Update and a painting
I have officially finished my contract with the JET Program. It has been 2 years of pure amazingness which, years later when I look back on it, I suspect I'll always remember it as a golden time of fun; no real job will ever be as good, or as easy.
I'm in Oxford at the moment, enjoying some quality time with my parents and old friends, and escaping the sweltering heat of Japan.
A couple of weeks ago I had my graduation ceremony. The ceremony was two years overdue (we book our own dates for graduation at Oxford, but I wanted to delay mine so I could have the ceremony on the same day as my friends). The whole thing went really well and I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful weather.
I'll be returning to Japan next Wednesday. After all the panic of job hunting, I got offered a full-time teaching position at a private high school in Chiba, so I'll be doing that for the next year. Never taught high school students before, but if they are anything like my junior high kids, I'm sure we'll get along fine.
It is quite chilly and pouring with rain in England at the moment, but in Japan, summer season is in full swing and all the summer festivals (e.g. Gion/Obon Matsuri) are happening all over the country. Thinking about them made me feel rather nostalgic and inspired me to paint this. It's the most complicated picture I've done so far. The flying white things are meant to be paper shikigami (in traditional Japanese folk stories, onmyouji, or exorcists, can manipulate paper to conjure demon helpers. If you have watched Spirited Away, they are the flying paper things that kept attacking Haku.)
Anyone following Gintama? My students told me to watch/read it a long time ago but I never got round to it. I started watching the anime last month and am now hooked! I need to get some Gintama fanart out of my system soon!
Also, I suppose I should worried about the fact that I'm enjoying the same anime that my students enjoy, if not more because of the adult humor in it, but I'm not :P