Sunday 13th December
Not much today, went down to the shops and caught up on sleep a bit, and wrote out a note 39 times…. One for each other member of my class, thanking them for a fun year, saying goodbye and asking them to keep in contact and all that stuff.
Monday 14th à Friday 18th December
My last full week at school here, and shorter days, most only until lunch, and then most afternoons I went for a walk through the park to enjoy the snow now that its around again and did the last of my Christmas shopping, and letter writing, hope that all made its way to Australia in time.
Thursday was my last Japanese lesson over here which was very hard, as Ibata sensei has been the only person I have known and seen the whole of my and genrally a wonderful person.
Saturday 19th December
Spent today working on Christmas presents for host families and went for a walk down to the shops and then the library. Nothing to exciting.

Sunday 20th December
We went to kanazawa today, to kenrokuen… the castle gardens (which I have now been to in each of the 4 seasons) and then onto a noh theather production. The gardens were nice as always, as I said it was my 4th time there, but I wanted to go again to have been in each of the 4 seasons.
The Noh was intresting for the first hour or soo but was very long, about 4 hours and there was no interval. For those of you that don’t know, noh is a tyoe if traditional Japanese Drama, that is done to song. I cant explain it very well.. ill try to find a proper definition for you……
“Noh (能, Nō?), or Nogaku (能楽, Nōgaku?)[1] is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays. A Noh performance often lasts all day and consists of five Noh plays interspersed with shorter, humorous kyōgen pieces.
While the field of Noh performance is extremely codified with an emphasis on tradition rather than innovation, some performers do compose new plays or revive historical ones that are not a part of the standard repertoire. Works blending Noh with other theatrical traditions have also been produced.”

Monday 21st December
No school today, I only have school on Thursday this week. And again didn’t really get up to much, sorted out what stuff im giving to the new exchange students, and went for a fairly long walk.
Tuesday 22nd December
Today I went shopping with the lady from Rotary for my Christmas present, of an electronic dictionary and then out to lunch with her befor heading home for a bit befor a trip to the library.
Wednesday 23rd December
Had the Australian, New Zealand organization Christmas party in Toyama tonight, which was lots of fun, there were actually lots of foreigners at this one, some of the same people that had been on the bus trip with us back in March, but it was nice to catch up with them again and chat with some other aussies and other forginers, other than Josh, at the start of the part they gave me this thing that looked a lot like a sword and told me to go stand on stage… I was sooo confused, and then josh, a newzealerner and a Japanese girl walked in with candles and I had to light the “sword” I was holding with their three flames and then walk around the room lighting all of the other candles, as an act of sybolizim of the 3 countries coming together ( this ended up in the newspaper on the 24th )
Prior to the part which started at 4 I decided to go to Toyama and walk around there instead of wandering Takaoka again, I figured a change of seans would be well welcomed.