June Photo Challenge Days 4, 5, 6

The last last couple of days, I had no interest in trying to take any photos for this challenge, so these were all taken today.

前の2日間にこの写真を撮りたくなかったから、今日全部撮った。

June 4: Half

6月４日：半分

After I cut the veggies, dinner was half finished.

野菜来たの後に晩ご飯を半分終わった。

Here it is finished:

終わり：

June 6: line

６月６日：ライン

Today my students were studying, “I’m going to . . .” So my JTE showed them the time using a timeline. I thought it was really interesting that the timeline is the opposite of an American one, which would have the past on the left and the future on the right.

今日生徒は「I’m going to ～」と勉強した。英語の先生はタイムラインが使った。面白いことはアメリカのタイムラインの反対。このは明日に左、昨日に右、でもアメリカの昨日は左、明日は右。

June 6: Ice cream

６月６日：アイス

I went to buy Mint Crunky to photograph, but the convenience store in town didn’t have any. What’s the point in buying ice cream in June, if there’s no Mint Crunky?

コンビニへアイス買いに行ったけど、ミントのがなかった。　ミントのがなかったら、なぜアイス買う？

June Challenge Day 3

Photo Challenge Day 3: Natural light (all of the café photos are!)

写真チャレンジ３日目：外光

I met my friend Minami for lunch. We went to a café I’d never been to in town.

みなみちゃんと昼ご飯を食べた。　新しいカフェいへ行った。

We got the bread set – hot dogs, an egg bake, small salad, bread and jam, and raspberry juice. Yum!

パンセットを食べた。　おいしかった！

Here’s Minami, isn’t she cute?

みなみちゃんはかわいいだよね！

Minami and I.

みまみちゃんと私。

We decided to get dessert after lunch. It was Ezo-Amu Pudding, which is apparently a Hokkaido thing.

デザートに北海道のエゾアムプリンを食べた。

Here’s the lady who owns the restaurant.

Some shots of the restaurant and all it’s natural light!

レストランに光は全部外光だね！

The front door of the restaurant.

レストランの外。

After that, I headed into Furano to buy Basil and to buy groceries. Unfortunately, the only basil they had was this, very sad plant.

昼ご飯の後に富良野へバジルと食べ物を買いに行って。　でも、１つバジルがあった。　かわいそうバジル！

I ended up with a variety of other herbs and found basil at the shop next door.

他のハーブたくさん買った。

Here are the newest members of my family!

自分の家族の新しいメンバー。

This is Thyme and Oregano.

タイムくんとオレガノちゃん。

Two adorable, tiny basil plants. (I found them at another store).

かわいいバジルたち。　（他の店に買った）。

My mint plants: apple mint, pineapple mint, peppermint.

ミント三連符：アプルーミントくんとパインミントちゃんとペパーミントくん。

They look like me, don’t they?

私と似てるよね！

June Photo Challenge Day 2

June 2: First things

６月２日：最初の事

Today was the Junior High School’s Sports day. Before any of the sports began, we did ‘rajio taiso,’ which is a Japanese-style warm-up.

今日は運動会があった。　最初はラジオ体操した。

Everyone got to pick a kanji to put on the back of their Tshirt. These two friends, picked the two kanji in ‘friend’ so that when they stand together their shirts say friend.

みんなはTシャツの後ろの漢字が選んだ。　この２人は友と達が選んだ。　一緒に友達になる！

Fever or hot, if I understood correctly, it’s because she has a warm heart, though that may have been lost in translation.

熱。

My team, the red team!

私の組は赤組！

I like taking jumping photos – it’s a fun challenge to try and get the timing right.

跳ぶの写真は楽しい！正しい時に撮ることは難しくて、いいチャレンジだよ！

I laughed when I saw this part of the obstacle & relay race. Two students have to get in a cardboard box and move to the end of their part of the relay.

びっくりした！ダンボールに速い動いている！

The tunnel race. It always looks like a lot of fun!

トンネルの。いつも楽しそう！

After sports day, we had party for the teachers. It was a lot of fun, though I was both happy and embarrassed when a teacher picked me as an MVP for taking photos and went on to say he thinks my photos are better than the town photographers!

運動会の後にえんかいがあった！みんなはMVPの人が言った。１つ先生は私と言った。写真撮るから。そして、彼は私の方が町の写真館より上手と言った。とてもびっくり。うれしくて恥ずかしかった！

June Photo Challenge Day 1

Time for a new photo challenge for June.

６月の写真チャレンジの時になった。

Today I had dinner with my friend Ami. It was a fun thing to do after a Saturday of work.

今日あみちゃんと晩ご飯を食べた。土曜日に仕事の後に楽しかった！

Today we had to bring bentos. I made a very American lunch.

今日は弁当の日。これはアメリカ流だった。

Photo Challenge Day 29

March 29: Pastel

I don’t own anything that is pastel colors except the small collection of pastel colors in my 24-count colored pencil box.

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Not so many pictures today. I helped K-sensei get ready to move today. We cleaned lots of things that needed done before all the teachers can descend on her house and pack it into a truck. It was fun to have one last chance to chat with her before she leaves.

Besides that, I switched from my winter coat today to my windbreaker. On the walk to K-sensei’s house, it was perfect weather for such a thing. On the way home it snowed!

Tomorrow’s Easter!

Photo Challenge Day 29

March 29: Fuzzy

Tigger is soft and fuzzy!

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How I wish we had paper recycling in my town. I cleaned out my desk today and this was the result.

This afternoon I also went out for lunch with a friend who I went out with last week. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture.

REAL brown sugar! I made it myself. Yum!

Chocolate chip peanut butter cookie bars of amazing!

I went out with Mayumi for her last night in the main part of town. Tomorrow she moves to a smaller part of town.

Photo Challenge Day 28

March 28: Backlit

Today was HARD. It didn't help that I didn't start thinking about it until 30 minutes ago . . . I should have been thinking about it more, but I just figured something would turn up. But I wasn't really looking. 9 pm at night is a hard time to find something backlit.

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Spring break has been great because I've been able to find excuses to have lunch with and skype with friends both here and overseas. It’s been a good week friend-wise.

Today I had lunch with the teachers from the high school. Two of them are leaving. It’s going to be strange next year.

Today I got the new seating chart for the staff-room in the high school. I was very surprised. We’re only getting 4 new teachers in the staff-room of 14, but so many teachers got married this year, that I could only read half of the names on the chart – all the rest had kanji I didn’t know.

Photo Challenge Day 27

March 27: 5pm

At 5pm today, I was a few pages into the 5th chapter of Narnia.

Reading in Japanese was difficult, but fun.

Photo Challenge Day 25

March 25: Guilty Pleasures

I think I need a cat! I considered chocolate for this one, and instead, aiming to be less cliché decided to go with crochet and reading (two really big time wasters in my life). I sound like such an old lady! Tea and Facebook could have also made that list though . . .

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This is the scene that greeted my eyes this morning as I drove to work. It’s going to be bicycling weather soon!

We recorded the HEC test today for my JHS kids. They did so well! But the day was a bit chaotic.

It started when my second student wasn’t at school. He had forgotten the test! Luckily, we moved right along and had him go last.

The camera was a bit of a fail though – I hope not a real fail, but I’ll find out tomorrow. With 3 minutes left in the test, it made a funny beeping sound which I immediately knew was because it had stopped recording. I had my student stop asking questions immediately and went to try to find out what happened – the sd card I put inside was definitely big enough. Turns out, it wasn’t writing to the card, but to some mysterious internal memory. I had no idea how to make it write to the card, so we used my SLR to finish the last 3 minutes of the test. We’ll see tomorrow if this all ended up working out ok, or not!

After that, I went home and had a nice phone call during lunch with a good friend back home.

Shortly after that, I went over to the high school to meet the new English teacher. She’s just graduated and likes snowboarding, too! I hope we’ll have a lot of fun teaching together. I still can’t believe the teacher I’ve been teaching with there is leaving so soon. I’m going to miss getting to see her everyday.

In a much more fun spurt of creativity, I decided it was time to re-arrange the pictures on my walls – when I had a bigger place, I’d re-arrange the furniture. Now, I wait till my pictures all fall down (approximately a month with the sticky tack I was using) and then re-arrange.

Here’s a pile of prints that I was deciding what to do with.

This is next to my sliding glass doors.

And here is my favorite part – the ceiling/wall between the living room and the bedroom.

In all, it was a really good day.

Photo Challenge Day 20 & 21

March 20: On my feet

What was on my feet yesterday? The camera socks mom gave me! Fitting, right?

March 21: close-up

I procrastinated again. So in looking around my living room for something interesting to photograph, I found my journal. The pages look kinda cool close up and only partially in focus, don’t you think?

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Yesterday was the first day of spring, so we had the day off. So, I went to lunch with my friend Minami. We had hamburg curry. It was yummy.

After lunch, we went for coffee. It was rainy, but warm (5C/40F) yesterday. I was so surprised because we had lots and lots of rain.

It was tons of fun. I also got more work finished on my crochet project. Pictures will be posted eventually, but since it’s a gift for a friend, I want to keep it a secret for now.

After yesterday’s “spring” visit, Hokkaido winter decided it wanted to show us who’s boss. We got 6 inches or so of snow last night and it snowed like crazy all day. I had eikaiwa tonight, or I would have wanted to go out on the ski hill and practice a bit more before it closes on Saturday.

I had my last practice with my high school HEC kids this afternoon. They’re hilarious. One said the other had large eyes and then she decided to use her ruler to measure her friend’s eyes. Between that and a comment about her friend being a fish-pig, we were all laughing so hard. I have such awesome students.

Photo Challenge Day 19

March 19: Door

My closet door. It was warm enough that everything was super melty and icey. I had no desire to go for a walk and fall many times over with my camera. So I had to look around the house.

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We have had lots of snow until this week. When suddenly it has gotten quite warm. This was taken this morning at about 7am.

Six degrees! (about 45 degrees F). It hasn’t been above freezing solidly in months and last night I think  the coldest we got to was 0! This may be the very end of boarding and skiing season. But that means cycling season will start soon. : )

Photo Challenge Day 17 & 18

March 17: Green

Matcha “grown up” Kit-Kats! They have cookie bits inside!

March 18: Morning Beverage

One of my favorite teas with breakfast this morning, Good Earth’s Sweet and Spicy tea. Full of cinnamon and other yummy-ness, could there possibly be a better way to start the day?