Photo number one is a slide on a mountainside playground. Clay and I climbed Mt. Kishima awhile ago. We didn’t originally mean to literally walk up the whole damn thing, but that’s what we ended up doing, in the rain no less. So I suppose I have been to the highest point in Shiroishi. It’s an observatory shaped like a castle and I have no idea what the view is like because by the time we got there it was pouring and we couldn’t see more than five feet ahead of us. But that was neat in its own right.

The other three are from Kitagata. Nothing in particular. A hair salon, a house, and an abandoned shack.

After the ceremony came the requisite photo shoot.

The teachers room where I work.

Some second-years.

Some first-years.

Kimono-clad third year teacher.

The Japanese school year ends in March. So, it was around then that we had the graduation ceremony for the third-years at the junior high school. It was big deal, and some of the teachers and mothers who attended dressed up in kimonos and everything. There was also a whole lot of crying, which is practically required at important ceremonies. At one point the third-years stood up in their chairs and sang a song to their parents and teachers, and during the song pre-arranged shoutings came from the graduating students saying things like “Thank you Mom and Dad!", “You teachers tried your best with us!", “We will miss you all!", and other sappy things and these kids were tearing up and it was all just surreal. It was like a scene from some sappy Japanese movie, actually.

Also! It was my birthday yesterday and I had a pretty good birthday weekend. Highlights include: seeing lots of people I don’t see all that often at a big ‘hodai in Saga; fancy karaoke and Annick acting just like Grace by getting really drunk and ordering a separate karaoke room so she could sing Dancing Queen; going to a cool bar/restaurant called Korner with really comfortable seats; going to an underground bar with an astonishing selection of absinthe; eating some excellent sukiyaki udon at a 24-hour udon shop which I plan to visit again soon; getting a camera (yes another one!) from Cassie! It’s a Lumix FX30, which is perfect for taking pictures during weekends like the one I just described because my Canon DSLR, while fantastic, is just too big for that sort of thing.

I thought I had four classes today, but it turns out I have zero! This kind of stuff happens all the freakin time. Today’s reason: physical fitness tests! Similarly, there were eye and teeth tests the other day and the nurse came through the teacher’s room with some sort of tooth part on a tray to show everyone…and I was like gross. In any case, it is 11 AM. I have walked home from school (about a 20 minute walk) to get my iPod and headphones so that I may listen to This American Life/Joanna Newsom on the way back. It’s a somewhat self-referential walk. Also I am updating this blog for you nice people. Enjoy Libido, an izakaya I have never been to right outside Hizen-Yamaguchi Station.

Various urbanities of Nagasaki. The final photograph is the famous “Spectacles Bridge", so named because, paired with its reflection in the water, it looks like a pair of spectacles. Or as some people like to say, glasses.

So, these pictures looked good when I edited them originally, I guess. But now they just look fuckin bonkers. I don’t know what I was thinking. I obviously get a little trigger happy with the whole saturation/contrast thing sometimes. I think I was thinking, “Nagasaki Lantern Festival! Red! Lanterns! Red lanterns!” etc. Last night Cassie and I went to Fukuoka and stayed out all night WOOO. It wasn’t so bad but also wasn’t so good either cause the vodka redbull I drank early in the evening sort of ruined the rest of my liquid consuming escapades. But the club was cool (Kieth Flack I believe it was called) and it was nice to go all metropolitan for a night.

EDIT: It looks like these pictures actually are the exact opposite of contrasty etc. when viewed on Firefox. This is an excellent example of how Firefox does not keep the original image color somethingsomethings but Safari does. Someone should tell Firefox to fix this.

All right, I’m trying out this new-fangled “ftp” nonsense and it’s looking pretty good. Thank you Zachary. The funny thing about ftp…good start to a story…is that it was actually the first internet I ever encountered. It was at Coe College. And it was way more boring than I expected. I have no idea what I expected but it’s hard to get more boring than ftp. But I have finally, 10 odd years later found a use for it. Hooray.