Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone in the states enjoys turkey day. It will go completely uncelebrated here. There was a much smaller holiday on Tuesday though, Labor Thanksgiving Day. It used to be a Shinto harvest festival in which the Emperor would dedicate the year's crops to spirits. Postwar, it was decided that the holiday should represent Japan's new constitution's move towards human and worker's rights. I guess that translates to everyone gets off work Tuesday with no fun traditions like the National Dog Show, because that's what everyone thinks of when they think about Thanksgiving.

The past couple of weeks have been a different schedule than usual. The teachers have had conferences with the students and their parents after school every day. Last week, all classes were shortened by five minutes, the cleaning period that happens at the end of school was moved to after lunch, and school ended after fifth period. This week, classes were normal length but school still ended after fifth period. Both weeks, all after school activities were canceled. Regardless of this, I had to stay at school until 5:00 every day. This meant that on several occasions, school ended at 2:00 and I had three hours to spend working on activities that it took about half an hour to plan.

Thankfully, tomorrow we will be back to regular schedule. Other than that, I don't have much to report. Maybe I can take this weekend to get around Mito with my camera, which I've forgotten every other time I've gone sightseeing. There's not much to see, really, but I can see what I can find. Until then, be thankful for something you have that I don't have access to. (I'd suggest either affordable dairy products or Mexican food).