Happy New Year!

---

Happy New Year

Well not really, but April is the beginning of the school and kindy year in Japan. There was an opening ceremony for all the new children. It was quite a formal event, some of the mums even wore kimono and all the dads had video cameras! No tears on the day, but boy, was I in for a nasty shock the week after! Well it wasn't quite so bad, but a few children cried the WHOLE day on their first full day of kindy. Since then I have not yet had a full day of peace. I am now the Koala teacher (the youngest class, mostly 3 year olds, a couple are still 2), and have 19 children, 15 of whom are brand new to the kindy. I think Amy has about 5 new ones, making 24 altogether in her class!

Welcome Party at Chatty

Mrs Nagata had a small welcome party for Amy and Hiedi at her pub that evening. Hiedi is the other new teacher who arrived at the same time as Amy and is also from Adelaide. We were introduced to Blake who is from Canada and has been living in Shizuoka for about 6 years. He will be working at Mrs Nagata’s ‘School Pub’.
Later that night Blake took us to a really cool, jungle like bar, then Amy and I led everyone to Flyte Tyme for some dancing! A craze in Japan at the moment is Para Para dancing which involves coordinating dance moves to certain songs - its fantastic, I love it!!!

---

Photos

The Newies
Opening Ceremony

Welcome Party for Amy and Hiedi
at Mrs Nagata's Pub

Welcome Party
Tomoko, Me, Hiedi, Blake & Mrs Nagata

Flyte Tyme!
In our cool little cell like corner

In with the cool crowd!!
The dance leader...the owner of the club...and us!

Had enough
In the end we had no clue what we were doing, it was hilarious and apparently others thought so too!

Straight from the hairdresser??
Anyway I thought it would be cool to have a photo with them...and at 3am I have no problem practicing the (limited) Japanese I know! Sumimasen, sumimasen, photo kudesai? (excuse me, excuse me, photo please?)