Monday, December 08, 2008

Big picture update - #1 of 3 - pics from Aug 08


Jacob & friends
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

Hey Gang -

Jacob says "Konnichiwa!" Jacob is the green dragon from the Chinese zodiac in the picture above. I've collected Jacob and his friends over the years from a small craft shop in Hinomisaki. Jacob was the last one I needed and now I have all 12.

I spent some time over the weekend updating my Flickr site with a bunch of new pics. I'm going thru my backlog of pics by month, so this batch is from August of 2008.

This update post will highlight some of the pics involving me and school and my students and events I went to during summer vacation.

The next update will be about other ALTs and JETs and some of the fun we had in August. And then update #3 will be about the preparations for Sports Day, which got underway during summer vacation.

Speaking of SD prep, I did upload a few pics from the earliest days of preparations, like this one below of my kids in Taisha working out their team dance routine:

early Sports Day prep - 4.jpg

One fun event I went to this past summer was a chorus concert in Izumo featuring both my Jr High schools and also former students who are now at Taisha High School.

My kids:
TJH Chorus Club - concert in Izumo - 2.jpg

Ang's kids, some of whom were once my students:
Taisha High School Chorus Club - 9.jpg

I also had a great time in Mid-August at the Taisha town festival, the goen matsuri.
I got to see tons of my students dressed up in their summer yukata (casual cotton kimono) and plenty of people turned out in the summer heat to enjoy food stalls and games and entertainment:

2008 Taisha Goen Matsuri - 8.jpg
(Do I look good in glasses?)

Lastly, I had a great time listening and lending support to both my schools' brass band clubs as they competed in the kentaikai, or prefecture-wide tournament.

I snapped tons of great pics of my genki band kids in Matsue, and I also traveled to Ohda to see my C-Team band (mostly 7th graders) compete in their tournament too.

08 brass band kentaikai in Matsue - 19.jpg

08 brass band kentaikai in Matsue - 25.jpg

C Team concert in Ohda - 10.jpg

C Team concert in Ohda - 5.jpg

So that's about it for this first update. I hope to blog about the other two batches of pics later this week.

Peace,
Jason

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