Ironically I have naked men again.

So this blog appears to be developing a theme as yet again male nudity forms the basis of most of my post.

First up here's a video I made at James' recent cheese and wine party. I was attempting to record James and Adam playing some Enka (Japanese country music) and I did, however at first I got side tracked by a long conversation about Drew's nipples.



Enjoy!

Secondly I'm not sure if this will work but my friend Kate put together a fantastic video of the Naked Man Festival that reallty brings the whole event to life. You can watch it here . However I'm not sure that link will work. If it doesn't please comment on this thread and I'll see if I can get the real video from Kate.

In other news today was the "farewell party" for my san-nensei. Basically a special assembley with videos, the brass band playing, the choir club singing and lots and lots of photos of the san-nensei. It was unlike most Japanese assembley type activities in that it was pretty fun and interesting. The photos in particular were hilarious and it was really cool to see what my kids looked like before they were my kids.

There were also a couple of photos of me in the display too which all drew big laughs from the kids. I'm not sure I know what's so funny though.

The best part of the day was chatting with some of the san-nensei afterwards. In particular one girl who I've got to know really well from the letters we've being exchanging. She hasn't sent me any for a couple of weeks now due to her exams but today she gave me a last letter and next week when they have the more formal graduation ceremony I'll give her my last letter. I copied all her letters to me today and it's a really fantastic souveneir of my first year and something I'll keep forever.

She also gave me an actual souveneir; a phone charm from Kyoto of two frogs. Apparently it keeps couples together and stops you being in a car accident. So now I can finally get my driver's license!

This would be the rewarding part of teaching. Connecting with and inspiring people.

The un-rewarding part is stopping boys from reading manga every time we go in the library. "Yes I know Black Jack is a cool series but this is an English lesson not a manga lesson."

I did like the one boy who was meant to be researching Thomas Edison and was in fact reading a samurai manga. When I asked him what he was doing he looked at me with a totally straight face and pointed at a samurai and said "Edison." Then he pointed at a girl on the page and said "Edison's girlfriend." When I flipped a page and pointed at a demon he pointed at it and said "lightbulb." Massive props to this kid, if you're going to dick aroudn in my lessons the least you could do is make me laugh whilst you're doing it.