"I get choked up on the words ’cause I think too much."

Pictures of our Halloween celebration from the English board. It's very gratifying how impressed everyone is by it, even though things I take for granted (black cats being bad luck and this is how ghosts look) have to be explained.

The spider web came in this huge bundle and took a bit of stretching. We have a bunch left over, and had some fun making impromptu wigs afros with it. One third-year boy was so fascinated with the whole creative process that he stood there while we put everything up, so we gave him a clump of the web as a reward. He promptly made a beard of it, and cornered every teacher he could find. "Sensei, sensei, look, look!" I would have given a full day's paycheck to be allowed a picture of him like that.

Went to a hanabi (firework) festival yesterday. Not to brag but my town plans the best festivals. Because fireworks are usually a summer thing, they're cheaper this time of year when winter is creeping out. And unlike some festivals I've been to where it's too crowded to sit down and people standing in lines for food get in the way of people walking and it's general chaos - ours was in a huge expanse of parking lots. They'd been recently paved, too, and so were clean enough that most had no qualms about sitting right down on the ground to watch the show.

So while we're still in that spirit, here's a song called Hanabi by a band called Mr. Children. Weird name, and cliche title, but there's nothing but good about the song itself. It's exactly what it feels like to witness something beautiful and want to hold on to it and know it's impossible. The part where the lyrics go "mou ikkai , mou ikkai" is one of my favorite moments in a song ever - it means "one more time, one more time."