We're a week into July now, and so I've been here for just about a year. This kind of small milestone makes me want to sit down and take a look at the past year. What have I accomplished? What is lacking in my life here, and what isn't? Am I really happy with the place I've made for myself? etc. etc. etc.
( A potentially boring but surprisingly cathartic overview of the pros and cons of my life here )

Updated the site with a bunch of new pics from a summer festival, a soccer game from the Prefectural tournament that my high school's team won, and that legendary Japanese high school event, the school festival. Lots of fun pics this time around, please take a look and leave some comments ( Read more... )

From Monday-Wednesday of this past week, I attended the Re-contracting Conference in Kobe, which was a conference for all JET ALTs in West Japan going into their second year on the program. These JET conferences usually make everyone roll their eyes, because they tend to be filled with the same generic seminars and lectures, meant to inspire us to ( Read more... )

Updated my pictures, with a delightful selection of images from cherry blossom season, a Hiroshima Carp baseball game, Golden Week in Nagoya, and a school field trip to an amusement park - you know that's gonna be cute! Take a look, and comments welcome as always!http://www.

I went shopping at the 100 yen store the other day, and spotted a glass to replace one I broke a few weeks ago. It has goldfish and a blue watery-looking design painted over the outside, and it's also printed with these words, in a small black font running in multiple directions all over ( Read more... )

So since one person expressed interest, here's an update on a few things ( Read more... )

Hi! So, thanks to RIT being a douche and Zonaxx being a saint, I now have a new location for the pictures that I was sharing with you folks. I just updated it with some new photos that I don't mind saying I think are pretty great. The new URL is as follows ( Read more... )

Tomorrow is the last day of classes for the school year, then there's a closing ceremony on Tuesday, and that's it until April 6. In the interim I'll sit at my desk at school every day twiddling my thumbs, and wishing Hiroshima Prefecture wasn't such a tightass (i.e. wishing they'd let me go do something else with my time, like travel around Japan ( Read more... )

So, graduation was last Thursday. I had been looking forward to it for a while, both with excitement and trepidation. I was looking forward to seeing a few of my favorite students again, but I knew it would be very sad. It wound up being a bit different from my expectations, and was a very interesting experience overall...and a bit of an eye- ( Read more... )

( my favorite third graders, and why I'm so sad that they're leaving )