Summer is bitter sweet,  no classes to teach(not that they are always hard to do) but I also have to spend each working day at a desk in the town office.  The worse part of it is that I don't get kyuushoku everyday and so instead I either have to make lunch or buy it.  Today marks the first day of my summer days in the office I have just bought a yakimeshi bento.   But it is nice to come back to my home in the middle of the day and chill out for an hour.   Last night I removed two fusuma dividing my bedroom from my 'living room' and thus opened up my house a lot.  Sitting here now in my spacious room and listening to it rain outside is pretty nice.  

Bug Poker weekend.  Never have I played so much poker than I have this past weekend.  I played for like maybe 7 or 8 hours worth.  Got my $10 back in one tournament but lost $5.50 in another.  On Friday we said good bye to Lauren at her soubetsukai, which involved a great round of crazy karaoke.  But the weekend ended with swimming at an incredible waterfall spot in Susami.  A great weekend, but could have been better had I not hit the bottle so hard every night of the weekend.  Not so bad on Friday though, just a couple bottles of sake. 
        Finally the heat wave has broken and with it has come rain, again.  Enough of the rain.  Tomorrow marks the end of the 1st tri-mester of the school year.  Teachers are filling out grade cards.  I had to give my students at Miyama chuu grades.  I couldn't give anyone a bad mark so they were either good, very good, and great.   The great kids were the ones that usually speak a lot in my classes. 
     Tomorrow is the last day of school.   The last activity of the term is to clean the whole fucking school and wax the gym floor.  I haven't yet decided if I am going to stick around for the 'big clean'.