A little "goma o suru" never hurt anyone

I was at my base school today, team-teaching an English lesson as I am wont to do, when one of my students came up with quite possibly the sweetest thing ever. We were working on riddles today, so most of the class was spent with me telling riddles to the class in English, and the students trying to figure out what the heck I was talking about. At the end, though, the students were supposed to think of their own riddles (in English or in Japanese, because we're not trying to kill the poor dears >.>;). So one boy came up with one, and wrote it on the board for everyone to figure out. I can't write all the kanji that he did, but here's a rough translation:

Y...-sensei, M...-sensei, Karen-sensei
Which one is the prettiest?

The answer? Karen-sensei! At first, I thought he was just trying to score points by blatant flattery, but he explained that in Japanese, karen (かれん) means "pretty" or "lovely." So, a nice, bilingual play on words! Yeah, he was probably going for a little flattery, too, but I'm willing to overlook that. ;) And I'm also going to overlook the fact that I checked out some other meanings of karen online, and found out that it can also mean "oppression" or "pitiful," depending on which kanji you use. >.> I'm going to assume his intentions were good. **smirks**

So overall, a good day. A good day, but a long day, so now I'm off to bed. As promised, though, here are your two random J-pics:


A garden at Ginkakuji, and...


"Bike Parking" -- yeah, this one was taken by a real photographer. Honestly, it's one of my favorite pictures ever. Just, the clouds, and the lighting...**is speechless**

Mata ne!