Today we had an assembly to start the day off. i sometimes do not get the point of these assemblies. It was an awards ceremony but, like they didn't had them to the people that won them i think. They may have had a representative from each like club come and get them, but i thought that some of them didn't participate in the sport that was called. Oh well. After that i had to review and teach the third years all by myself since the english teacher for them was away on business. It was kind of a big flop. We tried to do charades, and then i tried to get them to answer "how are you?" with more than "i'm fine." but i really need to find a way in order to get them to not be scared to use japanese. besides the like two or three students in the school who actually speak english and like to do it, not many of them will actually try to speak english at all. I wonder if i'm speaking too difficultly or if they just don't want to respond because they are scared about not being perfect. I had a meeting with the BOE today after school, and they main guy there i was speaking with said that most japanese do not want to speak a foreign language because they are just so scared of making a mistake. There are kids good at writing and taking tests in english, but they do not talk that much, or i do not have a good reading of their english because i haven't talked to them or they haven't talked to me. The only one that i have tried to speak english with is the relative of the english teacher, and she seems to be pretty good in speaking at least and good at tests, but there are others that are just able to take tests. though, that is one big problem with the japanese education system that i have found, and many people will agree is that the japanese system rarely focuses on anything outside of test taking, so as long as you can write and do a test, that seems to be all that really matters. oh well, as they say "sho ga nai." Tomorrow starts the five day weekend. Its actually the first year that it is happening in japan, i guess thanks to the law that any holidays separated by one day, the middle one is also a holiday i think, or they all just lined up that way this year. Yeah for silver week. I think i will go to Iwanai tomorrow and see it, and then i think i will go to Sapporo on Monday. I paid my bills today, and it is kind of odd sometimes. You practically can do everything at the post office in japan that deals with money. Pay your bills, set up a bank account. Basically the bank and post office are one. kind of nice, but you could also pay your bills at the convenience store.