もう一回！

Here are belated videos from the Onuma Park weekend trip from 2 weeks ago. This act features the Intermediate 2A and 2B classes singing....insert song name I don't know (Elliot, help?). Speaking of Elliot, this particular clip features Yale (and the Light Fellowship's very own Elliot Eaton, Elizabeth Silliman, Jamar Bromley, Leah Itagaki, and Max Ehrenfreund. They did a much better job than my class (Intermediate 1B) did---we had to sing Banzai, youtube link to follow later--- probably because they actually were capable of reading the lyrics to their song whereas I mostly stared at my sheet and tried to decipher kanji during any part of our song that wasn't the refrain.

Anyway, it comes in two videos because my camera died after I started recording:

...Tiny Fork?

Let's see how much I can remember from this week's shenanigans...continuing from my post about the Onuma Park trip, post-talent show at the amazing Greenpia Hotel was karaoke! Seriously, the hotel had just about everything: karaoke, bowling, merry-go-round's, a jungle gym, a real gym, horseback riding, water slides, go-carts, etc. I may have mentioned all those things already, but I don't remember. Karaoke was a blast, and the HIF kids took up about 3-4 adjacent rooms with definitely more than the allowed 5 people per room, and Austin kind of wowed everybody (or at least me) with his singing abilities. Austin and I had both realized that neither of us actually knew the other person's name at dinner that night, and when I finally admitted it first and he was staring at me thinking furiously about what my name could be, Chris Brown held up a fork behind my head and pointed at the tynes to which Austin goes "...Tiny Fork?" It was kind of amazing. Anyway, post-karaoke was mostly hanging out w/ all of that gang and trying not to get locked out of the hotel and get eaten by bears.

Karaoke! Koh isn't blinking, he's actually pretty much asleep, haha.

Afterwards, Thanu, Heng, and I all stayed up and had what Thanu dubbed "girl talk" although I successfully deflected most of the questions directed at me until Nao arrived from her drunk people babysitting activities and we crashed for a few hours until we got up at a ridiculously early hour to go to the onsen (public bath) which was really really nice! My group had gone through multiple "Hey, you guys want to go to the onsen!?" conversations the previous night only to arrive at the conclusion that onsen-ing it up meant splitting up by sex, which was lame. Well, you know what I mean. We may have gone through that scenario a few times since drunk people tend to forget things though. Anyway, Brian was definitely a big fan of the onsen anyway:

Awwwww. Also, my host mom met him yesterday and said he was cute, haha.

Breakfast at the hotel followed and the 30 minute bus ride back to Hakodate. Chien-Wei, Andrew, Thanu, and I wanted to go squid-fishing but that fell through so we ended up grabbing lunch at Lucky Pierrot (it's this must-go-to hamburger chain that's famous here) before I headed home to tackle homework. Yuck. Everything since the weekend gets pretty hazy from here because my memory fails a lot, but a general update about the various going on's of the week:

Monday: Kimono & Etiquette Class! It was surprisingly really really interesting and they taught us how to bow, open sliding doors, etc, and then we all tried on kimonos with a LOT of help.

Obi tied in the butterfly shape (I think--my Japanese isn't great)!

Elliot towers over the other Americans and 外人 even, haha.

Wednesday: Asahi Elementary School Visit! OMD I WANT A SMALL (or big) ADORABLE JAPANESE CHILD. They had made us name tags and prepared a welcoming ceremony and grabbed our hands and led us into the middle of the gym to play various games, including rock-paper-scissors (Jan-Ken-Pon!). When the cutesy music stopped, you had to go up against the nearest person and whoever lost Jan-Ken-Pon grabbed the winner's shoulders and joined his/her party until a bajillion rounds later, only one giant train of people remained.

Ahhh, Japanese children, WANT.

Afterward, we learned the infamous Ika Odori squid dance that we'll be performing later this summer! Anyway, apparently I volunteered to help teach the kids new games because I wrote my name on that sign up sheet I was handed but couldn't read that one time. My group (Juan, Victor, Allison, and I) had 5th graders (I think?) and they all lined up and handed us little slips of paper with their names and drawings and in really shy, English said "My name is ______" and it was ADORABLE, especially for the shy ones that mumbled it really quickly before running away. We taught them how to play Oshiri, aka, Big Booty, in Japanese, as well as this similar animal game that they had a real kick out of. I really wanted to steal the little boy who chose to be a penguin for his animal, he was sooo cute. Post Asahi Elementary, I joined Brian et al. to go to a 100 Yen store before heading home. Lots of fun.

Intermediate 1B class ftw: Erika, Ashok, Malika, Amalya, Brian, me (blinking fail), Allison (Victor and Juan are further down the row)

Anyway, Thursday onward will have to follow later---Brian wants to go watch the sunset from Mt. Hakodate (since I couldn't make it Friday after Kyuudo class when he went w/ the others) so I'm going to take a short nap and then run to catch the bus to where we're meeting---over and out.

Onuma Park: Part I

I think I'm going to have to update in installments about the overnight trip to Onuma Park we took, because I have a ton of homework to do, plus it hurts to type. Or move. Or do anything other than sit in a steaming hot bath and relax, but that actually hurts initially too.

This weekend, the HIF students piled into two buses and went on an overnight trip to Onuma "quasi-national" Park! It may have been neither nice nor relaxing, but it was definitely tons of fun and highly enjoyable. My okaasan and Mina kindly drove me to my bus pick up point in front of the Hakodate JR Station, even stopping to pick up additional breakfast fare for me along the way (yummy hot cakes filled with cream and sweet bean paste、although my friends ended up eating most of it because I was already stuffed from breakfast back at the house). My okaasan had originally pulled up next to another car which turned out to be full of HIF teachers, including Asaoka-sensee (my sensee who teaches Intermediate 1B), which was somewhat terrifying. Thankfully, she pulled up ahead to the curb a little later.

Unfortunately (well, I suppose it was amusing in a terrifying sort of way) as I was walking from the car to the front of the hotel where we were gathering, I got stopped by one of the rickshaw drivers who somehow knew who I was and stopped me to chat. I'm about 95% sure it wasn't the same guy I had interviewed for my independent study project last Thursday (I swear, I can tell Asians apart!) but he knew who I was, so he either had been present when I had interviewed my guy or I just fail a whole lot. I swear, it wasn't him though, especially because for this guy I could barely understand a word he said, although that may have been an effect of my brain tending to shut down when I'm too overwhelmed by something and just refusing to function altogether. My okaasan saw the driver chatting with me and laughed about it today and told me how she and Mina had watched from the car and had wondered whether or not I needed rescuing, haha.

Anyway, after that fun chat where I mostly said "Sorry, I don't understand!" a bajillion times, I proceeded to talk Andrew's ear off on the bus for about an hour, which was enjoyable for me at least, although I can't say the same for him :-P. We arrived at the park around 11:30 am and the group of friends I was with decided to do the bike rental and cycle around the park/lake. It only cost 700 yen, so it was a pretty sweet deal, plus they had about a bajillion different kinds of bikes you could choose from. Heng and I both opted for cute metallic silver bikes (hers was metallic pink, mine was metallic blue) with bear baskets, although most of the others decided on more practical mountain bikes with different gears. I personally think our baskets turned out to be more useful than their gears were though:

フレンドリーベア (Furendorii Bea aka Friendly Bear!)

We decided we wanted to spend more time at the park before going to the hotel, so all eleven of us or so decided to sign up for the late bus at the last minute, which turned out to be a great idea and gave us an extra two hours to explore the park. Biking around was a lot of fun, although it took us quite a while to make our way around the lake, given the the number of stops we made to take photos, get ice cream, skip stones, etc. Victor caused a mini traffic jam too as we all got stuck behind him at one point, as he pedaled on slowly but surely.

Note the look of terror and excitement on Victor's face.

Andrew (aka Tae-san) & me on one of our bajillion stops for photos by the lakeside

We got back from our biking adventures around 2:30 pm with an hour or so to spare before the bus came to get us. Sadly, I didn't see much of Brian nor did we get to ride together on a boat like I'd hoped =(. Anyway, It was a really fun if exhausting afternoon, and a lot of us were sunburned, myself included. However, whereas I just got really tan (and can continue to insist that my daddy is from Equatorial Guinea like I usually do), poor Kent turned completely red. I had offered him my Yale 2011 cap to wear and he'd initially agreed with the condition that no pictures were to be taken of him, but after Chien Wei tried to sneak a few photos, he gave up and Thanu wore my cap instead. I guess I can't really blame Kent, because if it were me and I were offered a Harvard cap, I probably would be very hesitant about wearing it too, not so much from personal issues but just from all the unneccessary crap I might get from other people for it.

Post lunch (miso ramen!), a short bus ride to the Greenpia Hotel followed where I mostly tried to not get any of my melting ikazumi (squid ink!!!) ice cream all over myself while chatting with Burton-Rose-san, the really nice (and really old) grad student, who had very kindly kept an eye on me at judo the other day and kept giving me useful tips when I was failing so fantastically at somersaulting, etc. Anyway, we were assigned four people to a room, and luckily I really like the three that were in my room: Thanu, Heng, and Nao, yay! Asaoka-sensee called about 3 minutes after we'd settled in to ask if Heng wanted to play badminton with him, and boy am I glad I wasn't the one to answer the phone. I ended up going over to the hotel gym with them and while they played badminton, a group of us (Victor, Andrew, James, Jason, Koh, Steffen, Cuong, Chien-Wei, and me) played soccer! I miss playing soccer a lot, although I'm not very good considering I played (translation: benchwarmed) all of high school. It was a lot of fun, although maybe not the best of ideas to play without shinguards (and thus, ankle bracing), considering the last time I played indoor soccer w/o them at practice senior year, one of the Hernandez twins took out my ankle and it's never been quite the same since. Fail. Anyway, keeping in mind that my team was one man up, we ended up accumulating a rather large number of goals before we all dispersed to go shower before dinner, where I saw Ashok for the first-ish time all weekend.

Sometimes Ashok and I like to pretend that we're friends and actually get along.

Dinner at the hotel was pretty sweet, with an assortment of dishes of every type individually set up for each person at the table, with our own personal hot pots with which to cook things. It was a really nice spread, with sashimi, lobster, tempura, tofu, soup, fruit, etc etc. I sat with Victor, Kent, Heng, Vicky, Jason, and Andrew, and it was a lot of fun. Afterwards was the dreaded talent show in which my class (Intermediate 1B) along w/ the Advanced Level class opened with an amazing rendition of the song Banzai.Yeah, fail. The other classes were also paired up and had to sing various songs too , so at least we all embarrassed ourselves together, although Ashok and Brian thoroughly enjoyed the experience I think. Koh played "Sakura" on his guitar, Jamar played "Gypsy Dance" on his violin, Andrew played an original peace on his guitar, Thanu and Yiwen sang, and Juan Miguel did a martial arts performance of some sort. Good times =)

Anyway, I'm afraid the rest of the weekend will have to wait though, because I'm way too tired and haven't finished my homework yet. Zyaa, mata!