Thousands of Miles from Home
日本で過ごした日々の記録

2/25/2005

Those Were Some Big Flakes

Yesterday brought a whirlwind of snow to Tamano. A true squall of a storm complete with the largest, silver dollar snowflakes I have ever seen. One flake on the tongue was enough to quench thirst for a whole afternoon! And just as fluffy as a cloud! Paul Bunyan's ox was as big as a house!

Tall tales aside, these flakes were large. The storm began in the afternoon as a cold rain and ended with streets the consistency of a lemon slush puppy. I was scheduled to teach some high school students English at the nearby Juku but the snow scared everyone off the streets. Neil came to the evening's rescue by hosting a last minute game-night at his place featuring my favorite, Casino, and his, Yahtzee, played inside a frisbee. John Davey came over for the evening and ended up letting me borrow some classic comedy videos in payment for copying his dance hall reggae CDs.

All the snow melted by morning, which was surprising, but no unsightly cinders or dirty snow residue were left to catch the eye.

This week also saw the return of Jittan to China. Jittan, who studied Business Japanese at a college in Okayama, had been in Japan for about 10 months and was one of my first friends in Japan. Shoko and I took the early morning train to Okayama, where I treated her to breakfast at Starbucks. We met Jittan at the train station and tears were shed on the Shinkansen platform as she waved from the window of her bullet train. And so departed another great friend I had made in Japan.

In the category of future plans, I will be traveling to Tokyo with Rahul March 10-13th (!!). If anyone has any requests (I have received a few for certain cd's) for any sort of Tokyo merchandise, you can contact me at BenPleaseBuyMe@SomeStuff.com or by sending me an e-mail to a real account.

Today was technically my last day of High School as a first year student in Tamano. My class will be taking finals over the weekend and part of next week which I have opted not to attend, but I am on the edge of my seat for Graduation and "Meet the New Teachers" Day which will be held sometime in March. First day of class as a second year student will begin April 7th, but I remain clueless as to how the students will be divided between the two classes of 40 in the "International Course." Perhaps everyone will stick with their own class, or there might be a mix and match (hopefully the former, because I just started to feel confident with everyone's name in my own homeroom). Either way, it's a little strange being a good bit older than most everyone in my class but I make do.

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