stuff and things

oh blog,
here are some of those pictures i told you about.
but first! i got invited to badminton for adults by the lady who sits next to me in the office at the elementary school near my house who is also in my english conversation group. her english is pretty good, in fact. so last night i went to badminton with my gym clothes and new gym sneakers, which i had never worn. we practiced for a half hour and then got split into teams where we played a bunch of other teams. the vice principal is so good that he can play doubles alone and win all of the time. i was paired with a nice woman, and we lost our first 3 matches, including the third against the vice principal. but then we somehow won the last 2, 15 to 14 and 15 to 13 respectively! it was a lot of fun and i think i am going to go back every week. it is good not to be interacting with only schoolchildren.
and now, you may look at some digital photographs.

this is a scuplture of a dancing man on a bridge over the river in tokushima city. doesn't it look nice? that's because it is.

here is a water tower or some other type of feature that has, surprise, illustrations of some dancers on it.

i call this one "would you like something to drink?" there are nine vending machines lined up in a row, because you are probably thirsty already.

and here is a picture from the morning before i went back to tokushima city for the prefectural speech contest. it's like 6:45 AM and there are two old ladies talking about things. what are they talking about? you can see the rice fields, which are everywhere.
so those are the pictures i have to show you.
there is a "super typhoon" called Melor, Typhoon #18, headed directly for japan, directly for this island. it is supposed to be here tomorrow and it is supposed to be horrible. if you don't believe me, you need to look at this:

and probably read this too. if i am lucky (or unlucky?) i will get a call at around 6 AM tomorrow telling me that school is cancelled and that my services (stamping english workbooks with the date, repeating sentences, being cheerful and have people call me "young" all day long) are not needed.
lunch today is milk, rice with some little vegetables in it, a miso type soup with carrots, tofu, some other stuff i dont understand, and a piece of what looks like salmon with maybe some egg cooked over it, sprinkled with bread crumbs in a tin foil dish. today's lunch does not look like it is going to get higher than a 7 on my lunch scale of 1 to 10, 10 being delicious.
that's it for today. keep tuning in for more blog updates.