Oh yeah! Japanese meals I’ve had now include a generous tablespoon of mayonaise. Order a bento, one of the things is mayo-based salad. A plate of food will have mayo as a dip. eew!

I had my first Japanese dream over the weekend as well. It was strange: my brain had people speaking in Japanese to me (and I still couldn’t understand), and I was reading some signs as I was walking around. My brian woke up exhausted. But, how exciting!

Camp was sweet. The place was right on a stoney beach, with Mt. Fuji in the background. The weather was sunny all time, and heaps of fireflies were out (a signal that autumn is approaching). It was an all girls school, in the end, but I think that’s better because you don’t really have the too-cool-for-this tendancy. All the students were vocal and active.

The first day was sorta slow because we were nervous and the students were nervous, but after that, people began to talk a lot more. Meals were fun - cafeteria style - so I got to sit and chat over fish and rice. Free time was spent playing outside or talking. The place had stilts and unicycles available, so I had a go at some balance challenges. Some students jumped on like they were pros. sugoi!

Each morning and each night, we had an all-camp assembly. Other schools using different parts of the building and our school met outside for a half hour twice a day for general announcements, speeches and flag raising/lowering. In the mornings, we’d do calethenics and that was rather cheesey, but most certainly bearable.

The overall format was group work on projects - TV commercials, skits, wish illustrating (where one was a big heart that said “I wish I was Joe’s wife”), speeches, and a cool scavenger hunt. I made some friends, and I get email from a few students now!

Over the weekend, I bombed down to Aroop’s house. He lives pretty close in Kanaya. We joined a JET soccer league, kicked the ball around a bit, and learned more about the tournament in Nagano in October. In Kanaya, we just chilled out. The night before a huge BBQ with about 70 JETs, and well, a lot of people feel obligated to like each other because we’re all on JET. (Like some folk feel about having to like and get along with and hang out with swing dancers because they swing dance too.)

He and I don’t really think along those lines, and we were quite happy to leave to discuss politics, jazz/music, and film. We watched Farhenheit 9/11 (he downloaded it with his broadband), and Kill Bill Vol. 2 (again with the BB), and we went out to a small pub. We stumbled around with our pidgeon Japanese, but made some small talk with the only other patrons present. It was quite liberating, and made me less shy to try and speak.

Now, I’m at school waiting for the rain to clear so I can go spray paint some posters for my self-introduction lesson I’m giving next week. Many questions have been answered by my supervisor, and my experiences at camp have really got me excited to teach and interact with the kids.

I should get my own broadband this week (fingers crossed). It would’ve happened over the weekend, but it turns out my name stamp (hanko) became smudged on the application. The bad stamp didn’t match the nice one at my bank, so the application was put on hold. I re-do it today.