04-hotasiansluts.jpg	The other day I was hanging out at the station waiting for some people and I saw these guys in a car trying to pick up these high school girls who were lounging about provocatively. A lot of high school girls make extra money this way, and the practice doesn't seem to be particularly discouraged. These particular girls didn't go with these particular guys though, so maybe they were just hanging out for 30 minutes in front of the station, or maybe they had better taste in men. 	High school hookers
06-housefromschool.jpg	This is a view of my apartment from the fifth floor of Eishin. Liberal misuse of Photoshop has made it look like a nuclear test site, but as you can see I live very very close to my school. 	Apartment from school
08-kokosei.jpg	Here are some more normal high school students, riding the train home from school. Most high school students in Japan go to school some distance from their homes, and oftent hey must take the train. High schools are applied to and have entrance exams, just like universities in America. These particular kids reminded me of myself when I rode the train home from high school every day back in DC. Although my uniform wasn't quite as bad.	High school students
05-kkk.jpg	I see this truck around Koshigaya sometimes. It always freaks everyone out of course, but this KKK is not the same onee as we have in the US. It stands for the name of the business, which can be read by people better at Japanese than me on the side of the truck. The first K I can read; it is "Kato", a common family name in Japan. I am guessing that this guy is one of those bastards that sells bikes that were impounded at the station.	KKK
07-schoolfromhouse.jpg	This is a view of my school from my apartment. It doesn't usually look so apocalyptic in my neighborhood, but this is during a big typhoon that we had in May. The clouds were quite impressive actually, and nothing serious happened, except around-the-clock news coverage.	School from apartment
10-shoninensei.jpg	This me being mobbed by 8-year-olds while doing my self-introduction at the elementary school. These kids are really cool. You can see my pictures of my house and family and of Nigel in the background there.	second graders
01-tambo.jpg	This is me planting rice wit the ichinensei. I guess this is their way of teaching the students about traditional Japanese livelyhoods, but they seemed a lot more interested in throwing mud at each other and did a really terrible job planting rice. You can see in this picture how uneven the rows are. It seems as if a lot of people actually do this for a living still, or at least to supplement another non-lucrative career, because there are plenty of rice fields all over Koshigaya, right between the buildings. If I owned a vacant lot though, I would turn it into a parking lot though, because parking is so expensive here and people who own parking lots must be making a fortune. If I had some startup capital right now, I would become Koshigaya's parking lot magnate.	Me in the rice field
11-taifurainbow.jpg	Here is a rainbow that I saw after the typhoon last week. It was a really cool typhoon, and an even cooler rainbow. I like how the weather is completely different on each side of the rainbow.	Typhoon rainbow
03-tukuruhito.jpg	These are the kids who make my lunch every day. They have to wear theseaprons and white scarves on their heads to preserve the illusion of sanitation, altohugh I just almost typed "the illusion of sanity" which is definitely not the case at all. 	The people who make my lunch
02-lunchbasho.jpg	This is the ichinensei classroom where I eat lunch everyday. As you can see, these kids are all crazy. It is a lot of fun, but it takes so long to get them quiet enough to start lunch, so sometimes I get really dizzy, and frustrated. Here you can see the designated subset of the class preparing the lunches and handing them out to everyone. 	Where I eat lunch
09-tokyo.jpg	Here is a shot of Tokyo that I took from the top of the Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku, where I was staying for a really stupid JET conference. The main buildings are two skyscrapers which constitute a university. 	Tokyo from Keio Plaza