March 3rd was Hina Matsuri- Doll Festival/Girl's Festival. It's a day to pray for the prosperity of girls. Families with girls display hina-ningyo (dolls) on a 5 or 7-tiered stand, covered in a red carpet and featuring dolls ranging from the Emperor and Empress to pieces of furniture.
Hina matsuri is not a day-off, so I really didn't notice when it passed last year.
In other news, this is my last week of teaching for the school year! YAY!
The Japanese school year runs from April to March so in a few weeks I will be sobbing my eyes out at graduations.
So, I'm on vacation right??? Well, not exactly.
In the normal world, the kids and teachers go home for vacations. Not in Japan. I've heard a rumour that once upon a time, teachers had vacations off. But then other civil servants complained. Imagine how easy teachers had it back then. They only had to work til 5 (many people in Japan work til 7) and they had about 12 weeks of vacation dispersed through the year. So now, teachers go to school every working day, just like everybody else. Unless they take a vacation day, which noone ever does.
The really sad part is that the kids also go to school. They don't have classes (I think), but they have club practices.
As for me? The ALTs (Assistant Language Teacher)go hang out in the Board of Education, or at their base school. For us, it's the BOE. We're lucky because we have our own office, so we can do whatever we feel like for 8 hours a day.
In the past, I haven't really done anything with this time, but this time I'm determined to. A month of doing nothing 8 hours a day is such a waste! So here's the list. Hope to be able to acheive it all!
1. Transcribe and translate (from Japanese) 5 episodes of Sailor Moon.
2. Read 2 more books in the Rainbow Magic Series (in Japanese)
3. Translate and furigana (write out pronunciations of kanji) all the instructions in my JHS text books.
4. Read Le Petit Prince (and maybe translate from French)
5. Read De Amor y De Sombra (Isabel Allende)
6. Edit Novel 1.
Wish me luck!
And finally, here's Iwate Swan#5.
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