Vacation

One of the things that is crazy about Japan is that all teachers have 20 days of vacation per year so they are pretty much given vacation like a regular salary man company job.  They can take random hours off of work if they need to leave for an hour or two.  Teachers in Japan have to come to school every day.  No students?  Go to school.  A national holiday was on a weekend?  Too bad, you have to come to school on the Monday.  School ends at 3?  Too bad you can't leave school until 4:40.  Business trip that ends at 3:00pm and you get back to Noheji train station at 4:20pm?  Can't drive home, gotta drive to good ol Noheji Ko-ko and sit in your desk for  5 minutes.

During my time at Maryland, in contrast, we were given two personal days a year, but I mean with summer vacation and all, you can't really complain about the 10 hour work days (14 hours during baseball season if you included my commute).  But anyhow I digress.

So, no students at school for most of the day (except for club activities for maybe 3 hours or so).  What do you think the teachers do during this time of no classes?  Well, basically my office takes turns seeing who can wear the most outrageous outfit or buy the biggest spread of food for the office and then Shimakawa sensei and I head to the gym and play some hockey.

I almost hesitate in posting this picture since it doesn't come close to doing it justice.  But this teacher's outfit was incredible.  It literally sparkled in the sun and seemed to be made of polished silver.  The picture is awful, but this guy wins the award for best outfit.

  

Some examples of the food teachers have brought in:

A deer leg.  This was cut up and put in a pot of boiling water with some veggies to make what is called 鹿鍋 or basically "deer stew"

One teacher went to Hirosaki (famous for corn) and brought back a super super delicious ear of corn for everyone.

Another teacher brought pokemon chocolates!

My attempt to get everyone fat went pretty well with the help of Heather's birthday package and a mix of Warheads, Kisses, wild rice and Reesce's Peanut Butter Cups.

 

And when we are finished with all the goodies, we work off the calories with some good hockey practice.

We put the big green mat in the middle of the handball goal to play goalie.  So.  Much.  Fun.

 Another tough day at the office.    Not gonna lie, it's more fun than a day off :)