You Know It's Fall When...

The Japanese folks here in Kusu have a very strange way of recognizing the changing of the seasons. Instead of noticing things like, oh, I don't know, the falling leaves and plummeting temperature my coworkers have instead grasped upon seasonal commercial trends and student attire. A few weeks ago it was "Well, Lawson has oden out for sale again. Must be fall", and today I heard "Well, the students are out of their white summer uniforms and into their black winter ones. Must be fall."

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Uh, did I ever post the above pictures from the Yufuin Summer Camp extravaganza? I don't think I even posted about that...
Well, here's the Cliff's Notes: back in August an English-language summer camp was held in Yufuin and I volunteered to be a team leader. Really I just wanted to get out of three days of sitting in the town hall--and I got 8,000 J-bucks for it! Anyways, one of the activities was an art class where the students had to make Wild West wanted posters. I couldn't directly work with/for them on the project, my job as team leader was to push them in the right direction and help them with good language use and whatnot. Deciding who was "wanted" and for what was eating into our work time, so I made a casual joke/suggestion that maybe it could be something like Anthony, a fellow team leader and from Brooklyn, stealing my heart. They ran with it and with incredible results.

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Sara, Pat and anyone else who reads this and may care, as of yesterday I have officially suspended my WoW account with no intention of reinstating it, regardless of what WotLK may bring. It's just time I moved on from that...especially since I haven't played in countless months. Sara, sorry our Book of the Month Club arena team has to end like this. I'll never forget our abject mediocrity punctuated by puffs of brilliance--like working 9-5 for a telemarketing firm before retiring home for a bowl of fruit loops, an episode of The Simpsons and a line of coke.

--Matt