A Short Photo Update

There is a blessing to having a digital camera; its that it remembers dates for you of when you did what. I have a program that came with my Casio camera that makes a pretty nice album library of images organized by date. I may have to move to new general piece of sofware now that I've moved to another camera.

November 11th 2005: Volunteering at international fashion show. They were short on models and the news got sent to me that they were looking for some "models" (ha!). There wasn't much of a choice to make; YES! And that was that. The organizers had clothes from all over the world, lots from South East Asia from parts like Malaysia, Indonesia and such. The organizers told me that they needed a guy to wear a kimono and so that was that. The pretty girl to the right is from Taiwan. The kimono she's wearing is over $10,000! The belt alone (imbuned with gold and silver) was $5,000.

The next photo here is all the other volunteers that took part in the fashion show. The theme was to have everyone from different parts of the world to wear clothing from other parts of the world which came out to an interesting effect. I thought it was great. There is a wonderful plus to living like this in Japan. The international students are a microculture living inside a foreign culture. Most of these people came out for a reason, to learn about new cultures (Japan in particular)... we got way more than we bargained for.


November 24th, 2005: Canada Presentation

A friend of a friend studying education at one of the local education colleges in Sendai that was looking for a foreigner to do a presentation to the students at the local elementary school. So yep, I decided to pitch in looking to see a little what Japanese schools and kids are like. I'll tell you this much-- they're really, really, really, really energetic. I would think even a little more than the kids back in Canada.


I tried taking a picture of the kids lining up getting ready for the teachers to lead them into the auditorium where I'd be making my presentation. I got one blurry snap, so I decided to try again. They noticed and before the my camera could finish writing the last picture into memory, the kids were in uproar to get themselves into the picture and this was the result. Cool eh?

There is one question that puzzles me a little. It's that children in Japan after getting older have a tendency to get way quiet. Get into an elevator with them and hardly anyone makes small talk.

December 19th 2005: Snow in Sendai.

he North East parts of Japan is currently facing records amounts of snow being dumped all over the place. From ther people I've talked to, it got particularly cold this year. Over the span of 2 days, we had about 30 cm of snow dumped all over the place. I'm still riding my scooter through the snow and ice thanks to my spiked tires. It is still pretty damn slippery and I've seen people wipe out. The trick is to not go fast in snow and over ice and it's smooth riding (for the most part). The plus about having snow dumped down like this is that it a great tale-tale sign that ski conditions in the mountains will be great (and great they were! A story for another time).

December 24th, 2005: Chrismas Eve Dinner

A Chrismas dinner held by the international students. The best part? Potluck! Chrismas music, gift exchange, good people and good food. There wasn't much more I could ask for. I got the invite a little late (it's hard to get word to me about events because I spend too much time at the lab.. and spend most of the time back at the dorm sleeping) so I didn't participate in the gift exchange. The food was great. I had samplings of Pakistani, German, Korean, Japanese, French and food from a bunch of other countries. Hmmm, serously we need to do some international cooking lessons!