Luminarie

I can't believe it's been a full week since I even looked at this blog. Alas. This is the problem, with this time of year as well as most of June and July. My trained inner seasonal clock says, we should be out of school. Or, at least the kids should, and my days should be pointless go to work and sit there days, which I could happily fill with trip planning, blogging, studying Japanese, keeping up with my reading, corresponding, and Christmas (eek, er, NEW YEAR) cards.

Alas.

We're still having class, I'm still planning lessons for elementary, making materials, trying to put together presentations about Christmas. It's kind of like rubbing salt in the wound, 'round here.. Thanksgiving, now Christmas... please make a presentation and a game about this holiday you don't actually get to go participate in. So I grumble, and I do it, and then I'm standing in the classroom, listening to Mariah Carey for the 31st time in three days, and I suddenly feel in the Christmas spirit. But by then it is December 23rd or something crazy like that and my inner clock is just confused as hell.

ANYway, last weekend, Adina and I went Christmas shopping and then to Kobe Luminarie. Although Luminarie seems a lot like Christmas lights, it is actually a memorial to the Hanshin earthquake victims, 1995.

It was the sort of thing that would have bothered me more not to see than actually gratified to see, if that makes sense. It was pretty, and nice, but really crowded (a theme, Japan?) and ruthlessly crowd-controlled by megaphone-toting, sign-holding policepeople. It was worth going just to see this, actually.. they sent us all through a long roundabout walk all around the area, sort of like when you are waiting in line at Six Flags.. then, much like Six Flags, the actual attraction was pretty short, compared to the waiting part.

But it was pretty, and it was cool, and I did get some Christmas presents (mostly in Himeji, and including a couple things for myself ^_^).

From 2010_12_12

From 2010_12_12

From 2010_12_12