Guess who got his camera chord back...

Life goes on here- the trees are finally turning some real autumn colors. The kanji for Autumn- 秋 -is literally composed of the roots for "tree" and "fire," which I kinda like. The weather is colder, and the kids are learning the English (hopefully).

The real news, however, is that I did in fact get my camera chord back- so here are pictures!

These first two pictures don't require any explanation- they would only be encumbered by one.




Here are some pics from the Murakami bamboo-candle Matsuri: a night of awesome candles, tea ceremonies, and live music. The former photo is at ground level (I didn't have a tripod), looking through a forest of candles into the shrine of an otera. The latter is also in a temple- the gentleman playing the flute was quite skilled. At the time that this photo was taken, he was playing an arrangement of the theme from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." All this while Amida Buddha looked benevolently on.





This next pic attests to some things that are just different here. For one, especially in fishing villages, it is not unusual to see strings of dessicated, enormous fish carcasses dangling from the outsides of buildings. I have no idea whether they are being preserved for consumption, or what. Here's one of my co-JETs posing with one.



Next are some pics from a taiko concert I went to in Murakami. It wasn't Kodo, but the show was still very good.





Finally, today I taught my 6th graders about oomoji (capital letters) and komoji (lower case letters). I decorated the worksheet to make it less onerous for them, and was vastly entertained by some of the ways they defaced them before handing them in. It also makes me hopeful that even if they are doodling, they are doodling ideas that I started for them- so even if they aren't learning English, I am establishing a kind of rapport.






I'm going to eat some food, and play some Final Fantasy 3. No not 6- 3 (tanoshii!). Oyasumi.