Jpanese Winter

hi hi. well, being back in japan is nice except for the cold. clearly its not as cold as good ole wisco, but the lack of central heating or any heating for that matter makes it quite unpleasant. i sometimes sleep with my coat on, but soon winter will be gone and it will go back to being nice and warm! winter in japan is very peaceful, although more and more people are out taking advantage of the sale season, which i must say is absolutely wonderful. After shogatsu everything goes on sale and i have been shopping like a mad woman and buying nice dress pants for 15 bucks, insane. besides the massive amount of shopping ive been doing, ive just been catching up with everyone after their winter breaks. finally back into the swing o things. lots of casual dinners and getting accustomed to japan again. last week was a really difficult week for my base school, Handa koko. my supervisor's mother passed away and a third year student got hit and killed by a train at my train station on wednesday. that was really hard for everyone to handle and such a shock to everyone. i didnt know the student, but anything like that can have a pretty strong affect on a person. his funeral was this weekend along with all the third years college entrance exams, so i cant imagine what a stressful time its been for them. on to a more upbeat topic, last week we had a kencho meeting and got the low down on re-contracting, which i have decided to stay another year in japan because there just isn't enough time to accomplish everything in one year. most everyone else is staying as well, which will be good for me. on friday i went to a friend's birthday party and we all had quite a good time, and stayed out all night again haha. on saturday i went to a theatre audition with maria, for this musical the Nagoya Arts center is putting on, in english of course. then we found ourselves a new, actually traditional, irish pub in nagoya and then went to see Body of Lies at the theatre. On sunday i got up super early, well at least for a sunday, to go to this private kimono exhibition and got to see amazingly intricatly designed kimonos, which were around 30 to 60,000 dollars, totally expensive but definately worth the price. clearly i did not buy any, but looking was a special experience. then we had some mochi, a tea ceremony, and got to see the traditional tye-dying techniques and products of Arimatsu, a town outside of nagoya and very famous for shibori, or tye-dye. we also got to go to a sake brewery and see how sake is made and taste 4 different kinds, which were all quite delicious. now i understand a little bit more about sake, but we were all in agreement that the brewery was more like a torture chamber and just glad to leave with our lives. As for this week, its a pretty easy one. We have a mid-year seminar on wednesday and thursday with the ALts and JTE (japanese teachers of english) which will be pretty boring, but something to do i guess. this weekend im off to Gero for the annual ski trip with the Gifu jets, and i will be attempting to snowboard so just hope i make it back with no broken bones! also there are a lot of natural springs around the area, so im really excited for that. thats all for now. much love from the east. xx