Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!
Well, Christmas has been and gone, and you’re probably all stuffed to the gills with turkey, stuffing and Vicar of Dibley repeats. It was certainly an interesting Christmas day for me; Christmas in Japan is not a public holiday so I came to work as per usual. We didn’t have normal lessons though - we had the school’s closing ceremony and then the students cleaned the school. That’s a novel part of the schools in Japan - the students are all expected to take part in cleaning the entire school every day. They clean their classrooms, the corridors, the toilets… even the staffroom! But they understand it is their duty and are happy to do it. I can only imagine what would happen if you told a bunch of students in the UK that they’d have to clean their school each day.
But at 1100 I donned my red outfit, beard and hat and assumed the guise of Santa san for the students! This is my third year of doing it, although I was without the sleigh this year (it was just too heavy and rickety to be practical). But I had presents for all of my classes, which they all seemed to appreciate. It’s always interesting to see the reactions of the different classes when they see me. Some were relatively quiet, but strangely enough the most excited class was the one which is my most quiet during lessons. The teachers get a kick out of it too and I got photos taken with the classes. I also attended the Christmas concert at lunchtime as Father Christmas and even went to Family Mart to get my lunch in costume! The staff there looked in complete shock for a couple of seconds until they realised it was only the crazy foreigner coming to get something to eat!
Today’s been a bit of a dull day though, and the rest of the week will be similar I expect. The students only have classes in the morning and I’m not involved in any of them. And quite a few of the teachers are taking paid leave so there aren’t too many teachers in to talk to either. So I’ve just been passing my time listening to the absolutely dire performance at the MCG by the England cricket team. All out for 159 in under 80 overs. An absolute shambles, and I’m sure we’re going to lose the series 5-0. We’ve a lot of rebuilding to do, and hopefully a change at the top.
Only 4 days until my trip to Yonaguni, so this will probably be the last entry until the New Year. So enjoy the season’s festivities sensibly and spare me a thought on New Years Eve. I’ll be diving the underwater ruins and hopefully doing some dives with hammerhead sharks as they migrate through the area. Thank you for reading my little blog over the course of the last year. Every time I see someone has visited or commented, I feel like John Grisham, so I appreciate you taking the time on this site. I wish you all a happy and successful 2007. See you next year!
Dave xx
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Good on you Merry Old Father.
Enjoyed reading your blog this year and am looking forward to some more entries next year.
Enjoy your trip to the Yonaguni underwater ruins.
A Happy New Year to you (and get a spell checker!)
Apologies for the spelling mistakes - hopefully they’ve been corrected now! My excuse is that I wrote this while I was feeling half asleep, but that’s no excuse as a teacher!
Happy New Year!!!
Knew I would get you with that!
Have a nice dive vacation Dave and Happy New year to you!
All the best for 2007.
Dave,
Good to see Donkey was also in costume again as Rudolph. Wouldn’t quite be the same without pics of you both at xmas.
Bim x