Whee, I like japan

Wow, I guess I`m a failure at keeping this up to date consitently, eh? I`ll try to do better.
Yesterday was the bet day so far, I think. We started off bright and early with breakfast, and then a bus picked us up from our dorm. Better than walking to the bus stop already!
It took us to the mountains, where there was a village and an elementary school with only 7 students (plus a couple visitors that day - nine kids) and four teachers to maintain them. It`s able to be so small because they`re a branch of the main school down the hill, from whence lunch is delivered each day by taxi.
They began with some introductions, and the children did a performance for us with Taiko drums, two pieces which were written by students at the school in previous years. They were good! afterwards, we got to fiddle on teh drums a but, and it really wasnt as easy as they made it look. I tried matchign the pattern from the boy showing me, and just when i started to get the more complicated one, he started spinning the sticks. then i messed up again.
We split into 3 groups and went to different classrooms and each did a separate activity. One did calligraphy, another origami, and my group pressed flowers. I partnbered myself with Zenkou, a second grader who showed me how to do it and helped me along the way. And said things I didn`t understand because it was Japanese. Sigh... outpaced by a second grader. At one point, he said "let`s go get some flowers" and my response was "I`m nineteen." ...He looked at me funny and said it again, then I got it.

After an all-too-short time with the kids, sensei had a special treat for us - barbecue!
It was spectacular. We went to a japanese-style barbecue place, where they brought plates of raw meat and we cooked them on a grill in the middle of the table. Everybody got stuffed with meat. Yummy, glorious meat. The pineapple was really great grilled, too.

Then we went to NAnzoin temple. I liked it there a lot. There mere many statues, and a couple of little caves to crawl through with shrines. Then I wandered off into the forest, ansd that was really great too. There was nothign around, jsut hte path I was following, and it really seemed like i could get lost in time. It was a bamboo forest, with birds calling and rain occaisionally makign it down to me, and it was pretty surreal. I found myself a nice piece of fallen bamboo and made a staff. I brought it home to the dorm.
Apparently, this is supposed to be a famous temple with a huge buddha layign down, but i didnt know that and I guess I missed it by wandering into the forest. it`s ok though. sonmeone else will have taken pictures.

Afterwards, we went to costco, grouped up with the people who had menmbership cards. All I bought was some cheese bagels and a really big bag of reese`s pieces. Costco was expensive, like most of japan.

Then, back home. I sat and carved side branches off my staff for a while and managed to get only two minor cuts and a blister on my thumb. Then it was in to watch TV for a bit. Some show about foreigners. IT was really quite amusing. Cassidy came too, and together we managed to figure out that they were trying to fidn out what was the mnost popular japanese restaurant for foreigners. So they found some gaikokujin (the more polite term for foreigners) in amakusa (we were there, I`ll write about it sometime) and send them opff to find lunch. The winning thing was a sushi train restaurant, when the food tries to escape you on a little conveyor belt and you have to hunt it down. Jsut like the traditional, time honored tradition of hunting sushi. 16 people went there, out of the hundred foreigners.

the next bit of the show was finding out the most popular type of cup ramen. So the guy and his cameraman went around barging into random peoples homes and searching their kitchens for ramen.
Really.
it went something like this:
*knock knock*
woman answers the door "hello?"
guy comes in "hi there, we`re doign a survery about ramen!"
guy looks around till he finds the kitchen, then starts digging around in the cupboards to find cup ramen.
in one house, the woman was fighting him for the cupboards, trying to hold them shut while he looked for ramen.
in another, it went something like this: "oh, look at the family, mom and some kids... where`s dad?" and the guy looks around the house to find dad. "oh, here he is in the shower!" as he opens the shower door on dad.
I`m not making this up. It was on T V.

Anyway, after it ended i played video games for a while and went to bed. Then I looked at my watch and realized it was only 8. Damn. I went to bed at 8. But there was nothing to do so I stayed.

That was the best day.