Who's coming to town?

Xmas at Usagi Sho - 1
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

Santa Jason is coming to town! :)

This is me decked out in a fantastic Santa suit for an Xmas party at my tiny elementary school - Usagi Sho.

I only got to be Santa san twice this year, because I'm leaving tomorrow - yes - I'm heading home to America!!!

I took this next week off school - I'll miss 6 days all together - and I'm flying home to San Diego on Sunday and I won't be back until January 6th. Almost three full weeks of battery recharge with my whole family in town for the holidays. With my folks being in England and my brother being in Iraq for the past year, and of course with me in Japan, it's been a long time since we've all been together at the holidays - so I'm really excited to be heading home - my first time to leave Japan since March of 2005.

This might be my last post for a while, so I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic New Year!

Click on this pic to be taken to a bunch of random holiday pics I took this past week.

ho ho ho...
-J

Xmas lesson with Araki eigo club

Xmas lesson with Araki eigo club - 6.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

ALTs - Click to see some examples of this very simple to make Holiday Card. I found the idea online at a good site for games for your classroom - i also got a great printable pattern for making snowflakes.

http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/xmas/

**Yes, I know this picture shows the card upside down, but it just looked even weirder when I flipped it over.

cooking French toast with Opt-A

cooking French toast with Opt-A - 5.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

click on this pic to go to my Flickr site to see pics of my 9th graders and my elementary school kids in one of my English clubs cooking French Toast.

I chose FT since I really enjoy eating it, it's easy to prepare and cook and most of the kids haven't eaten it before. I had some syrup my friend, Emily, had bought me when she was home in America, so that made it even better. The kids had fun, there was some English involved and we all ate well - Japanese bread is HUGE!

-JCH
the "C" stands for culinary gourmet! (NOT!)

Japanese students singing Xmas song

Here are my kids in the Araki Sho eigo club singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Enjoy!
-JCH

Sept 06 trip - DAY THREE - Nara

Sept 06 trip - DAY THREE - Nara - 26.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

OK - here is the last batch of pics from my September trip to Kyoto.

This was Monday, September 18th - a national holiday in Japan - "Respect for the Aged Day."

Kazuki met me at my hotel for the 9am checkout, we stuffed my stuff in a train station locker and then set out for Nara, which is about an hour away from Kyoto by train.

You can read more about what we saw and why Nara is an important site by checking out all the pics on my Flickr site.

Seeing the "Daibutsu" (Great Buddha) at Todai-ji was perhaps the highlight of an overall amazing weekend. The sheer size was so impressive - I was truly in awe walking around it. Not sure why it impressed me so - perhaps I was thinking about how monumental it must have been for Buddhist pilgrims to see it back in the 800s or 900s, let alone for us jaded, modern-day tourists.

I'm not a religious person at all, but studying world religions in college, I'll admit Buddhism had an appeal for me - and seeing this fantastic monument was a moving experience for me - far more so than I ever thought it would be.

We didn't really have time to explore the rest of the park at Nara, but I'd like to go back again and walk around even more - maybe on a day when it's less hot outside and more comfortable to walk around.

Kazuki and I had some lunch and then jumped back on a train to Kyoto and then to Osaka, as I had to book my return bus ticket from Osaka. We had some tasty okonomiyaki at a small place in the Osaka eki and then it was on the bus for the 6 hour journey back to Izumo.

An excellent weekend of sight seeing!

Enjoy,
Jason