent to grade 9 in Canada). He rocks.

These are the school bad-asses. I was instantly popular with them on account of my goatee (facial hair here is extremely rare). The one front-right punched a teacher once. That (and smoking which seems to be a huge deal here even though it's practiacally government-sponsored) is the worst thing that's ever happened in my sleepy school.

This is a group of some of my favorite students. The one right in front of me is super-genki.

Gradu-ma-ation

Japan prides itself on having a good education system. When we first got here, the informed us many times that over 99% of students graduate from Junior Highschool, and "a similar proportion" graduate from Senoir Highschool. What they don't tell you is that everyone graduates from Junior Highschool. No matter what. Some kids - literally - do not go to school, but still recieve a diploma. Case in point is what happened at Joe's school (for those of you that don't know her, Joe is the wonderful ALT who also works in Kameyama; for those of you know don't know what "Kameyama" is, that's the name of the city I live in; for those of you who don't know who "I" am, then nice to meet you. I'm Louis). Ok, maybe I took that one too far.

Anyway (did you know "anyways" is not actually a word, even though it sounds more natural?), at Joe's school, one student, who was never particularly stable, just flipped out one day. He attacked a bunch of teachers, and basically all the male teachers who were in the classroom at the time had to restrain him. He broke the ribs of one teacher, and probably would have seriously injured, or possibly killed another one if someone hadn't grabbed the fire extinguisher out of his hands that he was about to slam down on a teacher's skull (I think I lucked out on which school I got in Kameyama). So this kid got sent to wherever they send juvenile delinquents, but on graduation day was still allowed to come back to the school to get his diploma. Oh yeah, a "C" is the lowest grade you can get in Japan, by the way; even if you break their ribs, apparently.

Bad seeds aside, most of the kids are great, and graduation was altogether a happy affair. The speeches seemed really meaningful, and I'm sure I would have been moved if I understood anything beyond "friends" "very fun" and "very interesting". Graduations are a very formal affair in Japan (hence the suits), and once they are over, the students get split up into different high schools based on ability (and not on location; it's not unusual for kids to travel an hour by train to get to school). A lot of them will never see each other again.

Then, the cameras come out, and everyone takes a million pictures.

Oh yeah, I find out about med school in June. Interview was fine, but the competition is stiff, so we'll see.

Will try to catch up on the last 8 months that I have been rather lazy in posting over the next little while.

View from the onsen observation area, with the Sapporo tower in the middle. They wanted to charge us ridiculous amounts of money to take an elevator to the top (wouldn't let us climb the stairs). We figured the view from the CN tower was better, so we opted to splurge on the onsen instead.

That's my plane. It has my name on it right THERE. Give it back you thieves.

One of the displays in the beer museum. Noitce the passed out drunk wizard floating on the head. All the displays were this cute. Hilarious.

Unfortunately, you can't see me, but this is me next to a sign for the Gaijin Bar. "Gaijin" is essentially a derogatory term for foreigner, so having a bar advertise itself as the "Gaijin Bar" (in English) is funny. Ha ha.

His nose isn't the only thing that's growing.

Astro Boy !!!

A cookie (from the chocolate factory) that I decorated. The place is like a theme park, with an equal combination of cuteness and deliciousness around every corner.

Chocolate pinnochio

View from inside the chocolate factory (Charlie said hello, by the way) where we had a massive sundae for lunch.

This is where the carts do their business

Go North, my son.

The great thing about this job is how much I get to travel while not actually working. Case in point: Hokkaido. For those of you "not living in Japan", Hokkaido is the Northern-most island of the 4 main islands that make up Japan. We went for Lisa's birthday (Feb, for those of you who don't have it memorized), which meant one thing: snow.

Unfortunately, we were only able to stay for a weekend, and so only really got to see some parts of the city. But, during that time, we experienced the "beautiful snow on the ground", "snow blowing in your eyes during a storm" and "snow melted into slush and giving you soakers when you cross the street". As Lisa pointed out, it was like experiencing a proper Canadian winter all in one weekend.

The highlights included:
-Sapporo beer museum, where a group of tourists obviously rushed through every exhibit without even so much as a glance to get to the place that serves super-cheap beer at the end (200 yen for a glass, where 500 yen is considered cheap).
-Chocolate factory, which also included a chocolate museum. We got to make food, which is always fun.
-Overpriced onsen (kind of like a sauna, except super-awesome, with lots of different types of baths, and fully clothed female workers going about doing their jobs in the presence of lots of naked Japanese men and one naked foreigner).
-Walking around in beautiful snow covered city and parks

Will post pictures below when time and laziness permit.

On a somewhat realated note, I've started bringing my laptop to work, so posts should become much more frequent. Don't know why I didn't do this before.