Christmas Party

We had a Christmas Party yesterday for the kids at our school, as well as some of the kids that Trevor teaches on his own.
We took them to a small amusement park, perched on a hill overlooking Okayama. The kids all had a great time, and Trev, Sara and I kept getting hauled onto rides with them that they weren't big enough to ride by themselves. I must've been on the roller coaster 10 or 15 times.
After a couple of hours of rides, we got everybody together (about 40 kids with about 30 parents), and we had the kids make some Christmas trees, followed by some cake that my Japanese boss's sister made. After that we played a game, and then Santa (aka Trev) made a visit and gave everyone presents.
The three boys in the first picture with Santa, Tomotaka, Kosuke, and another Tomotaka, are in one of my Monday classes together. The girl on the merry-go-round, Haruna, is in another class of mine.

Tottori

For Dad's last weekend in Japan, we first went to Matsue and then on to Tottori, which is about 2 hours north of Okayama on the Japan Sea.
Tottori is famous throughout Japan for its sand dunes, which were pretty nice.



Tottori is very popular with Japanese tourists, and there are men at the dunes with camels that you can either ride or pose on for pictures. It's really popular for the Japanese to sit on the camel with the little Middle Eastern hat (I don't know what they're called) and pretend they're Lawrence of Arabia. I think it was about $20 for a short ride or $5 to sit on it for a picture.
In the picture below, you can see a rack with what I think are cuttlefish (a type of squid) on it. It was in the sun spinning very quickly to dry them. It really stunk! In the souvenir shop you could even buy squid-flavoured ice cream. No, I did not try it.

Koshi byo

When Dad and I were in Nagasaki, we went to this Confucian Shrine, which is owned by the Chinese government.
The style is considerably different from Japanese shrines, being much more intricate, and you can also see a lot of yellow, which is rarely used in Japan.