back to school

I realize that I was a bad blogger through the month of August, so I'll try to recap...

Traveling with my family was great--but SO unbearably hot. After leaving (rainy) Tokyo, it was 35-39ºC (95-102ºF) everyday in the Kyoto area, which is where we did the most walking and outdoor sightseeing (unfortunately, Japanese historical temples and palaces are not air conditioned). We occasionally hid in our hotel room or grabbed some frozen treats to escape the heat, but even with those breaks we covered a lot of ground. Some highlights:
As I returned from Osaka I looked out the window of the train, saw a big electronics shop and decided that I needed a new cell phone. Immediately. So I took a little detour and bought myself a present:
...isn't it cute? It's about the same size as my last phone, maybe a little bit thinner and more squared around the edges, but its much better. The built-in camera is over 2 megapixels and the screen flips over so that you can use it like a digital camera display to take pictures (the screen is much bigger and better quality than anything I've seen in America). I think it's one of the new phones that are capable of receiving TV and video feeds (though the service is prohibitively expensive) and it can hold up to 1 GB of music/pictures. Finally, it has a sensor on the back that I can hold against certain vending machines, tickedispensersrs and payment points in convenience stores and other shops to pay for things without needing cash... a definitely luxury in cash-based Japan.

I was home for about a day before I packed up again for a 3-day trip to help at orientation for the new Gunma ALTs. My city has increased in size from 8 to 13 ALTs this year, which goes against the trend for many cities to use "private" ALTs instead of those on the JET Program. The role of English in Japanese school is spreading from junior high and high school all the way down through elementary school and kindergarten (sometimes even nursery school). This means that every school is in want/need of an ALT and amounts to a huge expense for the city and prefectural governments. I've heard that they can save a bit of money by using private ALTs, but the training and support networks aren't as extensive as those offered by the JET Program--which may amount to higher turnover and less satisfied ALTs. Whatever the political climate might be, the new Kiryu ALTs are great and I'm really happy to have more people around.

I also made my first trip last weekend to the Shibukawa kokeshi doll factory/museum. Shibukawa is a city in Gunma not too far from where I live, but without a car it's impossible to get to the museum. We wondered around the shop for a while, watched the professionals making hundreds of dolls and decided to paint our own kokeshi dolls. I also ended up buying a little doll that had been hollowed out to serve as a bank for ¥500 coins (about $4.30). It holds roughly 45 coins, so if I fill it I'll have saved $200! (which I will promptly use to buy myself a present)
Finally, classes started again this week and I'm grateful to have the students back at school--sitting in the teachers' room during summer vacation was incredibly boring. It's nice to hear a constant buzz throughout the building and to chat with the students between classes... they're so interesting! For example, four of them went to a neighboring prefecture to conduct additional research and present their experiment at a science conference, and others played in traveling sports leagues all over Eastern Japan. I think that's exciting stuff for junior high school kids to be doing, though it's not much of a summer "vacation."

That's all I've got for now... interesting trip coming up in a week or two and thoughts stirring about where to go this fall during one of the long weekends, let me know if you have any ideas.