Up early for a drive through the mountains from Odate in Akita to Aomori airport. Along the way the sign posts were showing the temperature of the roads (vital info in the Winter.) Most of the way it was 17 degrees – in August! At one point it was down to 14 degrees.

We also stopped off at a conbini and checked that they did indeed ask to warm your onigiris. Convenience stores up here also have a special porch on the front to stop snow flooding in in the winter.

Then up to Japan’s main northern island of Hokkaido. Luckily it was a little warmer here, but still too cold for shorts in the evening.

In the afternoon I popped into the school for tomorrow and it sounds like it’s the most perfect school I could hope to present at. They teach English from 1st to 6th grades but are not too sure of the curriculum and won’t be teaching the Eigo Note book. They were also asking lots of questions, all of which I can help with. It’s also the beginning of the new school term so tomorrow I’ll also do a kids show in the morning. They had a projector set up, and I jokingly asked if they had another, and they did, so a show with two projectors, cool.

Then I again jokingly asked if they had an interactive whiteboard for the teachers’ workshop. They said no, but they’d just received a fifty inch touch screen plasma TV that they don’t know how to use! Excellent. I’ve used those before but never in an elementary school, it will make things so much easier to just be able to touch the pictures on the CDs and have the voices come out. But sure enough they had it set up just as a normal TV because they didn’t know how to use the touch screen functions. Amazing the waste of money in Japanese schools, but then everyone moans they don’t have any budgets!

The kids were also doing choir practice, and it sounded amazing, just like the Harry Potter soundtrack. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

So some Sapporo ramen for dinner and off to get some sleep.