Baikosai, the school festival, went well. The English club sold all of their cookies! I also enjoyed judging the choir competition, looking at student projects, sampling tea, cakes and cookies, watching the musical "Annie," and listening to the band play Disney songs. It was a wonderful day!

This weekend is Baikosai, the yearly school festival. Each class sings a song in a competition, each class sells something, and each club does something. This year the English club is doing face painting and selling chocolate chip/M&M cookies. After school the English club met to make cookies. We ended up making around 300 cookies! I have never seen so many at one time in my life. I think most of the thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Baking is somewhat of a new experience for several of them. Now all we have to do is sell them:)

It was a night with friends eating sushi and then watching "The Wizard of Oz." We ate at a kaiten sushi restaurant. Little plates of sushi come around on a conveyer belt and you grab what you want. (You can also order if you don't see what you want.) The plates are color/pattern coded so you know how much each plate costs. Most of them are around $1. You can get everything from eel, octopus, and fugu (blowfish) to ham sushi. Who would have thought that you could get ham and bacon sushi? We had a great time trying all kinds!

Then we watched "The Wizard of Oz" together. During our Korea trip, Lena and I made a couple of references to it. Once we discovered that the two Japanese friends hadn't seen it, we decided that we needed to see it together. It had probably been over 10 years since I had last seen it, so it was a lot of fun to watch it again. I hadn't realized how often we elude to it. We had a great time explaining all of the references!

A few examples: follow the yellow brick road, I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too, aunty Em, there's no place like home, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, that's a horse of a different color, Toto too?, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and the list could go on.

I tried a new dessert tonight. I'm not sure what it is called and even in Japan it's not common.

Well, it was the end of Bible study and Etsuko san brought out the cake she made. She is known for her amazing cakes. Usually they are a type of sponge cake with fruit or poppy seeds in them. For tonight's meeting she tried a new combo: sponge cake with diced goya (prickly Okinawan cucumbers) mixed in. Goya is an extremely bitter cucumber! Needless to say, I was disappointed with tonight dessert. In fact, I think this one hits an all time low. In my opinion, sweet and vegetables just do not go together. However, my tastes have matured a little in recent years, and I am now able to eat carrot cake. Maybe there is hope for me. (Here's a pictures of goya from www1.istockphoto.com.)

While watching CNN with a neighbor I learned what the difference is between a hurricane and a typhoon. Do you know what it is? The international date line. Interesting...I never knew. A typhoon was heading our way but decided to take a turn before hitting Japan. It's probably a good thing, but I'm a bit disappointed. Deep down I was hoping for a typhoon day. Maybe another day.

And the semester is off! The new term officially started on Friday, September 1. Of course, we didn't actually teach any classes those days. Instead, we gave Ruthie a tour of the school and tried to explain how things work at Baiko. On Saturday, we started having classes. This is one of my busiest days of the week. Nothing like jumping right into it. Today I led the English Bible class at church for the first time. The students are eager to learn. Things have gone fine for the most part. I'm continuing to learn what works and what doesn't.