Well, I had a nice, full week of classes at school, and being Friday and all I thought I was all set for the weekend, but not this time. Turns out we are having class on Saturday, because a special guest speaker is coming in the afternoon. Normally, we'd get a day off the following week to compensate, but no such luck this time- it's been tacked on to beginning of winter vacation, on a day that I was going to take yearly leave on anyway. So yeah sure, that means I have another vacation day in the bank, but I'd much rather be sleeping in on Monday morning that having some vague yet-to-be-defined substitute day, know what I mean?
So about the speaker. Well, the school has been studying AIDS a lot recently, which is good, because even though AIDS is not as prevelant in Japan it still presents a danger. So there have been classes and special activities, and one of the culture day plays was about AIDS. So the guest speaker is an AIDS victim who contracted it through a blood transfusion, and apparently had a big court battle with the government over it. So it's officially a big deal, the vice-principal will pick him up from the airport and take him to school, the kids will sing a special song, all of that stuff, and it definitely makes sense to plan a school day around it, even if it is a Saturday.
With all this big stuff going on, and Christmas coming up soon, I got a haircut today. There is a local barber here, right next to the post office, who does a pretty good job at a very reasonable rate. I can go there and practice some Japanese, and it's nice having a regular person cut your hair, because you don't have to explain what you want every single time. I look at something like that as one of the advantages of living in a small town, if I was in the city, getting a hair cut might turn out to be this big deal. But out in the countryside, I can walk there from my house, I know the guy, and like I said he does a good job. I also shaved my beard off today, I was getting rather careless with it and it was getting on the shaggy side, and enough was enough. Of course, now I look like I'm about 20 again, but oh well.