Happenings 1

Lots of things Happened this week. Lets start with...I don't even know what to start with. Monday was a normal day. I went to school and school went along as usual except that we did have an extra addition in our class. His name is Cullen, he is from New York, America and he is living in Japan for one month and stayed in our class for one week. I did my normal, everyday thing and Cullen did something a little bit different. He got to do what I wanted to do, he skipped some classes and went to music and cooking class instead, lucky bastard.

Not speaking any real Japanese except for Sugoi, Oishii, Dame, Hen and Baka which he uses frequently, I was gifted with the role of temporary translator for both him and Keri, a girl also from somewhere in America who came with the same company although is a year below.

I had been told a few weeks before about an English camp on the 14th and 15th of July. With no further information about where it was or what we would be doing there, I assumed we would leave in the morning and be returned to school at the end of the day. Asides from one conversation with Chris, who said it had been at some place on top of a mountain last year, I received no information. Tuesday at 11:10 took me to outside the front of the school gate where Keri and Cullen were both waiting with bags. I was like, "What are the bags for?" and they were like, "Uh...you know it's overnight, right?" and I was like, "Obviously not." Which left me panicking slightly, I didn't want to go anywhere without knowing whether or not I would be coming back or in what condition. I definitely didn't want to spend two days in my school uniform, that was for sure.

I informed the teacher that I hadn't brought anything as I never received any official information telling me what this was about, (it turned out everyone got a form saying what to bring except for me) which made me even more jumpy as I got into the teacher's car with the other two and headed off to who knows where. In the car, I was trying to calm myself, when we started heading in the direction I lived I eased up a bit and when I noticed the station that I leave from every morning and asked whether it was close from here, I was relieved when she said that it was fairly close from here. So, I figured I'd be able to do something, or catch a ride home for the night before returning in the morning. I wasn't staying there with only the clothes on my back. No way. I may enjoy studying but there is no way I am nerdy enough to sleep in my uniform. That's more of a Katherine thing. Jks.

Arriving at the camp, everyone was still in their assorted uniforms so I didn't stick out. Explaning to Miyamoto sensei, my Chinese teacher, that I didn't know it was a camp he apologised repeatedly and assured me that he'd get someone to take me home and bring me back to camp the next day. With that bland reassurance, we all were ushered into a room where we sat with our alternative schools. Kansho was easily the largest school there are we seemed to be the sponsoring school or something as all of our teachers were the ones that gave the speeches. I hate the awwardness that always hangs in the air at the beginning of camping experiences. Everyone relaxes so much afterwards but the first kind of half a day is always the most awkward. So, after the speeches which forced me into a sleep like state of boredom due to it all being in Japanese, everyone headed to their rooms to get changed. Oh noes.

Everyone was just like, 'Why isn't that freaky gaijin in the corner getting changed?' I just excused myself from the room and waited for everyone to come back out. People did offer to lend me clothes but I was like 'It's all good, I'm going home later 'cause I didn't know that it was overnight.'

With that explanation everyone proceeded to ignore my current state of attire and we started with ice breakers designed to break the frosty atmosphere so commonplace with strangers. The ice breakers consisted on Jun-ken trains, which is just Scissors, paper, rock with the loser of the match tagging behind the winner to eventually make a very large chain. As well as the game where you hold out both your hands and place the finger of your right hand in the palm of the person standing next to you, then when someone says Go! you have to try and get your right finger to escape and your left hand to catch. I was good at that game.

The program consisted of three workshops over two days. In the first workshop all of the gaijin (there were like 7 or 8 of us) were seperated and had a team of three or four Japanese kids. The Japanese people had to ask us about our school memories and we had to draw vague recollections of high school on a large piece of paper. Mine had was doodlings of the Formal, Guitar, Shakepeare, the Musical, eating outside...I was just trying to think of things that schools in Australia did that they didn't do in Japan. Then the Japanese guys had to explain my picture in English, they didn't get it all right but it was good enough.

Once we had finished that workshop we had dinner where one of the foreign teachers from my school, Kris offered to drive me home so I could get my clothes and drive me back. I thought about it over a dinner of Curry Rice, a dish which is extremely popular here and decided that I did want to stay and that it would be so much easier if I didn't have to go to school and then go back the way I came to arrive at camp late and thus informed him that I would be taking him up on his offer. Yamasaki sensei however did tell him that he had to be present for workshop two and thus we'd have to make our dash for freedom during bathing time.

Workshop two I thought was going to be lame but I found myself getting into it much more than I like to admit. Basically, it was a business game. We were all participants in a world bank which traded money for paper shapes. There were three groups A, B and C. A got the most materials, B got the avergae and unfortunately for C, they were given hardly anything and left desolate. The reason I probably got into it was because we were given an enveolpe with a big, happy A smiling up at me which meant we had a pretty damn good chance of winning. There were six teams in total. I took control of the group, which I am slightly ashamed to admit, as I batered with the other students who were trying to get their hands on our abundant amounts of equipment for the pitiful prices that they could scrape together from their limited supplies.

Rushing around for half an hour, making shapes from paper was much more fun than expected. Different shapes had different values and at one point in the game a circle with a diameter of 12cm became worth $50 for one minute only, I managed to make two in that time before they got taken off the market. It just kind of got you hyped up is all. In the end we came second with $720 dollars. We thought we had won as every group put up their final tallies, we were like $60 dollars ahead of the group behind us but then the B2 group came up and put up their grand total of $1160 and we were shot down in our prime. We still got some lollies. ^_~

After Workshop 2 we went and ventured off to my house which was an interesting adventure considering that not only was it dark but Kris had no idea of the way leaving me to give him directions. Something which is a very dangerous thing considering my lack of that particular sense. We somehow made it to the station as I only know the directions from there and we got there without any major difficulties. I rushed inside, quickly said hello to my family as I shoved unnecessary amounts of stuff into my bag and ran back downstairs.

I was fairly sure I took under five minutes as I jumped back into the car and being very careful of what Kris calls 'Gaijin Death Traps' (the really deep gutters at the side of roads) as we backed out we trucked on over to Lawson to buy prizes for his and Annette's workshop the next day. I bought a packet of Mitsuya Cider lollies which I've taken a particular liking to. Speaking of Mitsuya Cider I have a joke, it's a Japanese one so you probably won't get it but...

What do you get if you put Cucumber, Carrot and Lettuce in a bowl and mix it together? Mitsu yasai da! Told you you wouldn't get it... Mitsu means three, yasai means vegetables and da is just the plain form of desu. Anyways...

We got back in a timely fashion and held a steady conversation throughout the trip. I thanked Kris and gave him my old pair of headphones as a gesture of thanks. He did actually say he wanted headphones, I just don't give people random things. I bought cool new ones so I didn't need them anymore. Returning, I quickly bathed. I think I'm getting used to public baths now. Although I don't really do it all that much I'm not so freaked out anymore. It wasn't so crowded which was nice.

I bathed, which I'll just skip over once I got dressed and was brushing my hair the water kind of suddenly just cut out. Annette who is one of the other foreign teachers at my school was cleaning her teeth when it died. ((Annette is from Jamaica and has a very strong personality. If she has a problem with you, she tells you, right up front. But the way she does it can be a little harsh and it is for that reason that most of the students are a tentative around her. ))

She seemed really annoyed (truth be told, she always kind of does) as she had toothpaste all over her hand. She was furious that she had to return to the bathroom, where other people were showering naked and wash her hand. I think she was put out that she was expected to bathe like Japanese people at all. Soon after that, we went to bed which I was very much looking forward to. People may have talked but either way I didn't notice, I just kind of stuck in my earphones and went to sleep.

We woke up at the energetic time of 6.30 the next morning and we exercised. Who exercises? Luckily it was the Japanese version of exercise which is more like stretching than any actual physical labour. The most taxing of the moves was five star jumps. If you want to see it, Chiyo-chan does it in Azumanga Daioh at her summer house, listening to the radio and later Sakaki joins her because she too wants the cute cat stamps. With a breakfast of apple, bread and yakult, we ventured off to the third and final workshop.

The third workshop, run by Kris and Annette was more language based than communication based which suited me fine. We played Bingo were we had to figure out which questions matched which answers on our bingo sheet. That and another game where we had to make 30 words using the letters of the word 'Incomprehensible', that was a race which we won and were rewarded with Black Thunder. Black Thunder is a chocolate bar which has like coco pop like crisps in the middle and is covered in chocolate. I'll bring a bunch back, they are only 32 yen each. Do you know they have macha flavoured kit-kats? I haven't tried one yet though.

After that we had to return to our bedrooms to clean up and fold away our futons even though we slept on beds. They just put a futon mattress on the bed, lolz. They were pretty strict about that, then we took some photos, had speeches, lunch and returned to school.

Arriving back around one. I wasn't sure what classes I had so I figured I'd just lounge around with Cullen and Keri and the other students until the end of the day.

We ended up playing some game called Apples to Apples which I hadn't heard of before but both Keri and Cullen knew it so I tried to explain it to some of the Japanese kids. The rules are that everyone takes 7 red cards which have various things, names, places, events written on them and they take turns putting down a green card which has an adjective on it like 'weird', 'scary' or 'brave' and you have to put down a word that compliments that card. It can either be a word that is close, funny, or completely opposite. It just has to make sense.

For example if the green card says 'sweet' you put down marshmallows. The worst one that I did was the green card said 'Honourable' and I put down 'Terrorist Attack', I felt really bad about that one but I still won the card even though it was extremely bad taste on my part.

Sorry.

This photo was one that came by incidentally, someone had taken photos on everyones cameras so they were all lying on the table and I thought it looked cool so I just pressed the button before I picked it up. It's a photo of the screen of a camera through which you can see another two cameras. Don't you think that is cool?

So, all in all it was a somewhat hazardous camp and I'm sorry I've been slack and haven't written. I'll write again tomorrow detailing Tokyo and Sadou but I am done for today.

<3

Ashley-chan.

P.s: I've only got the Top Deck left. Oh noes!