And We're Off Once Again

School was back in session this week for both Meg and I. Last week, I had two days of classes (if you can call watching Ice Age in Korean and English class) before a three day Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) holiday. Meg and I both struggled through classes this week as students couldn't care less about school. After 5 weeks off they come back for 7 days (5 in Meg's school) to end the term. The next two weeks are Spring Break. It is a very strange schedule here.

Anyways, while Meg was talking to her co-teacher about planning for the new year, her co-teacher told her that maybe she could have a day off next week during the holiday. And so her teacher went and asked the principal about Meg getting a day off. The principal decided that Meg didn't need to come in at all over the two weeks, however Meg's co-teacher didn't like that idea and after some discussion, Meg got next week off (mostly because our friend Kevin has the week off and after asking my co-teacher about it he told me I didn't have to come in either). So the mad scramble began. We now had 9 days of nothing ahead of us. We looked around online as quick as we could and found semi-reasonable tickets to Japan and so we are off once again. We leave tomorrow. I'm not sure I have ever bought plane tickets closer to my actual departure date then this.

We fly into Hiroshima around noon and will spend a day and a half there before heading up to Himeji Castle (the largest in Japan) on our way to Kyoto. We'll do a day in Kyoto and Nara (the two ancient capitals) then stop at Hakone National Park (where Mt. Fuji is) as we travel into Tokyo. I don't think we'll spend much more than half a day in Tokyo (it isn't my favourite place in the world) and I'm anxious to have plenty of time in Sendai and my old hometown of Ishinomaki. It'll be a pretty crazy 8 days, but I think it will be a lot of fun. I'm off to Seoul tonight to pick-up our Japan Rail passes which will let us travel the country with ease and for a great deal cheaper. We'll basically be going from one end of the main island to the other along the Bullet Train. I've done most of this the trip twice before so it shouldn't be too difficult, and the last 3 days will be quite familiar for me as I spent 14 months living in that area. We're both really excited. It'll be quite a month and a half for us. Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea and Japan. I think we could really get used to this. Of course, this will most likely be the last interesting trip we take for quite awhile.

I doubt we'll be writing much over the next 10 days or so (though it isn't like we've written particularly much over the past month anyway). We hope everyone back home is enjoying the winter weather that we've been missing here. It'd be nice if the snow stayed on the ground longer than a day or so.