The Queen of Good Smells and Hometowns

so many stuffs what i done these last dozen days or so... just got back from the park across the street where i played a few rounds of basketball with a norwegian, a singaporian and five kids from 6 to 10 yrs old. i can't ambulate and control my movements so well on account of my advanced age, so the kids whooped me up pretty good.

what the hell else, i can't keep things straight... the sakura have bloomed and blown away already. the school is surrounded by cherry trees, so everyone has been out to oggle and smell. i went on a little picnic in the park with the taiwanese and korean students, and last weekend, went with a group to senshu koen for their hana-mi matsuri. the park was jammed with people sitting on big blue tarps layed out with food and drinks brought from home, and plates of matsuri food from the stands lining every pathway in the park. we wound our way up the main path to the castle tower and back down, stopping for takoyaki and beer.

herrrmmmm... there was a little welcome party for the new first year students in the auditorium with performances and weird games. one of them involved the drawing of paper from a hat which had either a beverage or a food on it. people had to draw two pieces, combine the two things, and drink the combination. some people ended up with stuff like iced coffe and tofu, or curry and cola.

there have been a few birthday parties with new and old students, eating of cake, and some traditional mongolian dish comprised of beef dumplings boiled in milk tea. that night, we also made some fluffy pan-a-cakes with frosting and whipped cream and then ate it all gone.

i'm using my pictures to try to keep track of the chronology and happenings, but there have been a few things i didn't get on there...spent an evening with a couple third year students who i don't get to see too often and have been trying to make plans with for a while now, just sat around talking in one of their rooms, a big spacious place in the apartments that look like cabins or motels or something, out on the edge of the little forest adjascent to the school, and was over there again a few nights ago for a guitar club welcoming party.

i also took part in an activity for the volunteer club last sunday, cleaning garbage from a local riverside. i can never seem to remember the name of the river, but i think it's one of the largest in the tohoku region. there were about 50 students and staff, and another 50 or so from the local community collecting trash, putting it in trucks, and bringing it up to a big clearing where most of the students were working on sorting all the junk and charting the info. we were sorting garbage for over 4 hours, i think, and i don't think we even made a dent on the massive ammount of detrius that gets picked up by the river when the water level rises. there was stuff stuck 10 feet up in the trees for miles along the banks. we found 15 tires, a mound of baseballs, tennis balls and soccer balls, a television, 170 something bags of styrofoam, and a grand total of something like 520 bags of garbage dragged up the riverbank. after collecting all that junk, we went for a short row down the river in a bunch of canoes, chugging along singing sailing songs and trying to control the damn canoe in the very fast current of the river.

what the hell else... it's golden week now, a string of national holidays, so there's no school for about 10 days. a lot of people have returned home or gone on little trips, and i've been in the lobby 'till 4 am the last few nights talking and whatnot with the ones who have stayed, which is pretty damn fantastic.

that's about the bulk of what i can recall from recnt happenings. tomorrow, there's a school trip to kakunodate and lake tazawako, supposedly to see cherry blossoms, but they're gone already, so it'll probably be a bunch of walking and eating. yerp. what say i put up some pictures?