Skiing is tops fun!

Well, here I am back at work. Yay!! The new school is called Higashi-sho and I will be here until the end of my contract on March 31st. The teachers all seem friendly enough. My classes start tomorrow with a morning at the kindy... Eew. But I've figured it all out and there are only 11 weeks left of teaching here. Easy. The school is about a half hour walk from my house which I'm glad about since it will force me to actually do some exercise ;) There are fewer kids here than my previous school, but not by much so I will be kept fairly busy again. It feels very wrong to be at work.

My holidays were tops. I went up to Tokyo, caught up with an old friend from when I was studying in Hiroshima. Wandered about Tokyo for a while, even did some shopping on the 2nd in the Ginza, not that I could really afford anything they were selling, even at 50%off! All the shops are getting rid of their stock in massive sales and since there's little else to do on the second day of the year everyone gets down there and spends all their new year's money. But by far the best part of the holiday was skiing in Nagano. It ended up taking a fair while to get there by shinkansen and then bus to Hakuba. But there was plenty of powdery snow and for the 2 days I was on the slopes, blue skies too! Very lucky. Skiing is heaps of fun, at first I was a bit skeptical about it all, especially after I went for a massive stack and used my face as a plough for a while. But I got the hang of it pretty quickly and after the second day was cruising down the hill without any worries. Managing to keep myself in a straight line, or at least a controlled curve might not have been quite so stressful if not for the fact that the beginngers slope was right on the edge of a sheer drop down the mountain! Had I gotten out of control and slid off the edge I wouldn't have been coming up without the help of a helicopter or a sky hook I reckon! Even though the weather was fabulous there really weren't too many people around and waiting for the ski lift really wasn't such a big deal. I have a few photos which I might put up later. But really I didn't take many, I was just enjoying myself. Besides, it's all just Japan aye!

Hope everyone else had a good break and have adjusted to being back at work without too many issues... I'll get onto that bit now :)