I Beg Your Pardon...But Here's a Rose Garden

So cheesy manipulation of lyrics aside, today has been a great start to my six-day "chuukayasumi" or half-way break from my internship. I somehow persuaded myself to go for a run after breakfast today despite of the increasing heat. Then I put myself back together and made my way down to the Forus department store, which is having its huge summer sale. So I bought some things I needed and some things I probably didn't...

Shopping aside, in the afternoon I went to the Kanazawa Rose Garden. (This is going to be a short, photo-heavy post and there won't be another until Sunday evening when I get to talk about my weekend trip to Hiroshima!) Despite the fact that it's been raining heavily all week there were still many beautiful blossoms.

Lots of the flowers had really weird names: Blue Moon, Music, White Madonna, Uncle Walter...I don't know if those are legitimate strains of roses or not, but they made for a laugh.

And now, let the photo barrage begin:

So I'll get back to you all on Sunday! Happy Early Fourth of July for everyone in the States (and happy Canada Day as well...)

ALSO. SUNDAY. USA vs. JAPAN. WOMEN'S SOCCER FINALS. IT'S ON. (And despite any suspected conflict of interest, I am SOLIDLY in the USA corner, thank you very much...)

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Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....

In Praise of American Teachers

SPOILER ALERT: This post is going to be part rant, part commentary and part revelation, so be prepared for a lot of text and some opinions (which may be rather harsh). Since I've had about a week of school I think I'm just about qualified to make comments about the type of education in Japan, and a bit of confusion I have about world education rankings. Let me be rather blunt at first: a dull teacher at an American school is already more intersting than a teacher at a Japanese school. The best examples I have for this is comparing American math and science classes to Japanese math and science classes. Science and math classes that I've always had have been very teacher-student and student-student interactive, with discussions, questioning, and interactions with the material. Japanese math and science classes are completely lecture based, where the teacher either reads directly from the textbook or instructs the students to. Even when the teacher wrote on the chalkboard (y...

Rice and Ramen

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