Short weekend

I had to go into school on Saturday to "volunteer" for a community recycling program. I'm still not sure why we were doing what we were doing, but all the other teachers at my school were going, so in order to keep my workplace harmonious I went too. Basically a bunch of parents drove up in small trucks with loads of newspaper, bottles and magazines and we unloaded everything, sorted it, and moved it onto much larger trucks which then drove away. After the recycling thing in the afternoon was the PTA new year drinking party, where I got sloshed with the principal and vice principal (and a good number of my students fathers) and was goaded into singing a bunch of karaoke. They enjoy having a native English speaker around at these things.

Anyway, on Sunday Sam and I had plans to meet up with some friends in Yokohama to observe some of the lunar new year festivities in the Chinatown (中華街, or chūkagai) there. Sam missed a day of work last week, and woke up again Sunday feeling less than 100%, so she stayed home to rest while I went on to meet our friends. We hadn't seen them in awhile and I didn't want them to think we were avoiding them.

Yokohama's a pretty town, which is a nice contrast to Tokyo, which is for the most part pretty hideous.


Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. 

In the Chinatown itself there was a parade to mark the new year, as well as a massive crowd that made moving about exceedingly difficult. It was also quite loud as they were lighting whole packs of sparklers at once.


The parade through Chinatown.