Photo Challenge Day 9

March 9: Sweet Tooth

This was the dessert we got after our delicious lunch. I had tea and some kind of pound cake.

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Today I spent the day boarding with friends in Tomamu. I’m getting so much more confident with my turns, I started doing turns on the steeper bits of the hill and faster on the lower bits.

Of course, going faster sometimes means falling a bit more. I was trying to catch up to a friend who had fallen down and managed to catch my board on another friend’s board. I tipped, and was still moving as I fell.  I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I found myself sliding down the hill head first, body just following a long as though I was on a slide. The whole thing didn’t hurt at all and was more funny than anything else. I finally managed to stop by spreading my limbs out and hoping the surface area would slow me down. It did. (Mom, dad and grandma: It was a bit of a surprise, but I was fine and I had my helmet on) 

We had lunch in a cute little café near the hill. It turned out, my students’ parents were working in the café.

We boarded and boarded until almost 5:30, when everyone had plans in different directions.

On our second to last run of the day, I captured this:

After our boarding adventures finished, I headed back to town, to put on dry clothes, and head out to the earthquake tribute my town was having. I met up with a couple of other friends there.

They lit up one of the runs on the ski hill with a kanji. I’m not sure of the reading, I had it explained really well to me last year. But it seems to mean bond, emotional tie, a relationship or connection.

After that they set off the fireworks.

This is how my tiny town, does a tribute to the victims of the Tohoku Earthquake.

All in all, it was a fun filled day with a few different sets of friends.

Photo Challenge Day 8

March 8: Leap

This is photo challenge fail day. I had the leap idea. I wanted to set the flash behind me and light the background and not me. Now that I’ve tried it, I’ve got an idea of how I could do it next time for better results.

The failed photos: 1. Totally out of focus, using the remote. 2. The shutter speed was too fast for the flash, only a portion of the sensor was even exposed while the flash was firing. 3. One of the many jump shots where I only managed to get part of myself in the frame. 4. An interesting portrait that ended up being lit by the flash behind me (all white walls work pretty well as reflectors to get the light back down on me.

The gear:

What I used to take these shots: Nikon D5100, a speed light, a super cheap tripod, a remote and a wireless flash trigger (one part for the camera and one part for the flash).

I think, to take this picture again, I’d find a white sheet and hang it, light it from one side and have me jump on the other. I also might need a bigger space.

All in all, it was good because I haven’t experimented with the flash very much since I bought it. I really like the way the lighting in the picture on the bottom right turned out.

I took a ton of pictures, I suspect that anyone who could see the flash going off again and again in my window thought I was nuts.

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Today was the last day the 3rd year students were around before Graduation. They first and second year students planned some fun games to play and a video. The video started with all the commercials the kids had recorded for school festivals. Things like a beer commercial (with the commercial in the bottom left) and the kids acting it out using school milk. The majority of the video was pictures of them over their 3 years of JHS. I’ll be sad to not see these kids all the time anymore.

Photo Challenge Day 6

March 6: Straight

Today I finished and sent my taxes straight to the paper wasters (aka. the IRS). Yay for not having to keep thinking about them after this. I love the cute stamps in Japan, for Valentine’s Day they had super cute Disney stamps.

Here’s the answer to Day 4’s challenge:

It’s a crochet hook. Mom (on the blog site) and Mandie (on Facebook) got it.

In other news I got the HNg (Hokkaido Newcommers Guide) for this year. Guess whose photo is on the front?

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Today was the last day of elementary school classes. I still am slightly in shock that this year’s students were third graders when I came and in less than a month they’ll be starting Junior High School. Time flies so quickly!

It was also my last ES class teaching with Mr. I. It was a lot of fun teaching with the same teacher for all of the classes. In part, because we had time to talk and change lessons as we wanted to. He was also always super receptive to my ideas for the ES English classes, which as a trained ES teacher, made me super happy.

Just because I’m still in awe of how much snow Niseko has every year, here is a picture of the Niseko snow this weekend. Wow!