Adventures in Japan: Week 26: Wrapping it up!

There's really not much to talk about this week.

Weather's been a real roller coaster.

Things are wrapping up for this contract. I have a few complaints, but hey, nothing's perfect, right? I'm putting my resume out there, trying to look at other jobs, but if I don't get one, this company is sure to hire me back at least. They like me. Just not enough to give me a raise. :P

The kids are sad to see me go, (most of them) so that's kinda nice. Tuesday school, the kids made me a crown and necklace with origami figures with English messages on them, saying they'll miss me! :D And I couldn't very well put it in my brief case, so I wore that sucker home!

Got a lot of second looks!

Wednesday/Thursday school, the kids presented the projects they've been working on for the last few weeks. The 6th graders did "my story book" and the 5th graders did "have you seen my ____". With objects featuring from countries around the world. A lot of the kids did "have you seen my clothes?" and "have you seen my food?" One group got very creative and did "have you seen my rice?" The American rice was Jambalaya! :D

I kept wanting to do an example book, but all my creative ideas kept coming up snarky. "Have you seen my indigenous population?" "Have you seen my pollution problem?"

I'll keep thinking.

Wednesday was very cold, but it was also the ward sports night. And I really wanted to go, feeling antsy. So I went anyhow. It was a LONG walk for a cold night, but I had fun playing volleyball with the others. They used a much softer ball (one of those rubber recess balls) and so I ended up with no giant bruises on my forearms. And our team CREAMED them! :D

Friday was entertaining because of Friday school. (you've heard me complain about them before) Well, I had the last two lessons planned, no problem, but when I go in, they've got another plan. They don't speak much English and I don't speak Japanese, but they showed me about what they want and I was like "I'm not sure how this is going to work, but hey, let's go for it" And so we did, and we made it work together. :)

Saturday, my friend and I have developed a pattern where we sleep in and get some chores done around our respective places and then we meet up somewhere around 1. :) So we did that, and we went to Osaka! The main reason was that there was an art show. A VERY SPECIAL art show. It was called CatArt. The artist, Shu Yamamoto, took famous paintings and re-painted them, but with cats as the main characters. And I gotta say, he did really well.

We had "Girl With a Pearl Earring" By Johannes Vermeer,

The ticket

And "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer" by Gustav Klimt

post-card I got.

And even a Japanese block print!

I don't know this one, but I recognize the style.

I was very impressed. They had a big folding screen he painted as well (with cat thunder gods) and I didn't get a picture of that because they wouldn't let you take pictures in there.

Which I totally didn't.

Of course.

shhhh!

After that, we wandered for a while. Of course, they used the opportunity to sell everything cat-related.

So happy

LOOK at those EYES

variety

More variety

...Cat Pitcher toilet paper?!

And THEN we wandered the stores.

And found lots of odd stuff.

sucker was like $50 each.

Ah, Gucci...

Oh, and Girl's and Boy's days are both coming! (they're separate days) and the girls day, they put up this display of dolls, and like everything, some are expensive and some are cheaper, some are elaborate and some are not. Here are some lovely ones that were expensive and detailed.

And then there's some dolls for the boys too!

so boy-ish.

And there was an Alice in Wonderland themed shop that actually had a LINE outside, because it was small enough you could only get a certain amount of people at a time in.