Visitors Please....

It's only been a few days since my last post and nothing much has happened. The old teachers have left and the new ones have started. I met everyone today. I'm still not sure if any of them speak any English but they all seem really nice. All three of the new staff are men so the balance has been tipped the other way. We now only have 6 women on staff and 9 men rather than 8 women and 7 men. The custom here appears to be that the staff who are leaving all give a goodbye gift to everyone and then the new staff all give a gift to everyone when they are coming so now I'm loaded up on cookies, cakes and treats for quite a while!
The teachers are all completely focused on prepping for the new school year but it's interesting to watch them because there seems to be varying degrees of efficiency being practiced. Many teachers stay very late but it seems to be more for visiting than working!
We had planned for Taran and Joisan to go snowboarding with friends on Monday (their last day of freedom!) but I have just found out that the mountain closes for the season on Sunday :( I'm working on some alternate arrangements for tomorrow (hopefully) but at least one of the friends won't be able to come. Bummer.
We are really looking forward to having some visitors... (HINT HINT!) We have rumours of a couple of possible sightings sometime in the undefined future but we would all like it to be known that we would like to see some familiar faces here in the land of the rising sun.
Speaking of the rising sun - we are all having some issues with it right now. None of the windows in our house have black out curtains and there is no daylight savings here so the early sunrise seems to be disturbing all of our sleep. We're working on some make-shift curtains from large towels and I've started wearing a sleeping mask but we'll have to see what other measures we can take. Not that I am complaining about the sun mind you. I am very much appreciating the warm days we've had. I'm welcoming the rain and the sun and whatever else comes to help get rid of the snow!
Oh! I almost forgot! We had an earthquake at the beginning of the week. It registered 5.8 and was centred in the Sea of Japan. I felt it here at the school but none of the other teachers did. The kids felt it at the house but Ian didn't. I did not hear any reports of damage at all so I'm guessing everything was fine.