This'll do it!

Whew! This should finish the catch up and (hopefully) get me back on to a regular schedule... In the future I am planning to update once a week - probably on my Friday morning (Thursday evening in BC) but I will give myself until my Sunday evening before I feel wracked with guilt!
Around the end of September Ian and I remembered what we had forgotten to do while we were in Canada... renew our International Drivers Licenses. Of course by the time we remembered they had already expired and we were driving illegally :( (Shhh don't tell my sister the lawyer!) Through an accidental discovery while looking for information about where to go to renew the International License, I found that it was a good thing we didn't do it while we were in Canada. Japan will only honour the International License for one year. After that we are required to get our BC license changed to a Japanese license. Since our international licenses had already expired, we were in a bit of a panic to get it done. My boss, Omiya-san made the appointment and on Thursday the 30th we headed out at Oh-my-gawd-o-clock (aka 6am) to make it to the licensing office by 9. The good thing about travelling that early was that there was very little traffic so we made good time - but having given ourselves enough time to get there we were left with time to kill on the other end. There was a lot of "hurry up and wait" going on and when we were finally called back to the counter it was to be told that we could not get our licenses that day... One of the requirements for changing the existing license is that you have to have driven in Canada for a minimum of 3 months before coming to Japan. Unfortunately, Ian renewed his license when we were home at Christmas so his was clearly an issue. I had forgotten that I had renewed mine last summer just before we came to Japan so it turned out that mine was an issue too - when they added up all the days I spent in Canada after the license renewal I was three days short of the required 3 months!!! The Japanese being a rule following society, we drove away unlicensed. Ian was suitably cautious in his driving as we made the rounds from the chocolate factory (yum!) to the dance store (for new pointe shoes) to Costco and an international food store. We were pretty tired when we got home - and not a little discouraged.
The chocolate factory was pretty neat - it's not really old or anything (est 1994)but it had some cool displays and a garden with play houses and a fancy clock that does a show every hour.
We found a funny t-shirt at Costco... not in big enough sizes for Taran unfortunately but still fun!

With a little guidance from one of our neighbors back home (thank you Joanne!) I was able to get our drivers abstracts emailed to us to prove that we had, in fact, been driving for a collective 50 plus years. Armed with the paperwork, I had Omiya-san make another appointment for us for Tuesday - unfortunately at 9am again.

Our weekend was fairly low-key. I put together a couple of things to send back to my mum for her birthday and dropped them off with my friend Mayu who works at the city hall in Date. She is the official translator for pretty much everything and she was going to Cowichan with the delegation so she said she'd take stuff for me. If anyone sees any Japanese students in Duncan on Saturday - say hello! They are the kids from Otaki! They're actually in Cowichan now but their only free time when they can explore Duncan is Saturday.

On Tuesday we went back to Sapporo and got our Japanese drivers licenses! Yay! Afterward we (Ian and Joisan and I - Taran stayed home) went and explored a new outlet mall in Sapporo. The rest of the week has been fairly low-key. With all the students off to Canada it is very quiet at the Chugakko. I think the teachers who didn't go to Canada have all taken holidays. I'm going to take three days off next week and we're going to visit Hakkodate. It's supposed to have one of the three best night views in the world. I'm looking forward to doing a bit of exploring and it will give me something to write about next week!