Shabilly-shabi-shashin

these pictures: indoor picnic party in the cafeteria for one of my taiwainese friends, party in the little student lounge for a mongolian friend's birthday, the monkeys lounging about on monkey mountain (or "saruyama" in japanese), another party (one of maybe three or four) for the mongolian guy, and the middle school kids welcoming us.

Sugoku Taisetsu da kara Yoku Oboite

well, yes... it's time to try and figure out where i've been for the last few weeks. no big trips or special school events or anything, but they've been pretty dang decent, making little spur of the moment plans and hanging out in various rooms with various peoples.

took another short trip to a middle school in the area which had a total of around thirty students. played some english games and ate lunch with them. asked some of the simple questions i can manage about their families and the things that they like or have done recently. there was also a middle school that came here for a tour and some group english discussion. one of my groups was lagging a little, so i spiced it up by asking if they new any bad words in english, and about four 12 year olds excitedly yelled "fuck!", but i don't think anyone else heard.

a few days later, a japanese friend who is in the middle of her study abroad year in america came back for a visit during her summer break, so folks that know her here spent a few nights going out on the town or hanging out in dorm rooms drinking and talking 'till we couldn't manage to stay awake anymore.

there have also been a rash of birthday parties lately, so i've been out to an all you can eat itallian place, had an indoor picnic, and ingested more cake and plum sake than my bowels can contend with. for some reason, all you can eat places are called "viking" here. did vikings eat more than any group in the history of the world? really, though, like five or six birthdays in 3 weeks.

one of the study abroad students has gotten his hands on a car, so we can do things like decide we want to go get chocolate and donuts after dinner, and then just head off to the damn mall and stock up on junk, and last week, because of the depressing cafeteria food, a group went out to ichi no tori, the really great yakitori place in the cramped, cool area of akita city, for piles of the most wonderful damn chicken i've ever gnawed off the end of a stick, and a big, hot bowl of confoundingly satisfying nabe.

also went to the zoo for a little while somewhere in there. we got there pretty late, so we had to rush through a little bit, guided by scent to the monkey mountain section, where we watched the pissed off, bored chimps lay around and half heartedly groom eachother. we were also grunted at by a giant, frothing, horned thing from africa and stared at by some prarie dogs, turtles and lions. i likes me some aminils, but zoos can be pretty solemn places sometimes.

yup. so i guess that's where i've been... eating pasta and sitting crosslegged on people's floors. i'll scrape together some decent pictures from the last few weeks.

Bunpo wa Tadashi demo Yoku Tsukawanai

dutdutdutdutdut...the last couple weeks...golden week came and went pretty quickly. most people took off for travels, and a lot of the japanese students went home to work or be with families, so the population was a little sparse here for a while. took the bus trip to kakunodate and tazawako on a cold, windy, rainy day, were shepherded through some buildings with crafts and whatnot, took a tour of a samurai house which for some reason has displays of grammaphones, cameras, and medical textbook drawings in part of it, and then set off in different directions to wander around the town. i met the bad ass ojisan with the giant beard for the third time. this time around he was out in front of the udon shop he is always sitting in and he was selling big bins full of his detailed little paintings of kakunodate, organized by season. he seemed like he had a fever, hangover, empty stomach, and a broken heart all falling in on him, so i didn't talk to him much. took off for tazawako where it was too cold and rainy to stand around by the lake for too long, and trudged up a nearby hilllside to catch a little bit of a view through some trees. came back down, bought something hot to drink next to the little tourist complex of food stands and souvenir shops, got back on the bus, and headed back to school.

later that week, i walked to a local shrine with a first year student, and the next day or thereabouts, went into the city to show her and a friend of hers some of my favorite spots in akita city, wandering, eating and suchlike out over the river, through the crowded night life area and looping around back to the station. there was also a takoyaki party in there somewhere. a big group of the first year students got together in the kitchen with a few takoyaki grills, little square things with 20 or so half spheres for the batter, and proceded to cook maybe four or five hundred takoyaki balls over the course of a few hours. i ate maybe 498 of the 500, so my stomach was straight jacked for the rest of the evening, which of course didn't stop me from joining the nabe party, which began about an hour after the takoyaki party ended, and slurping up a few bowls of that.

the weekend after golden week, i went with a group to happocho for an overnight english teaching/ hiking trip. we stayed in a training facility with bedrooms and a gymnasium right on the coast of the sea of japan, got fed dinner and the next morning's breakfast, and then headed out pretty early to a tiny elementary school with only 38 students from 1st to 6th grade. played some english games, sang songs, practiced greetings, introduced our home towns, and they played a big marching band song for us on drums, accordians and recorders. they also made sketches of our faces and showed us a little practice run of their upcoming sports matsuri, running a relay race and dancing around with giant, bright flags. after the school, we drove up the side of a mountain to a trail head and were guided through the woods by a guy wearing full fatigues and a big, thick survival vest with about 12 pockets for knives an who knows what the hell else, and he told us about the things growing on the mountain, and how they're used by people and animals. i saw a big pile of salamander eggs sitting just under the surface of a little swamp and bear claw marks on half the trees, some of which are around 400 years old. came back from all that stuff, exhausted from the hike, and went up to the auditorium to watch another super rock fest blowout which lasted for four hours, left early to hang out in a norwegian's room, and then wandered through the lobby at around 4am talking to some pretty spectacularly drunk folks, which always warms the heart, does it not?

the next day, had a party in the tatami house across the street for the voleyball club. more beverages, blathering, popcorn throwing, and consoling of first year students who went a little too fast with the hooch.

and now it's now and i am without obligation for the time being, until this evening, when i have to sit around and work on a group presentation about the definition of happiness. i will throw chocolate at people during the presentation.