Nearing the End

I've been meaning to post something lately, but haven't really known what to write about. In some ways the last couple of weeks have been harder than I'd expected. This is primarily due to the fact that I have had so many nice messages from students since they've heard I'm leaving Japan. In spite of some of the problems on the administrative levels of this company, I've really come to care for and respect many of my students - so many of them have become good friends, and it's hard to leave good friends. I don't really know what more to say about this except that I hope many of the people I've encountered here in Japan will come visit me back in Minnesota.

I'm also very excited about returning to the States next month and seeing friends and family whom I've been away from for too long. I am a little nervous about the return - I've had no real nibbles from the applications I've submitted for work, and am not quite sure what it will be like to be back in the US after living in a place as different from it as Japan. Anyway, these last too paragraphs have taken far too long to write for as wordy and uninteresting as they are, so I will move on to pictures taken recently.

After tennis a couple weeks ago, Stacy, Anthony, and I were invited to the Suda's for dinner. We had a lot of fun playing with their new toy: Wii. Here's Stacy and Anthony boxing:
And Stacy, Motoki, and Tomoko in the kitchen whipping up some paella:
Here's the gang after the meal:
Later that week, Michel's family stopped in Utsunomiya with Michel and Yoshiko for a visit. Here we all are at AEON:
I went to Tokyo and Yokohama this weekend. Here's a shot of Tokyo Station:
Chinatown in Yokohama:
A temple in Chinatown:
I walked around Yokohama bay and saw this nice looking ship:
I really enjoyed my afternoon/evening in Yokohama - the architecture was really interesting, and in spite of the drizzly weather, it was fun to walk around and take some shots of the buildings and amusement park:



I tried taking some night time sakura pictures, but the cherry blossoms, while beautiful, didn't really look the way I wanted them to with a flash on them and I didn't have my tripod to take a good evening exposure. Ah, well...