Seminar students at my place

Some of my third-year seminar students came over this weekend and besides "studying," we played domino. I am always surprised to hear that none of them had ever played it.

What are the chances of you getting these dominoes?

"Otsukaresama!"

Twenty-seven seminar students went out to dinner to celebrate the success of the JIU Festival. We went to Yutaka which is probably one of the only places in Togane where they can accommodate so many people and don't charge that much for such delicious food.

Dinner with Bald-sensei

About two weeks ago we had the pleasure of learning how to eat Indian food appropriate with Bald-sensei. We went to Garam Masala for authentic curry.

Special Talk by Chancellor Liu

On Thursday, Chancellor Liu from Dalian University of Foreign Languages came to our Togane campus for the very first time and gave a talk to a full auditorium of more than 500 people.

Meeting our mascots J and I.

Yuto talking to his juniors

On Wednesday Yuto came to talk to our first and second year students about his professional career. He worked for five years at JAL Cargo and this year he started working for the German company DHL. We thank him for taking time off work to come talk to us on a Wednesday afternoon and hope he was an inspiration to all students.

Meiji Kinenkan

On Monday we had a welcome dinner for Chancellor Liu from Dalian University of Foreign Languages. He received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Josai University on Tuesday. As we arrived quite early, Professor Bald and I enjoyed some tea in this very nice tea room. This place was built over 130 years ago in Tokyo.

Finally

I was finally able to upload some photos of the JIU Festival 2011 in the JIU Festival page. Please take a look at that page. I am loading a few here as well. Apologies for the technical problem.

Dancing to "Aquarela do Brasil."

Lots of graduate students came support us. Some with great news such as "We got married." and some showed up with their children.

Dancing with our guests.

Final day, final group photo with the two awards they received.

Singing "Aquarela do Brasil."

JIU Festival

We successfully ended the 20th JIU festival yesterday. This year we sang Aquarela do Brasil and displayed posters on the Boi Bumba Festival in the Cafe Amazonas. Thanks to the cooperation of our loyal supporters we were able to achieve our goal of making at least 300,000 yen to donate to charity. We appreciate your kindness. Muito obrigada!

The 20th JIU Festival

We successfully ended the 20th JIU festival yesterday. This year we sang Aquarela do Brasil and displayed posters on the Boi Bumba Festival in the Cafe Amazonas. Thanks to the cooperation of our loyal supporters we were able to achieve our goal of making at least 300,000 yen to donate to charity. We appreciate your kindness. Muito obrigada!

Soba with the Hungarian students

I had dinner with the students from Hungary who entered my department in September. They said they wanted to go to a Japanese restaurant, so I chose Tokyo An. We enjoyed a great meal of traditional dishes and also appreciated Ogawa-san's great hospitality.

Wow. Did I eat that much?

Dinner with Yoshida-sensei

On Monday I was finally able to have dinner with Yoshida-sensei from Josai High School. We went to my favorite "yakitori" restaurant in Tokyo. I realized I hadn't been there for a long time when I told the waitress I liked it how they remodeled the place and she said they had it done 18 months ago! Anyway, we had a good time over great food!

Persimmon Picking

Some of us went persimmon picking yesterday here in Gumyo and got all that you see in the photo from one tree! We'll be eating lots of persimmons for a few days and we are lucky as the fruit contains a lot of vitamin C.