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March 20

I was interviewed about the war today by the Hokkaido Shimbun (newspaper). I scanned the article and the picture on the left links to it. However, I can't really read it...

March 21
Megalomania at the Den

Mike's band, Megalomania, played tonight at The Den , the new International bar in Asahikawa. It turned out to be a rockin night. A lot of JETs from all over Hokkaido came out and we packed the place. Megalomania sounded great, too. They even got two encore calls. I'd say more, but I'll just let the pictures do the talking.
The equipment ready to go	CJ
Hi Jonathon	Almost ready to play
Rock on	Cheezu!
Akihiro	Tatsuo
Freya and Steph	Julianna and Jonathon
Peace Catherine!	Yumiko and Possessed Travis
...and the crowd goes wild	Nicole
More of Akihiro	John and Nicole
You should know who this is by now...	Dance fever!
Yumiko, capturing it for posterity	Jess and Patrick workin' hard
Rock Stars	Dancin on the table
Dancing? That's debateable	Karaoke later...
Singing the night away...	How do you work this thing?
And one more karaoke picture...

March 26

In the Japanese system, the school year ends in March and begins again in April. Coinciding with that is the annual staff changes. If you are a public school teacher in Japan, you are hired by the school system, not by the school itself. Therefore, every few years you will be moved to another school. This holds true in many large organizations in Japan, including the Board of Education. At this time, there are many soubetsukais (end of the year/goodbye parties). My office's soubetsukai was held in the New Hokkai Hotel. Below is a picture of my entire office staff. The people in the front row holding flowers are the people leaving the office this year:
After the soubetsukai, the nijikai (second party) was held at "Deden".
Ikeda-sensei and Toyo-sensei	Me, Mike, Shimizu-san
Someone's had too much...	Genki, Genki, Genki
No comment	Lots of food
Speech Time	Pay no attention to the face in the background
At the sanjikai (third party), Soma-san took Mike and I out to an old, very traditional style izakaya. Walking inside was like taking a trip back in time. The owner cooked all of the food over fire, no gas or electric cooking to be seen. Also, most of the food was more traditional mainland Japanese food. I didn't really get any good pictures, but I did get two that turned out somewhat ok. I had to edit them a bit, so bear with me...

March 28

Some purikura...