Last Day of the Year
Me stamping in for the last day of the work year.
Every day I go into work I have to put a stamp in my shukkin-bo (employee attendance record sheet). I'm not sure why, but I enjoy doing it even though it is kind of tedious to do every single day. The sheet is divided into 12 rows and 31 columns, as seen above.
The red "J.C." represents days I came into work at Ujiyamada High School, my primary workplace. The stamp I use for this is my personal inkan, the Japanese equivalent of a signature which is used on all official/legal documents...due to the kanji writing system, Japanese people don't utilize signatures since their names are already so complicated to write, instead everyone uses these little personal stamps with their names carved into it.
The black stamps represent days I didn't come into Ujiyamada High School, such as shucchō (business trip) for my weekly trip to Nantō High School, nenkyū (paid vacation days), tokkyū (special leave) for my Japanese class in Osaka or other special days off, or even byōkyū (sick days)...but luckily there were only 3 of those this year. After taking this picture I realized it is actually a very good visual summation of my 2007, "The Year of Ise"...which has now come to an end. Although only part of the year is viewable in the picture, the big events of the year can be pointed out pretty easily based on the black stamps.
Tomorrow I'm off to Tokyo for New Year's season. I hope all you readers (all maybe 10 of you) have a great holiday!