It's officially summer vacation! And I am in the office!! I just finished planning the last of my adult English lessons. We have our final class tonight, and I'm definitely looking forward to finishing. They have been a great class, and teaching them has been rewarding enough to consider continuing in the fall. For now though, I am almost done!!!

I had a really good weekend. I headed to Tokyo on Friday after school, unfortunately timed perfectly with one of the last (I hope) storms of the extra long rainy season (though it still looks like its going to pour yet today). About a hour into the 2 and a half hour trip they shut down the tracks in both directions due to the rain. I wasn't aware rain actually affected the trains much, particularly here where Japan is one of the world's best at being on time with their rail system. But... there we were, stuck on the tracks in the rain, next to a station but not allowed to leave the train. Sigh, more reading time, I told myself. They continued to postpone our expected (re)departure time until we'd been sitting on the tracks for almost an hour an a half. People were getting anxious and I was worried that I'd never make it to Tokyo. Of course, we'd left Matsumoto at 4:56 in the afternoon and the original arrival time was 7:37 so with the delay we were also getting mighty HUNGRY. On top of all of this anti-excitement, the conductor announced that someone had suddenly become ill and were there any doctors on board?

Well, we all survived, but it was a really long trip. (I swear though, it was raining harder when we actually got moving again...) We finally reached Tokyo just before 10pm and were escorted off the Shinjuku platform to a plethora of extra polite apologies by the announcers.

The rest of the weekend was a blast though. With the extra time Tom had to kill before I arrived, he baked me a birthday cake... it was delicous and hit the spot after waiting so long to eat (oh yeah... we had dinner, too). On Saturday, we both slept in and then we headed out to Tokyo Dome "City" to check out the new roller-coasters. We spent the day bouncing between the rides and being dropped from far, far up in the sky. The Japanese have mastered the art of building rides on top of already existing buildings, so that an already tall coaster is twice or three times as far off the ground when you look down from the top of that hill! After we'd had enough of that, we checked out the 5 or 6 simultaneous fireworks shows that you could see from the top of his office building. It was a nice way of Tokyo to celebrate my 26th birthday... I'll have to thank the mayor. We finished the day with a video and more of that chocolate cake!

On Sunday we met up with the Mori No Ike abroad program, in their final swing through Tokyo before a final exam and flight out of Narita (today). There are 18 high school students with three teachers, and let me tell you... they are feeling the effects of a month of traveling together. We were getting some pretty funky vibes out of that crew! Nonetheless, we all gathered together for a lovely picnic in Shinjuku park. Tom even brought a football so the guys could look manly while knocking out innocent bystanders. It was a good time had by all. I headed back here in the evening after a fast meal at a Tokyo Mexican restaurant.

Yesterday was a day long area teachers "Summer Seminar" run by myself and one of the only other JETs left in town. It was basically just an English camp for adults. We warmed up with skits and introductions and then taught English songs. We all cooked asian food together for lunch, then we finished the day with a sample class using MTV videos to get kids into listening to English. I got some really positive feedback, and it felt good to finish. Once I finish my classes tonight, I will be officially out of things to plan!! That will feel great.

To celebrate, I'm heading back to Tokyo! Too bad I can't collect frequent flyer miles! I'm looking forward to spending a few days with a friend from Wakayama who I haven't seen since I left in '96. She was one of my best friends in school, so it should be a fun time. After that, I'm hooking back up with Tom and we're going to "Summer Sonic"- a big summer music festival concert featuring the bands Blur, Travis, Blink 182, and a couple of our favorite Japanese bands: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra and The High-Lows. Should be cool.

I don't know when I'll be back online, but keep checking the photo page because I post to that a lot more often. I can send pictures from my phone regardless of where I am and don't need to get online to do it. I'll try to keep you all updated!!