Friday night a group of us ("us" being defined as crazy gaijin foreigners) went to play in the snow on the river banks around midnight. The snow had finally let up (by "let up" I mean it was no longer a complete whiteout) and we decided to brave the cold. It was amazingly beautiful-- looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, only in Japan, with crazy people snowboarding down the river banks. I have to say that around 2 in the morning I started to get the hang of snowboarding. And not one of us fell into the river. We added a mohawk to a snow man some children had built, made snow angels, had a snow ball fight and snow ball races (rolled down a hill to see who could go the furthest). I don't think that I have had that much fun playing in the snow since I was 10 years old.

We have a brand new beautiful school that just underwent a renovation and I am responsible (indirectly) of putting the first dent into the walls. Some of my students were playing a game racing across the room to pick up fruit (they are 5 years old) and one of them slipped and banged her head into the wall. I'm almost impressed at the huge dent such a small head was able to put into the wall. The poor girl though, the accident left her with an little red egg on her forehead. Last week one of my students managed to poke her eye with a paper banana (I'm still not exactly sure how she pulled that off). This buildup is leading to something that I considered utterly astonishing. I cut my finger yesterday and asked for a band-aid and was told we don't have any. I asked where the first aid kit was. I was told we don't have one. WE ARE A CHILDREN'S SCHOOL! CHILDREN HURT THEMSELVES ALL THE TIME. YET THERE ARE NO BAND-AIDS. That really does my head in. No one except myself seemed very upset about this.