December's 12 on 12

For those of you waiting, here is my December's 12 on 12. They are in no particular order, just some random pictures I took.

The way the school system works here, the students pretty much stay in the same classroom all day unless they have a special class to go to (like mine). They do not have lockers to put their things in so all of the stuff stays at their desk all day long. Of course on exam days, the stuff is all out in the hallways. So this is what the typical classroom looks like.

Pizza is popular here in Japan, but be careful what you order. Their idea of toppings can be a bit different than ours. This is a local Pizza Hut. Yes, they do have delivery service, however they ride scooters to deliver.

Walking into school one day I noticed that there was something up on the 3rd floor. So on my way to class I diverted my path to the 3rd floor and found these incredible pieces of art work that the 1st grade students had done in art class. They are not full size masks, but I thought they were incredible the amount of detail some of them had.

Do you see what I see? There is a student standing outside on the window ledge on the second floor. This is very common during cleaning times. Once a month they have long cleaning days and you can find many students outside washing the windows...only in Japan

Do you remember my piece on parking in Japan, well here is an addition to that segment. I hope the owner of the mini van leaves on a regular basis otherwise that car is not going anywhere (actually Mitch and I think they must be from the same apartment, how else would that work out)

This is the local drug store just down the street from our apartment. RJ loves when we have to go there to buy toliet paper and stuff because the owner always gives him and Sara some fun band aids.

This is the bakery that is just outside our apartment building. In my first couple of days in Himeji, Sara (teacher Sara) and I would go there looking for breakfast. We came across some interesting things such as pizza bread and hot dog rolls. I do have to say they tasted ok, but now that we know where the grocery store is we have not gone back into that bakery.

This is the shower/tub room. Why are all of our clothes hanging in there? You see, this is also our dryer. On warm days, Mitch is able to hang our clothes out side to dry but now that the days are shorter and colder, we have to dry inside. Hope no one wants to take a bath during the middle of wash day...

Twice a month Mitch gets to take our "large garbage" across the street and sort it out. I had planned to take a closer picture on the morning of "large garbage" but I was afraid of the garbage police that were standing guard. Throughout my morning walk I see many different areas that are for "large garbage" collection days and the signs are all in Japanese only. But in our neighborhood, there is an English translation just for us Shirasagi residence. I guess they got tried of having to resort for all of us because we couldn't read the signs.

This is the local gas station. It sits just across the street from the taxi stand that is oh so helpful for giving directions to our apartment. In case you can't see it, the price for regular unleaded is 165 yen. That is for one liter and there are basically 4 liters in one gallon...no quit complaining about gas prices :-)

These are the stairs that lead up to the park that is near our home that RJ and Sara enjoy going to to play on the spinning pumpkin. There are the same stairs you saw earlier in the "large garbage" picture. Daddy helps Sara climb these stairs as they are very steep.

This is a picture that I took from the front door of our apartment looking north east. I took it because there is a "river" of homes that goes up through the mountain pass there in the middle of the picture. I know it is hard to see, but I just can't help think that that is a water way of some kind and someday something bad is going to happen to all those homes.

Stay tuned for next months. Hopefully it will include some things that we find while traving with my parents who will be visiting us from Dec 29 - Jan 4th. And don't worry I haven't forgotten about the sign test, I just want to make sure I know all the correct answers before I post it.