I haven’t posted for a while, gomen, ne. (sorry, eh). This all happened last week I’ll update with something about recent events when I get the accompanying pictures from friends. I miss having a digital camera but I am saving money right now for my trip home. I have been pretty tired lately so I haven’t really felt like doing much. I think I am having a small attack of culture shock and feeling the need to run away for a little while. I did buy an MP3 player however. Nothing like retail therapy to cheer you up. The pictures today are of english camp, flooded rice fields, a woman I saw on the train and my favourite train line in Tokyo, the Yamonote line.


I have certainly covered some territory this week. I left for English camp early Saturday morning. It is up in Karuizawa and it took us about 2 hours to drive up there. About 150 kids attended and I had a fabulous time. The theme was pirates and treasure. Gisela was one of the organizers and so she helped introduce the camp by having a sword fight with Eric the other organizer. It was great! The burst into the room shouting and fighting until Gisela had Eric down on the floor. The kids were shocked I think. The story line was that an AET who had come to English camp the previous year had been killed in a mysterious onsen accident and it was rumoured that he had left behind a great treasure. The kids spend the rest of the weekend completing activities on different islands to win pieces of the treasure map and ultimately find the treasure of 150 silver and gold wrapped chocolate bars. I laughed the whole weekend. High school kids are great. These of course were the best and the brightest from all across the prefecture and could for the most part, carry out good English conversations. If the kids spoke Japanese, we shot them with water guns. All of the staff dressed like pirates the whole time. It was held at a very nice onsen resort up in the mountains. We were at quite a high elevation so it was a little cool. I finally tried the onsen for the first time as well. I had been putting it off because the idea of being naked with a bunch of tiny Japanese people was never all that appealing. Also it seemed strange to do it with the students but we did and it was fine. It was a real testament to how Japanese these kids are. We showed a movie at the same time that the onsen was available. Only 6 kids watched the movie. Everyone else was running around outside and using the onsen. We had a late night “staff meeting” and didn’t monitor the kids at all. We could never have done that back home because we would be too busy trying to control the kids. I am starting to come around to this philosophy of teacher guidance. We didn’t have any problems because the kids didn’t feel like they had to sneak around. Our island was called Mystery Island. I don’t know why. The concept was that the kids had been shipwrecked on the island and had to get medication to 6 members of their team. The medication was small chocolates somewhat like smarties. They had to pass the candies to each other by sucking it on to the end of a drinking straw and passing it using suction. I hope you can imagine what that looked like. If the students cheated we cut their straws in half. It was very difficult for them. I was surprised by that because we had tried it out at home and had no difficulty. Their second task was to pick a representative from their team and send them to the front. They had to say Red Rabbit Yellow Rabbit and then put a marshmallow in their mouth each round until their mouth was so full they could no longer say the words. The letter L is kind of difficult for Japanese people to say to the results were quite comical. The top team rep managed to get 9 marshmallows in his mouth and still speak but it was making us sick to watch it so we called the game there. The most I could do was 7. I ate a lot of marshmallows that day. The camp ended with the unveiling of the treasure. One team found it and brought it into the main hall but couldn’t open it. Every team had a key and had to try to open it. Then we all ate lots of chocolate and said good bye to the kids. There was very little clean up and we all headed out shortly afterwards. Gisela, Eric and I went into Karuisawa for a little shopping and then headed home. We got lost on the way home because we were all so tired. I got back home at around 7 that night and left to go to Tokyo half an hour later for a conference. I jammed all my stuff in my backpack and water the garden and then raced to the bus stop with Tom. The conference was for all the first year JETs who had decided to re-contract. I would say about half of the people who came with us one year ago decided not to stay. Often times, these conferences are a waste of time and we don’t really get anything out of them but no this time. I thought almost all of the seminars had something useful in them and I came away with a lot of ideas and a renewed interest in studying Japanese. I stopped studying about two months ago because I was just completely unmotivated but now I feel like I can get back on it. I also picked up a new private class this week. I am going to start teaching English at the dental hospital. I guess they know me well enough as a patient that it is time to start meeting me in a professional capacity. Also this week, I have started a clothing drive to send stuff to South Africa before the winter hits there. There is no system for recycling clothing here. People just throw everything in the garbage. It is very wasteful when there are loads of people around the world who could really use the resources.
I have only been back to school for one day this week after the conference and I have to say I am feeling a little wiped. Of course we also used the conference as a great chance to socialize so I haven’t been to bed before 2 AM for about 6 days now. In my first class of the day, so kid put his hand through a window and was covered in blood. But they got him all bandaged up before the end of class and he actually came back for the rest of the lesson. Good on you kid! It is now time for another foul school lunch so I had better run. I don’t know in which direction yet…