Summer Vacation

My summer vacation consists of sitting either at the board of education or at the junior high school writing emails and studying Japanese. All of the teachers are required to be at school during their summer holiday and most of the students show up. During their break they show up wearing their gym uniforms and continue to clean the school each morning, study and practice their sports. Now what is the point of this so called summer break? Absolutely nothing! All of my coworkers have a yasumi (paid holiday) coming up and I still have to go the the BOE and do nothing. Again makes no sense.

Despite this short ranting, I really don`t mind. Being at the school and BOE has given me the chance to get to know my coworkers and even hang out with them. We have had several enkais (soon to be described) and other fun activities. They even invited me to go to Tokyo with them in February.

During my summer vacation I have had the opportunity to have some very nice weekend trips. The two nearest large cities are called Hagi and Masuda (Shimane-ken). I have two friends from New Zealand that live in Hagi named Dan and Rosie. We often go there for dinner and shopping (hyaku-en shop and DIK). Masuda is usually my one stop shop for groceries and many other necessities. You will all be hearing these cities a lot. I should mention my other friend Christine who is from Vancouver and lives about 8 minutes away. We see eachother a lot during the week. There have also been weekends where I have been able to see JETs from all over Yamaguchi-ken. Just last weekend we all met for a day of bowling and then out to eat at a Korean BBQ. Everyone seems very kind and fun. So this has been my summer vacation, nice eh? Gochisosamadeshita!