Gathering of uni co-workers

On Sunday, a group of teachers from work along with their families/partners came over for some lunch and and time to catch up after the summer. Here are some photos:




The kids were especially busy gathering shellfish from the lake:
It was good that they could stay to watch the sunset, although some of us passed up watching the sunset to watch the final day of sumo. Everyone left full and with smiles on their faces so I think it was a success.

Take me out to the ball game.

There was a small group of us that took the train to Nagoya to catch a professional baseball game:

We were pretty high up in the bleachers but still had a good view of the field:
And we could always see a replay on the big screen. It was also fun cheering along with the fans who had chants for each player on the home team:
Since the home team is called the Chunichi Dragons, they had a cute pink dragon as a mascot (although the official mascot is a koala bear...not sure why). They also had cheerleaders who came out 4 times during the game:
Although the home team had good chances to win the game, they only scored runs in one inning and thus lost the game 4-3. For us though, we were mainly there for the atmosphere and to watch some good baseball, so we weren't dissappointed:

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:

Relaxing on Atago River

On Sunday, we went up to Atago River with Sumiko's family and some teachers that Ayako invited from work. We met up in the town of Tenryu where Rio and Neo enjoyed playing on an old train for awhile:

At the river, we had lunch and enjoyed playing games in the river like skipping stones:
and playing frisbee:
as well as just relaxing by the river:


I'm glad that the super hot weather has finished and so hopefully the weather will stay pleasant like it was on this day.