There's No Raining on Our Parade

On Sunday I went to a CAMP Yale BBQ at the American Embassy Dormitories in the heart of Tokyo.

The complex is located in Akasaka, right in the middle of the city. There are three "towers" like the one above, each with a different color assigned to the balconies. Personally they remind me a lot of the Piet Mondrian paintings: the ones that are white canvasses with stark black lines and occasional blocks of primary colors.

Despite the rainy weather we held our BBQ outside (albeit with a gazebo and pop-up tent handy). There was a bouncy castle for the children present, while the adults did both an egg toss and a water balloon toss for Tokyo Embassy-themed prizes. Then there was classic American BBQ fare--hotdogs, burgers, grilled chicken, potato salad, corn salad, watermelon, brownies and beer. The Yale community here seems really friendly and I hope I'll get to know everyone more over the course of my time here.

Interestingly, right across from these dormitories is a shinto shrine, Hikawa Jinja, built by the Tokugawa Yoshimune, the 8th Tokugawa shogun. The shrine has very densely wooded grounds, and the effect is somewhat like entering a quiet forest when one least expects it.

The rainy season is certainly starting to show its colors, however. The next few days are all cloudy, if not raining, and the humidity is creeping upward in a direction that makes me blanch, just a little bit.

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文化祭！(Bunkasai--Cultural Festival Days 1 and 2) and Man I'm Tired!

So this weekend was Musashino Joshi's annual Cultural Festival, an event that all high schools (I would assume) have, where the school is open to the public and classes and clubs put on events, or set up quiz games or food booths. Essentially it's like a carnival. Traditional culture...not so much (though there are aspects of it). Mostly it's just good fun. My class was doing a chocolate banana food booth, so on Friday (the school-wide prep day, even though techincally it was another Japanese holiday) we got cardboard and began making our booth, which was Hawaiian themed. And you'd think it wouldn't take very long, but it took the entire day and then about half an hour on Saturday. (Also, what' you're seeing is Summer Uniform Form 1.5, where there's the sweater over the shirt.) But in the end the booth turned out pretty sweet, if I may say so myself: The top says Chocobana, and the sides of the poles are made to look like palm trees with a monkay on it

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds.

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u

Rice and Ramen

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