I had two days of orientation in my prefecture on Monday and Tuesday. The days were a little long because it took over an hour, and several train transfers in the hot weather, to get to each location. The best part of the first day was that we got to participate in cultural workshops, so we got to do 茶道 (tea ceremony) and 書道 (calligraphy). During the second day we had disaster preparedness training at a disaster training center in Saitama, so we got to put out fake fires and go in earthquake and typhoon simulators.

Today was the first day of my mini summer vacation! I get four days of summer vacation to use as I please this summer and the teachers at my school encouraged me to use my break right now, during Obon. Since many Japanese people travel back to their family homes to celebrate Obon, there probably won't be any people at the school right now. It seemed like a good time to take a break to me. I don't go back to work until Wednesday next week. I'm looking forward to relaxing and hopefully getting out for a bit of fun (but not too much fun because I don't get my first paycheck until next week).