Day 51 in Japan - Shimizu e jitensha de ikimashita!

I rode to my visit school for first time - uphill all they way! It normally takes about an hour by walk, train, bus BUT it only takes about 25 mins by bike. I thought it would take much longer so I got school way too early. I went for a ride around the school to kill some time. I found a little shrine by a big dam, and sat there for 10 mins. It was the most peaceful 10 minutes I have had in weeks. But of course it had to come to an end, and i got on with my day at school.

My little shrine.

The view sitting at my shrine looking
back towards my school.

Another busy day, and today I was teaching REAL classes for the first time! I had to teach direction phrases out of the textbook to 3 first year classes at Akashi Shimizu, work on retellings of ancient Japanese stories with my third year class, and talk to another third year class about Australian history. I am kind of used to it now, but it's still quite tiring by the end of the day.

After school, I had to record a speech with one of the ESS boys from Shimizu. He wrote a speech about his dreams, and his goals for the future. It was very sweet, and he did quite well recording it in only a few times. We had to wait around for a long time waiting for the teacher to come and find us both with the minidisc for the recording, so we ended up chatting for a little while. I think that being a high school student must be a hard job - the poor guy does school until 5 every day, and then goes to cram school, works a part time job or volunteers for a human rights group, is in track and field club, is the head of the ESS club AND cooks all the dinners and lunches for himself and his little sister because his parents both work until late! After we talked for about 40 mins, he was obviously sleepy, so I just let him sleep on the desk while I read over his speech.

I stopped by the "Recycle" Store for the first time on the way home. Which means that I went to the Op Shop. They are pretty much the same as our with one small difference - they stock VHS porn. See the photo below. There were about 7 shelves of this stuff! Hilarity ensued. Things that I thought would be expensive were cheap (fridges and washing machines that were fairly new-looking were about $250, brand new cute bento boxes for 50c to $1), and some things that I thought would be cheap were a bit pricey (e.g. $5 cutlery). But everything was pretty decent quality, and not very old.

Disagreeable women's various Chitai can be seen
(that's on the top video, by the way - I couldn't
come up with anything as wonderful as that).

Food highlight of the day: Delicious, delicious chocolates. I can't remember what they were. They were in a gold packet, and there were two individually packaged halves with nice bits of chocolate in each. They were about 2 cm X 1.5 cm of pure deliciousness - like a really rich chocolate ganache inside a milk chocolate shell. I think my brain is blocking the name, because it knows the dangers to my health and well-being that such knowledge could cause.