Seems like whenever anime or manga show graduation ceremonies, there are cherry blossoms (sakura) blowing in the wind everywhere. Romantic as it is, its kinda unrealistic since graduation is usually early to mid-March and most places in Japan don’t see cherry blossoms until late March-early April. Artistic license, I guess.

So, instead at today’s Mukaihara JHS graduation, we had light snow blowing gently in the wind. Didn’t look bad I guess and it wasn’t too cold.

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…but apparently I’m still a little southern:

52% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category.

Actually this comes up all the time in class because of how I pronounce “a” and “the”, which I think is southern.

OK, I’m a little late for the start of the lunar new year, but I thought I’d post this picture of some of the Year of the Rooster cards the JHS students did. Again, I’m impressed at the artistic talent & creativity they have.

Having been born in early January of 1970 (which is part of the 1969 lunar year), I’m a rooster myself. So hopefully this will be a good year for me…

These days only presidents have the job security of a four year term. However, I’ve turned in my paperwork saying I’m interested in staying here in Mukaihara for a second year. I came here with the intent of staying at least two years so long as I was enjoying things here and didn’t freeze to death. So far I am and I haven’t. The teaching is still enjoyable, there’s still lots of stuff for me to see and do here (especially once it warms up again in a month or two) and the past 6 months have flown by. Wow, looking at the calendar, today in fact is the 6 month anniversary of me leaving Tucson to come here…

Sunday was my junior high school’s “culture day”, which is basically a school play & art show. Performances were pretty good, even if I couldn’t understand much of them. Most of the plays were school dramas of one sort or another. My main observation is most of the plays had far too many scene changes, which kinda broke up the flow I thought.

The one I understood most seemed to have the most acting in it. It was by done by one of my favorite classes, 2-B (2nd year is 8th grade in US). It seemed to be about some kid (rich maybe, the kind that is never allowed to see the real world) that had run away & was being pursued by men who were supposed to bring him/her home (the part was played by a girl but I got the impression it was a boy’s role). The kid meets up with some others that show him what school & life for them is like. Other thing I liked about it was that they did a good job of including most of the rest of the cast in interesting little side characters that kept popping up.