Ninja mayhem and 11.11.11.11.11.11

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This weekend I headed up to northern Nagano to the Togakushi Ninja village, in a beautiful area up in the mountains (http://www.ninjamura.com/english). I drove up the night before with two other friends from Iida and stayed at a friend's house near to Nagano City. She is an excellent cook, so we had a lovely home cooked meal in the evening, before an early night to prepare for our ninja day.

We got to dress up in ninja costumes (The main reason I went!) and competed against other teachers on various ninja assault courses. It was a brilliant day out ....apart from when I got a bit cocky on one of the water courses and managed to make an arse of myself by partly falling in, soaking my ninja costume in front of everyone, wailing rather too loudly as two helpful Japanese guys pulled me in clinging to a small raft.....not very ninja!

After the ninja day we got to try our hand at making soba noodles at a local soba museum, and eat our finished handywork after (very delicious). So all in all a pretty awesome weekend all round.

I had a really fun day at elementary school on Friday. One of my favourite teachers reminded me that during his lesson it was the 11th month of the 11th year, of the 11th day; of the 11th hour of the 11th minute....so we took a class photo dead on the 11th second after a fun countdown using an internet timer! I also taught a couple of the younger classes "The very hungry caterpillar" or "Harapeko Aomushi" to give it the Japanese version. I made a sock puppet and models of all the fruit/food etc.....wasn't sure how well it would work, but the kids seemed to really enjoy it....especially when I improvised the caterpillar burping after every meal.

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