Conky the robo-dog looks over yummy cupcakes thoughtfully prepared by Kate for my big birthday bash.

Follow up:

For probably the first time ever at Hirosaki's Capricciosa, we all got exactly what we ordered. Hugh's worries were for nothing.




I try on my new gay-chic sunglasses given to me by Hugh.

Is that Akiko or a young Yoko Ono?



I think this look really works for Sorcha.




It wasn't only my birthday last weekend but Ewen's as well. Go Cancer!



Kate and I have now finished our collection of signing robot dogs thanks to Angela's kind gift.




My great pile of loot. Thanks everyone!



On Monday July 11th (my actual birthday) I had to visit my "Hell School", Yokohama. I was determined not to let this get me down and devised a lesson plan where I could still enjoy the day no matter what the students did. Let's celebrating Jamie sensei's birthday!




These students have always acted "too cool for school" no matter how interesting a lesson I came up with. Today was in a sense "Revenge of Jamie"! I devised a lesson so lame that I could perversely enjoy their suffering. If only I had brought in a clown and some balloons it would have been perfect. Here Nishidate sensei forces one of the girls to wear the birthday hat Erica so kindly gave me the night before.



The lesson was simply "Make Jamie a Birthday Card".




Most of the boys weren't too excited by this idea, but several of the girls got really into it by the end. It still took about 20 minutes of persuading to get anyone to start work on their cards.



When the boys finally woke up, the cards they produced seemed somewhat sarcastic. Either that or they thought black crayon on black paper was a good idea, and one of them is actually named Jack.




The boys weren't the only students sleeping. This girl never lifted her head off her desk once for the full 50 minutes. I drew her a card of my own asking her to wake up and left it next to her head. To my surprise she later dropped by the staff room and gave me this!



Though the English didn't go far beyond "Happy Birthday" and "Congratulations" (Which I wrote on the board), I was still pleasantly surprised that most of the students actually made cards and didn't just throw the papers and markers I gave them back in my face.


Here are some of my favorites:

















Rough draft left, final product right.




This was made by a girl who in all previous classes ignored the lesson and read manga the whole time. I guess I finally came up with a lesson that was to her liking. On the back she also drew a cool manga cartoon character.



A girl named Mami was probably the most into this lesson of any of the students.




For some reason she also drew this picture and gave it to me. Cute!


All in all, it was a great weekend and a not-too-bad birthday Monday either. Thanks again to all my generous family members and friends for helping me kick off my "Misoji" years (30's) in style.