Synopsis

Here are a bunch of random pictures from the past few months. I warn you they are in no particular chronological order. The crappier pictures were taken with my cell phone camera because my regular camera's batteries always seem to die.

Part of the Aso Fire Festival. They made two big "Fire" kanji on the
sides of the mountain. It's pretty hard to tell from this picture how
absolutely massive the big kanji actually is. After the sun went down,
there was a good old-fashioned fireworks show.

Picture from the lift at the Ashikita Roller Luge Park. It's located about

an hour by car from my house, and on the side of a mountain facing the Ariake
Sea. The view was amazing and luging was fun too. There were three tracks
and it was satisfyingly dangerous. In the summer they also have Zorbs.

Here's the view from the Roller Luge lift of the Ariake Sea. The mountains in the
distance are in Amakusa.

The Family eating Korean Barbecue in Kyoto.

This and the following few pictures perfectly illustrate the madness
that is the Dress Up Game.

Some of my tough and cool 9th grade boys that just graduated. I'll miss them,
they were quite an interesting bunch.

One of my English teachers, Mr. Susami, and his kids. Rie is the youngest,
sitting on Mr. Susami's shoulders, and she's very cute. Seishin is the middle child,
standing in front. He's pretty crazy and loves Pokemon. Yuka is the oldest,
and she's very smart. They're a very fun group.

Seishin and Rie in action.

A group of especially talkative 6th graders from Kawachi Elementary School.
I had never heard so much Kumamoto-ben. It was quite a fun school though.

One of the fifth graders at one of the elementary schools I went to. This elementary school
had about 40 kids spread throughout 6 grades. There were 8 fifth graders.

7th Graders playing a grade-wide game of Karuta. One of the teachers
reads the first half of a classic Japanese poem, and the students have
to slap the card with the correct second half of the poem.