Leavin' Town

So, as many of you who follow our blog probably know.. we will be coming home for a visit TOMORROW! Today we still had some last minute errands to run before the long flight home. Of course we had to walk because it snowed about 2-3 feet of snow yesterday (yes, 2-3 feet!), which meant we couldn't get the bikes out just yet!!! As we were walking down the street we noticed to conspicuous Japanese girls taking pictures of an ordinary taiyaki shop (this is a Japanese dessert), and they happened to cross the street and get right in front of us while we all had to wait for the light to change. One of the girls looked at us a little too happily, but we tried to ignore her as we do all of the stares we get from Japanese people from this area (yes, they have a tendency to look at us like we're zoo animals!) But then, to our relief, we realized she didn't think we were zoo animals! Instead she thought we were celebrities.. she asked us if she could take our picture.. ... on HER camera, not ours! Yes, she wanted a picture of the foreigners!! After we smiled for the camera, we asked where they were from and found out they were from Tokyo and are visiting the "photographer's" grandfather that lives in Hirosaki! And they were lucky enough to spot 2 of the very few foreigners in town!

Anyway, onto more important things.. as we said, we'll be coming home for about a month, from March 13-April 8, so if anyone wants to get ahold of us, you can post on here, send us an email, or post on Angie's facebook wall! We hope we get to see many of you (all would be even better, but we know that's not possible with so much stuff to do!) when we're at home!!

Graduation Conundrum

Today was graduation day. For many of the students this is a day full of emotion both tears and laughter. It was the last time to be at school with all their classmates around them after their three years of toil through high school. For us it was a day of sadness and joy to see some of our closest students graduate. We will miss many of them and their jokes in class that lighten up our days.

It also was a day of frustration to us and a few others as we were reminded that some students didn't have to work so hard for their graduation. At our high school, as well as others in Japan, as we have heard from different sources, education comes second to following miniscule rules such as hair color (the students must not dye their hair), skirt length (even though it is rarely enforced these days), hair length for boys (not past your ears), and permed hair for girls. Though we agree with some of these rules such as skirt length, we disagree with the drastic enforcement of these rules over educating the students. We have come to realize that many of the students graduate without completing the necessary courses. Yes, in otherwords they fail their classes but are still allowed to graduate. The question becomes, is this really school? What are these students learning? Well, they don't have to work or study to earn their diploma, but they had better keep up the expected appearance.

As you can slightly see here, this teacher is "spray painting" the rebellious student's dark brown hair to its natural black color. We hope this student passed all his classes...well...at least we know he looks appropriate!