First Day of school & Nyuugakushiki

This picture makes me happy!
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.

April 9th was the first day of the new school year here in Japan. On April 10th, we had a ceremony for the new Ichi Nen Sei (7th graders) called a "nyuugakushiki." It's an entrance ceremony with some speeches and music - nothing too exciting, but the 8th graders get to decorate the homeroom classrooms for their new kouhai (underclassmen).
So I walked around both days and snapped a bunch of pics - about 60 of which I just uploaded to my Flickr site.
I'll try to get around to individually labeling them soon - but they have a lot of good "before and after" type shots of the decorating, and a bunch of shots of my awesome kids running around the halls.
There are also some pics of the ceremony and the new kids filing into the gym.

I choose a few pics out of each batch to add to a file on my laptop that runs a slideshow on my desktop. Many computers can run your own pics as a screensaver, but Apple allows you to have your desktop change at the frequency you choose.
This pic of Hazuki and Nagisa makes me smile everytime it pops up on my desktop - I love the unguarded nature of it juxtaposed with Nagisa doing the perfect Japanese "peace" pose.

More pics from the first month of school soon.

-Jason