End-of-year parties

The end-of-year parties are in full swing now. I went to a couple over the weekend, although only took photos at one of them. Like last year, we visited a party thrown by a fellow Aichi University professor, Angus, seen here:
The party was thrown at an old house with many rooms and even a sunken hearth in one room, which we cooked sweet potatoes on.
There were a number of professors as well as students there. It was nice seeing some 4th-year students in a relaxed atmosphere since they have now finished writing their graduation papers.

New Year gathering

Similar to the end-of-year parties that I went to last year, this year starts off with a shinnenkai, or new year gathering. I met with my previous students from Photonics along with another previous teacher, Bill, and their current teacher, Abby, and her boyfriend, Daniel.

Before we left, one of the neighbourhood dogs was running around and wanting to play. I went to see if the neighbours were in since the dog is usually in his yard, but there weren't. Since I couldn't catch him, we had to leave while he went yapping to other neighbours:
We met the group at El Techo restaurant, which we had previously been to once before:
We had a set menu of 7 courses and all we could drink. We could enjoy many Mexican cocktails.
It was nice to see that the old group hasn't changed and good to see Bill after quite a while.

The last of the year-end parties

The last four year-end parties have come and gone. All were good, but probably the best was one put on by a professor in my department, Angus, who is in the picture below:
It was held at an old, traditional Japanese house in Toyohashi and lots of teachers, students and friends were invited. There was a bonfire outside and lots of good food including banana flambe which was made at one of the centre tables. Here are some other shots I had taken with some students and friends:

Only one more class to teach and then it is off to Canada for the holidays. It's been a busy December and so I'm looking forward to relaxing with family this Christmas. See you next year (of course with photos from our trip to Canada).

Year-end parties

As we are half way through December already, a few bonenkai (forget the year gatherings) have already happened. I enjoyed going out with Sian, Carrie, John and Angus (working in my office) on Friday night. We enjoyed some nice food and many bottles of wine.

On Saturday, Ayako and I went to get haircuts and then passed by Sumiko's (Ayako's sister) place to see how Sana-chan was doing:
She is 2 months old now and was peacefully sleeping until we came by. Still, she didn't mind us passing her back and forth and dozed on and off during our stay. Of course we were also happy to see how Neo and Rio were doing:
After our short visit, we headed downtown to visit Eric and Tomoe, who had invited us for dinner. We enjoyed playing some Wii sports for a bit:

And then were served a great meal of nabe, gyoza and sashimi by Tomoe:
It was very delicious:
Later that night, we headed to our common izakaya (Japanese pub) for Four Seasons' bonenkai:
It was nice to see how catch up with people from Four Seasons.
This coming week, there are four more bonenkais I'll be going to so there will be more photos of them to come.

Reunion parties

I had a couple of reunions over the weekend. On Friday night, I met up with my former Photonics students. It was good to hear what they had been up to over the summer and to hear that a few of them had improved their TOEIC scores even more:
On Saturday night, I met up with the current teachers at Four Seasons school for a farewell party for Rachel (second from the left). Luckily she'll still be in Japan so I'm sure we'll still see her around:
Here's another table at the farewell party:

Photonics class party

On Friday night, I had another farewell party for one of my company classes. They all work for Hamamatsu Photonics, which I recently wrote about when I went to the Photon Fair. This class had the highest level of English compared to my other classes, so we could have some good discussions in class. I taught them for two and a half years and they'll be another class that I will really miss teaching. Anyway, here are some shots from the night:


I hope I'll get a chance to meet with them again in the future sometime.

Sayonara parties

Well, my time teaching at Four Seasons Language School is coming to a close and I will soon start working at Aichi University in Toyohashi. Since this is my last week of classes, I have a few going-away parties with students and teachers. My first one was with my ladies class, which was one of my favourite classes. I have taught them for the past 3 years and although some of the members have changed, I was glad that the main three women were in my class the whole time. I have leearnt a lot about Japan and Japanese culture from them and will miss teaching them.
They took me to the Japanese restaurant across from Four Seasons, which is also where they took me when I started teaching the class. It was a wonderful meal and the chef used some ingredients that even my students had trouble naming.
On Saturday night, there was a sayonara party for myself as well as Ian, who is also finishing at Four Seasons. We went to our usual drinking hole and I was happy that most of the teachers could come out. Here's me with Ian:
And here's Ian with Rachel and Ayako:
I have another party next week with another one of my favourite classes, so I'm looking forward to that one too.

Year-end parties

During December in Japan, many companies or groups have parties at the end of the year. I had 3 different class parties this year. This first one was with my community class:
The second was with my class at Yamaha music:
We enjoyed copying part of the following video that shows incorrect cultural tips for eating sushi in Japan. We always said "Maa maa maa maa" & "Oh toh toh toh" when pouring and receiving drinks. (^-^)

The last group I went out with was my Roland class:

Roland DG party

There was another of my classes finishing in September and so there was another class party Saturday night. This time it was in Act Tower, which is the tall tower in my city that you can see on the side-bar picture. It was a fancy dinner with some very good sashimi (raw fish):
And here's a couple shots of my students and me:

Univance party

On Saturday night, I went out with my Univance class. Here are some pictures from the night (with my old camera that seemed to work better than before):

Today's News

In regional news, we've had rainy days for the past month or so, and the last few days we've had a few downpours which have created some problems in today. I saw on the news that 18 people were dead from rivers overflowing. The river that goes by my city, Tenryu river, was very high with parts of the roads near it closed and the river had even broken a levee in the northern part of the river near Nagano:
In local news, my ladies class on Thursday morning took me out for lunch today to welcome me to their class. We went to a nice, small restaurant near my school. We had a 6-course meal that was made from very healthy and seasonal food... a very Japanese lunch. Very delicious.

student party

Last night, I had some of my students from my Welding Rod class come over to my apartment for a get-together. We had good food to eat and then played some pool and had a small darts competition. Here's some photos of the fun.

class party

I had a small party with one of my company classes last night at my place.
We had dumplings from a town which is known for its famous dumplings and had other good food as well.
We then played some games of 9 ball (even though we had 10 balls) on my new mini pool table:


And a shot after an amazing winning shot:

Last week of classes for the year

It's Friday Dec. 23, which means it's the Emperor's birthday, which means it's a holiday as well as the start of my Xmas vacation. All during December there are many End of Year parties for friends and companies in Japan. You often have to reserve tables at restaurants and bars well in advance. On Monday I went with my community class from the school to an Italian restaurant (or more specificaly a Sardinian restaurant) for our class year-end party. We had some good food that we shared with each other.
Yesterday, Thursday, I wanted to go to the library, but for some reason it is always closed every fourth Thursday. It was a bit cold and very windy yesterday, but I still decided to ride to the beach after I found out that the library was closed. Since the weather was very cold for Hamamatsu, nobody was there, but it was nice walking along the windy beach and seeing the birds playing over the waves.
Actually it was cold enough that there was some snow on the ground.

On my bicycle ride home, I was very happy to see a Japanese loon in the river I was riding beside. There are actually a great variety of birds in my city since there's the ocean and a river near my apartment and it's not a far drive to get to large forests and the mountains. I often see hawks flying about. One new year's resolution for myself will be to do more birdwatching around here.

On Thursday night, I had another year-end party with a company class (Roland DG who make printers). It was nice way to have my last class for the year.^^

After this party, I went home where there was a get-together of my school's teachers before they we all took off for different countries for our winter break. And so now I can start making more specific plans for my break now. All I know now is that I'll be in Korea with Ayako from Dec. 28 to Jan. 4 and then visiting my Canadian friend, Craig, in Osaka and seeing Kyoto for a few days. Many pictures to come next year...