 | me giving my goodbye speech at the farewell enkai (formal drinking party). it went quite well, and not just because all the listeners, and the speaker, were a little tipsy. |
 | kawaguchi-shi's departing JETs. from left to right, nerissa from the u.s., kenny from canada, adam from the u.s., rachael from the u.s., claire from nothern ireland, nick from canada, stacey from england, me, and akio fukushima, our boss. |
 | me and some students at kizoro shogakko (kizoro elementary school). i'm the one with the big head. |
 | me visiting one of my kyoto-sensei's (vice principal's) houses. she's the woman in the orange and black shirt. she picked me up at my place, and then before going to her house we stopped to pick up almost US$100 worth of beer! japanese people love to drink. |
 | tokyo international forum in yurakucho. i went to the aida mitsuo gallery. he is (was?) an artist (calligraphy) and poet. |
 | the woman's political party, in ginza. i'm not sure what the white gloves are about. |
 | a garden in kamakura. kamakura is a town on the sea about an hour south-east of tokyo. |
 | two buddha statues in kamakura (hase-temple). you pray to these buddhas for dead children, hence the winnie-the-pooh (pooh-san in japan) doll. |
 | emi and me in kamakura, hase-temple. |
 | steve and me on the way up mount fuji (fuji-san). definitely not an easy climb, nor an easy decent. both of which were difficult because the trails go practially straight up and down the mountain. |
 | sunrise at the top of mount fuji. because we were well above the clouds (mt. fuji is a little under 3800 meters high), the sun rises first through the clouds, then over the horizon. it looked as though the sun was coming up out of the ground. |
 | me and some friends at the beach in kamakura. from left to right, kuku, kenny, moi, alen, and steve. |
 | japan's second largest buddha (daibutsu), in kamakura. it used to have a house, but it was washed away by a tidal wave in 1495. |
 | the top of japan, mt. fuji. |
 | finally, a picture of my scooter. my poor bike was stolen about 3 weeks ago. i thought it was lost for good, but the police surprisingly were able to recover it. it was a little bit trashed, but i paid an old man with beer to fix (read: duck-tape) the wires that were cut so i could ride it home. also, i couldn't get the seat open since the thief had jammed it up, so i couldn't get my helmet out (which, as it turns out, was taken from inside the seat, along with a pair of gloves and my lock ... which should have been on the bike when it got stolen, but i had become lazy and wasn't using it.) luckily, the police recovered the bike with the thief's helmet, so i've been using that. |
 | a cool motorcycle in tokyo. there are 3 types of motorcycles popular in japan now: mad max-type, stripped-down bikes like this one; dirt bikes; and these giant scooter bikes. |
 | me and some of the boys at haimatsu junior high school. |
 | me and some of the girls at haimatsu junior high school. i actually learned their names (the girls here get pretty excited if you can remember their names, and some of them would quiz me each time i saw them by pointing to their noses and saying "name?") from left to right: miku, ayaka, momoko, and sakurai. all first names, except the last one. |