typhoon season?

So earlier this week, typhoon 14 hit Japan. I was really excited, because my teachers said I didn't have to come in if an emergency was declared (they all do). However, the typhoon came in the night and I slept through it. It was really windy for about 2 days, and a bit of rain in the evening, I guess the action all happened at night. So in to school anyway.

A good deal has happened since my last blog, some exciting, some less so. Today was my first day in elementary school. Both the junior high and elementary schools are preparing for "sports day", so classes are irregular for the next two weeks. So today I went in and taught one class, of 100 elementary students. It was a lot of fun actually. The teacher I work with is a big really energetic lady. So I showed up an hour early to prepare for the lesson, and I find out we're working with puppets. We started the lesson doing a dialogue between Lion and Rabbit (hi, how are you? I'm fine thank you, and you?...) and then played a counting game, and sang a song. Then we went and just hung out in her "word room" where she teaches Vietnam students Japanese. She kept trying (successfully) to feed me cookies and fruit. Then we had lunch, and I found out she had called me a taxi. So, I think my JH school was expecting me back, but this was not to be. So it is now 2:00 and I am home.
So since I wrote last I have visited Mt. Shosha, the second and last of the attractions in Himeji. It was built over 1200 years ago, at least. But it's more famous for being the site where Tom Cruise filmed The Last Samurai. it was really really awesome. It's a big mountain Buddhist temple complex. After getting off the bus, there's a cable car to the top of the mountain, after entering, I proceeded up a path littered with buddhist statues, mini-shrines to different boddhisatvas and buddhas. There was an enormous bell that I rang before starting, you grab a rope at the end of a large hanging log, pull back and release it to swing into the bell and toss in ten yen. and maybe make a prayer. anyway, after walking past a good number of small shrines, there's a little path through the woods that suddenly opens up, and there's an enormous temple out of nowhere that just takes your breath away. I went in, and tried to talk to one of the monks there for a little while (very little english+ no japanese= small dialogue). He was really really excited that I was trying to ask him questions. I guess he must get kind of bored just doing calligraphy in people's temple books. Anyway, we finished up there and headed into town. I went to aikido and the rest of my crew went to play frisbee for a while.
Not exciting part of blog- I got really really sick last week for the first few days of school. Had a fever for 3 days. I finally went into the doctor on Saturday. he made a clip art rendition of my medical diagnosis on the computer, told me I had tonsilitis, and gave me some antibiotics. At any rate, all better now.
more later, going to go run some errands, buy a bike, while shops are still open.
Allison