Best wishes

Wishing you all a year of success and happiness!

Jindaiji

Here are some photos of Jindaiji where people line up to eat the "toshikoshi soba" and pray for a better new year. For those who have watched the NHK drama "Ge ge ge no nyobo," take a look at the amount of people in front of the souvenir shop!

Dinner with UCR students

We had a farewell dinner for Hiroko last night. I met her about a year ago when I was in Riverside to talk about the Disney Internship Program and to visit some high schools. I cannot believe that since then she has already come to JIU and that she is leaving tomorrow. It's been great having my "kohai" here in Togane.

Judo Tournament at JIU

The 10th Mizuta Mikio Judo Tournament for High School Students was held at JIU on Sunday. The photo--sorry about the poor quality--is of what I saw when I walked in the gymnasium.

Christmas 2010

Except for one year, I have not spent Christmas with my parents for 25 years. I cherish the days when we had big parties where we got to exchange gifts with relatives we never saw during the year. We ate special food--it was a feast with both Japanese and Brazilian food! My parents made efforts to give us what we wanted and we treasured those gifts. There are lots of things I miss and one of them is personally giving gifts to my parents, my brother and sister and spending peaceful days with them.

I spent the day today with some of my present and former students. It's been like that for a number of years now and I feel lucky. Look at the dessert (pavê de coco) decorated by Hitomi & Sho.

Feliz Natal!

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!

Feliz Natal para todos.

Trying to make a tree

Last night I tried to make a "Christmas tree" in my house using eucalyptus and these red branches that my florist recommended. It actually looks much better than what you see in this photo.

Christmas party on campus

A party was held on Wednesday and we sang, ate, exchanged gifts and had a good time.

Last Seminar of the year

We are getting really close to the end of the year and that means my senior students only have two more classes with me and they'll be graduating. We decided to eat some sweets--actually a big cake--in our last class of the year.

Tokita-sensei and Sato-sensei at JIU

It was nice seeing Tokita-sensei and Sato-sensei again. Look at the beautiful flowers they gave me.

Captain Nagaishi & Captain Nakamura at JIU

Captain Nagaishi & Captain Nakamura from ALL NIPPON AIRWAYS CO., LTD. gave a talk at the 航空空港キャリアclass today.

Disney Graduation

Teramoto-sensei and Hiroyuki sent me some photos of the graduation events at Disney World. Congratulations, every one!!

Entrance Exam Weekend

We had entrance exams both on Saturday and Sunday, so the whole weekend was of opportunity to meet prospective students. We were lucky the weather was not so bad despite the low temperatures.

Mr. Attila Márton's visit

Mr. Attila Márton is a member of the Parliament of the Hungarian Republic. We had the honor of his visit on the Kioicho Campus on Friday.

Dinner on Thursday

Yoshiko-sensei was finally able to go out for dinner with me. It was a pleasant evening with her and Hirose-san over great steak!

Mariage with Chiemi & Haruka

Last minute planning: Haruka didn't know I was going to Tokyo and I didn't know she was going to Tokyo but things worked out well and we ended up meeting with Chiemi in Ginza. Great dinner!

Tea Party with Schalow-sensei

Professor Schalow taught his last class on Thursday and a small tea-party was held to thank him and wish him all the best. The people you see in the photo are his students.

Korean food with Shiori

Wednesday ended up being a "Korean Day" for me. After spending time with our Korean guests, we ended up going to Oami for Korean food. Of course I could not eat one bite of the spicy food Shiori had....and the fire on the table was pretty scary last night.....

Dongseo University

We had the honor of receiving a delegation from our sister institution Dongseo University in Togane today. The delegation included the Dean of Graduate School (photo). We are looking forward to establishing more programs with them, and I personally hope more students will take advantage of the exchange program we have and will go to Pusan.

End-of-year party with my 3rd-year students

We had an end-of-year party today and my students decorated the room very nicely and also prepared some food. There was a gift exchange as well and it was interesting to see the choices of presents.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Yoshika!

A new toy

My new toy--a pocket WiFi--arrived, but I still don't know how to play with it. I know that we'll be able to have an Internet Café in my office now....

PTA: Chiba Chapter

The last PTA meeting of the year was held today here on our Togane campus.

Oranges, Lots of Oranges

Nameki-san gave us hundreds of oranges yesterday. I drove to her house to get them and my car still smells great today! We appreciate her kindness in providing us with lots of vitamin C every winter.

End-of-year party

My Extension students in the English Communication course held an end-of-year party today and look at the feast! We also exchanged gifts--it was a great class!

お疲れさまでした

Jack, Jonah, Moet, Patrik, Aniko and Mr. Fukuyama went to an elementary school in Funabashi the other day for a special program with the teachers there. I wanted to thank them for taking the time to go there and we had dinner together last night. We learned how to make a banana and a penguin using the "oshibori."

Dinner with Dr. Sudy

It was a great pleasure to see Dr. Sudy, former Hungarian Embassador, on Wednesday. He's going to be in Japan for a short time and we were grateful for his making the time to see us. It was a good opportunity to thank him for making it possible for us to develop great programs with Hungarian universities. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo during dinner, so what you can see here is the table before everyone arrived. The view of Tokyo was just great!

Presentations in the 留学プランニング course

Today students in my 留学プランニング course gave group presentations in class. For most of them it was their first time making a power point presentation and they did very well.

国際交流研修の食事会

Some of the students who participated in program at UC Riverside in September got together at Garam Masala last night. We talked about our two weeks in California and exchanged gifts including group photos.