Well, the Winter semester has ended where I teach, and that means another new year at the school. Our attendance has been down a bit since 9/11–our school prepares Japanese youngsters of college age to go to institutions of higher education in the U.S. and elsewhere (though many take our own Associate of the Arts degree program here in Japan before moving on), and since the terrorism scare, and then the build-up to the Iraq war, more people have been a bit more nervous about studying abroad. However, that appears to be turning around, as our numbers are growing again–as you can see a bit in the photo above, about 600 new students entering this Spring.

So we had our annual entrance ceremony, which is always fun–meeting the new students and their parents, getting to know some of the people we’ll be spending a lot of time with in the next year and two. Also, we hold these events at nice hotels (this year at the ANA Hotel, last year at the Century Hyatt), where the halls are nice and the food excellent–see the chef carving the roast beef at right, and one small example of the pastries below.

There was also entertainment; some from the outside, like a marching band, a professional bagpipe player, a magician, and a string quartet–and from students, including a violin duet (two young ladies who styled themselves “The Violin Vixens”), a choir singing an original composition, and a pair of dancers. That along with the requisite speeches and presentations of awards to last year’s students.

All in all, quite a big and impressive bash. If you’d like to see more photographs, you can visit a small gallery of photos from the event.

An elderly woman made an impromptu dance for the Violin Vixens

Yum…