Hello again, whoever's reading. I thought I'd send a few more photos tonight. Above is the entrance to a buddist temple, they are all over the place, small ones maintained by the local community. I walked inside too but not for long because I wasn't sure what was appropriate. They are very well cared for and have beatifull stone carvings and plants.
Here are some of the morning "bilingual kindergarten" kids. In the morning we are more like day care workers than English teachers, the ones who come for the summer special aren't as used to the whole thing and sometimes cry the whole 4 hours they're here. Plus Colette won't stand for anything but being held all the time, so my arm was pretty dead after teaching the 4 1/2 hour class. It's ok though because it's only till the end of August, then things will slow back down as the kids are not on "vacation" anymore and will go to their regular school. I only teach the kindergarten on Fridays, but Nicolle teaches them every day. They are very cute and loving kids and fun to play with but they all want shoulder rides from me, some of the chubby ones are very heavy!
Coleete gets mad when someone tries to take a ball away, or even touch one she's playing with. She's going through an adjustment as we focus our attention on other kids. She only allows me to teach or play with other kids if I'm holding her so that it's clear she's the favorite, otherwise she gets upset. She has gotten much more sociable since we came here, and took after Melissa right away, even letting her carry her around. The other couple who teach at the same school as we do have a 9 month old baby and I can see that they will be fast friends.

Colette in front of the Marugame Modern art museum. There are a lot of stairs and a fountain, so she likes this place.
Here's another view of the castle, from across the moat. The moat is actually pretty wide, I'm not sure how deep. Out of all the original towers, only one remains; so the castle isn't nearly as big as it would have been in its glory days.
Driving is becoming more comfortable, but the right of way rules are opposite of the US rules in some cases, which is very strange. For example if I am approaching an intersection where I have no stop sign but the crossing road does, and I must turn, a car at the stop sign can go across my path before I turn. It was very confusing today when that happened.
Things work differently here. For example, rather than paying a tax or fee for garbage collection, they just make it a requirement that you use official government trash bags, which cost about $4 for a small pack of 8 bags. These yellow bags are the only ones the garbage collectors will pick up, so you have to buy them. Another example is the air- conditioning of a house. Each room has its own air conditioning unit, which sits on the ground outside of the house, not hangind awkwardly from the side or from a window. Rather than wasting a lot of A/C on rooms you're not occupying, you only use the ones you need.
Nicolle is very tired from teaching all day and goes to sleep with the baby about 9pm or earlier. I had thought that taking care of the baby would leave me a lot of free time to practice my sax, or learn Japanese, or whatever else. This is harder than I'd thought, so today after trying to practice while Colette fell asleep in my arms (I can play the sax while Colette's sitting on my left arm) I gave up and watched Japanese TV for a while. They have some strange shows. Lots of obstacle-course shows with contestants swimming, jumping on trampolines which bounce them onto big floating pads, climbing over walls, running across log-tightropes etc; it's like a live scene from super mario brothers. The game show sets are crazy, with huge bubbles, flashing stars and arrows, moving glittering objects everywhere. And the celebrity's hairdos are out of this world. Imagine the anime cartoons' hairdos in real life. Many colors, and usually sticking straight up at crazy angles.
Most people in the street are using umbrellas or visors and gloes to make sure they don't get tan. It's kindof strange to see a 60 year old woman in a dress riding a moped with an umbrella. Or a middle-aged man on a bycicle the size of a kid's dirtbike. Today we saw a crazy bullet-biker on a small bike with an Elvis hairdo and a huge hunter-orange seat on the back. He revved his tiny engine (maybe hoping to fill the back seat with an impressed schoolgirl) and drove off, Nicolle commented that he'd be laughed at with such a small-engined bike back in the states. All the cars have tiny wheels and are very skinny but normal height, making them look really funny to me, they look squashed. Most cars are square and look like miniature versions of the Honda Element.
Well I'm off to bed, tomorrow's another normal school day, even though it's Saturday.