Tearin up Tokyo like Godzilla my nilla !

So this past monday, tuesday and wednesday I went to Tokyo with Janet and Rebecca.
We went to Harajuku (the part of tokyo where the youth of japan go to buy their little bow peep outfits and generally just shop. It was pretty fun. We also spent an entire 10.5 hours at Tokyo Disney Sea. We had a ton of fun, took lots of pics, but only saw Pluto. I think mickey and the rest of the gang were takin the day off. Those costumes must be sickly hot to have to wear all day. I'm sure there's some sort of law against making people wear furry costumes in the dead of summer in Japan and if there's not, there needs to be. Poor poor Pluto:(

I'll post more pics from the trip. I need to get more from janet and rebecca.

Party time people!

These pics are from my city's annual festival. It went on for two days. Friday and Saturday. There were parades, people dancing in the street, competitions, and lots of food. Everyone and their dog was selling something. It was basically like a county fair with no rides. But the fact that the entire city attended made up for the lack of rides.

New Transportation!

THIS, my friends, is my new scooter. It is not new technically, but it's new to me, so it's my new scooter. I've had it for about 3 weeks now, but have just now gotten around to posting a picture of it. My friend travis and I bought them from our church's missionaries who recently bought a car and have a child, so they didn't have much use for scooters anymore. We were both pretty excited as you can see by the expressions on our faces. We are now able to join the ranks of our other friends with scooters. I'm the only girl with a scooter here which I think is kind of sad. I'd like a girl to scoot around with sometimes. Luckily my friends janet and rebecca are getting a car today. A car isn't as fun as a scooter, but at least I won't be subjected to the weather when I hang with them:)

By special request...

Out of a special request I have posted pics of my school. This is Kasahara Jr. High school. It's summer vacation here, but kids still show up every single day in the sweltering heat to practice their respective sports.



This is the teachers' room. No teacher ever has their own room b/c that would keep them separated. Plus this makes the day social for the teachers as well as the students.



This is my desk. I'm the only one in the teachers' room with a fan at my desk. They're nice and understand that I just can't take the heat and humidity like they can. They've lived in this humidity all their lives and I'm pretty new to this level of warmth. They have no AC in the school. We like to open windows and get the air moving. Plus the prime minister asked the people of Japan to do their part in conserving energy so this helps of course. While it's really uncomfortable sitting in a room with no AC in the dead of summer, I think it's pretty cool that the nation can actually reduce the amount of energy they use as a collective whole. Everyone actually does play a role. Another cool thing about it is that they don't look for a medal or blue ribbon for doing their part and helping out. They just do it, expecting nothing in return.

Interactive Forum

These are pics from the Interactive Forum. Four students from my school had to participate in an english conversation contest. Each student must have a 5 minute conversation with two other students and are judged on speaking abilities. Two students from 8th grade and two students from 9th grade from each school in Mito (town where I live and teach) compete and I had a blast working/training my four students. They were totally brave for participating.