Well, my decision has been made to finish up on JET at the end of my 3rd year contract. They’ve recently changed the rules so that JETs can stay a 4th & 5th year, but I’m not going to take advantage of it. I’ve greatly enjoyed my time living and teaching here, but after 2.5 years I’m starting to get more than a bit burned out on things. Its time to move on and return to programming I think. So, since there’s only a little more than 6 months until I return to the US, I’m getting ready to do the job hunt thing again. In keeping with the times, one of the first things I’ve done is to make my linkedin profile. If anyone of knows me is on there as well, send me a message and I’ll add you as a contact.

Yes, today is the two year anniversary of my arrival in Japan — 730 days. I’ve seen and done a lot of things, had many good and a few bad experiences. I’ve blogged about some of them here, but really just a tiny fraction (especially in the last year). I hope that I’ll write up a more reflective impression of my time here so far (but don’t hold your breath), but in case I don’t here’s a list of about 130 experiences I’ve had here over the last couple years. If I remember more, I’ll add them. Some are significant, some are pretty trivial, but its that combination that makes up life. I wonder how many more I’ll add during my remaining 365 or so days…

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Yesterday at MJHS we had a "Peace Project", part of which was folding
paper cranes with a message promoting peace in observance of the
upcoming 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb. We tied the little
paper birds to helium balloons and set them free…

[This entry is a little back dated, I’ve been kinda slow at posting but want things to stay in order]

The theme for May seems rice fields, I’ve now spent two days standing in them. Geraldine, the JET in the neighboring town of Midori, invited me and a bunch of other JETs to come to her town’s rice planting festival. This is the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, so I was really glad to go. It was a lot of fun too, the towns people were really friendly and about a dozen of us showed up to take part. This was a really good opportunity for some of the city JETs to experience country life (and to see we aren’t lying when we tell them how long it takes to get into the city).

When we got there, they loaned us costumes to wear. Fortunately us guys were only going to play drums, because the legs of mine we a bit tight around the calfs — embarrassment would have resulted from me doing much bending. Anyways, everyone (especially the ladies ) looked really cute in their costumes. That’s me above, in case you couldn’t tell.

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This week was the final one for the school-year (school runs April to March, I arrived mid school-year). So a bit of an entry to cover the final events of the year. The week was a bit mixed around from usual to accommodate the various graduations and stuff.

Monday was a holiday, I spent it returning from Kyuushuu like I mentioned in the last blog entry.

Tuesday I had kindergarden in the morning and the last 2A class at the JHS. The kindergarden was a mix of sad and relief. Unfortunately I will only be seeing each class once every three weeks now. On the other hand, I don’t be eating lunch with them anymore (on the surface it sound like it should be fun, but in reality its a little stressful when someone gets upset they can’t sit by me and I dread the germs I’m sure they’re spreading all over my food). In the JHS class we did a couple activities and played a quiz show game. That as usual was pretty fun, the students really get into it.

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