Day 52-53 - Feb 27-28

This weekend was the Culture Exchange Camping trip; a two day weekend trip to get out of Tokyo and exchange some culture with native Japanese students at TUJ.  The trip took place in a campground park kind of place (similar to Onanda Park for those who know it) in Ibaraki.  We had to be at the school at 8am to depart, which means I needed to get up at 6am.  Human beings are not meant to be alive at that hour of the day.  Li and I grumbled our way to the back of the bus, reclined our seats, and did our best to pass out.  On the way there, this girl came back and introduced herself to us and this other girl who was nearby.  Interestingly enough, her name is McKenna.  After a little while we got talking about our heritage, and it turns out she is Scottish as well.  Apparently her practically white hair is naturally very red.  She also said that her family is very proud of its heritage, possibly too much, which I found interesting.  Eventually she got called back up by her friend (maybe bf? I still can't figure it out) and I resumed my passing out.

The place we stayed at in Ibaraki was only heated in some places.  Namely, the rooms, the gym, and the kitchen.  There was also a few super-space heaters in this big meeting room, which is where we went upon arrival.  We spent several minutes waiting there all sitting around in front of this white board that was mostly blank.  Several people made the analogy to Battle Royale.  Fortunately, when the guy showed up he wasn't wheeling in a couple dozen bags of weapons/supplies.  We were told the rules of the place, and then told which rooms we were going to be in.  There were 6 people per room, and I was rooming with Li, Winston, Sean, Tony (McKenna's friend), and Takuya (native).  The rooms were set up with bunk beds, but not normal bunk beds.  These were each the size of one tatami mat and in fact had a tatami mat in each one.  Basically, we needed to set our beds up like a traditional futon on the ground, except in a bunk (the bunk part made it rather difficult).

Once our rooms were set up, we all met in the kitchen and were each given a bento for lunch.  The bento was pretty bad, which was unanimously agreed upon.  Afterward we were broken up into different groups for a scavenger hunt type of thing.  I was with McKenna, two native girls who's names I can't remember, and another guy who's name I do know but is escaping me at the moment.  We were given a copy of a hand-drawn map of the area around the building, which had a couple dozen small circles drawn scattered around the area.  At each circle was a sign with a number and a katakana.  We were to randomly place the numbers 1-25 in this grid at the bottom of the map.  Basically we were playing a cross between bingo and a scavenger hunt.  We were given two-ish hours to find them all.  Our group stayed together for a little while, and then ended up getting separated along the way.  I wandered deep down into this ravine, eventually realizing that I had definitely gone too far (probably a mile and a half away) when I got to a bamboo grove at the base of the ravine.  Not wanting to scramble my way up the somewhat steep and rather muddy path (it had rained most of the morning), since I had already fallen once and gotten mud all over my nice white hoodie, I recalled a similar situation in Hawaii.  So, I broke off a good walking-stick size bamboo stalk and hiked my way back up.  The area was really pretty and I rather enjoyed my hikes through it.  At a few points I caught up with other members of my group and we exchanged info on the signs we had seen, eventually getting it to the person with the clipboard and the map.  When they called us all back in we were pretty well exhausted.  They must have anticipated this, since they actually made a small banner with two long poles holding it up that said "GOAL."  Nearly every single person who came up to that area did a slow-motion run through the goal, and most did this without seeing anyone else do it.  My group was tied for 2nd place, but we had the moral victory since all the other groups were texting each other, and we did it the natural way.

Once the hike had finished we had two hours of free time, so just about everyone went to the gym (since we were so exhausted lol).  We got a really nice size game of dodgeball going, and I actually did really well in the beginning.  As I got more tired though, my ability to catch balls thrown at me diminished.  I only got hit once though; in all the rounds we played the only reason I got out was because I failed to catch a ball.

After dodgeball we got back with our hiking groups and were brought outside and told how to make our dinner: Curry Rice.  We broke the jobs up amongst the members of our groups, and I was fortunate enough to get the job of building and then maintaining the fire, which also included keeping track of what we had cooking on the grill above it.  The whole cooking process took us about two hours, leaving us rather starving by the time we got to eat.  I was quite surprised, the curry rice was really good.  They made it really spicy though, so by the time I got half way through the curry part I couldn't take any more.  Also, half-way was a lot since somehow we ended up with a lot more than everyone else, as our servings were - in some cases - overflowing from our plates.  Once we had finished eating we commenced cleaning, which brought me back to building/tending to the fire since we were heating the bowls which were filled with water to help them clean more easily.

Since the sun had set and our dinner event was complete, it was time for the bonfire.  The people at the camp had set up a real nice bonfire for us, with the wood itself being around 4 feet high which made the flames around 10'.  Nahomi (the advisor/supervisor lady, who is awesome btw) brought the fixin's for smores.  With the fire as massive as it was though, most of the people had trouble getting close enough to cook their marshmallows.  Even with a stick half as long as theirs I had no problem walking right up to it and sticking my 'mallow right in the flames, I guess because I have a high pain tolerance for heat or something.  After I had consumed my third smore and didn't want anymore I started helping some of the girls who were having trouble with theirs.  Oh, and did I mention in a previous post that Li and I bought flasks?  Mine is red plaid and Li's is beige.  We had each filled ours with the most appropriate fluid: scotch.  Unfortunately, I discovered that mine actually had a small leak in it.  This wasn't a problem as long as it was sealed, but as soon as I opened the cap it started dripping out the bottom.  I need to fix that sometime soon, since I'll need it for Fuji.  Anyways, as the fire died down we were all chatting etc., and I had the idea that I wanted to jump over it.  The bonfire was within a ring of stones about 6 feet in diameter.  Within the ring the ground was recessed about 6 inches to make a mini-fire pit.  I knew that I could easily cover the distance, but my main concern was the height since I'm terrible at vertical jumping.  After contemplating it for a while, Tony (who is about 6'5") jumped over it since no one else was.  He barely made the distance though; another couple inches back and he would have fallen back into the fire or at the very least hurt his ankle badly.  Of course, this just could not stand.  So I waited a little longer for this one log that had since fallen so that it stuck straight up in the middle to get brittle enough that I could break it.  Once I had done so, off I went.  I easily covered the distance, making it about a foot farther than the opposite side of the ring, but it seems it was a good idea for me to wait since I cleared the top by barely a couple inches.  McKenna was going to record it, but wasn't paying attention, so at her request I immediately turned around and did it again.  I'm currently trying to get that video from her since I have found her on facebook.

Around 8:30pm we all got back to our rooms and were told that the lights in the halls would be shut off at 10pm, and we had until 9:30 to get our baths.  Knowing that everyone was going to rush to the bath, Li and I instead made our beds and waited until 9:15 to get to the bath.  This was a good decision, since it was completely empty and we had the whole place to ourselves.  I'm quite surprised; I was not expecting to enjoy this public bath system as much as I do.  I really really like it, and its probably one of the biggest things I'm going to miss about this country.  Its very hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it.  Its just a wonderful experience.

At about 10pm we got kicked out of the bath and made our way through the dark halls back to our room, where we found out that just about everyone was hanging out in a lounge farther down the hall.  Li and I joined the party, and hung out there until about 2am, even though we needed to be up at 6:30.  Rebecca Mock (who lives down the hall from me here) taught me Egyptian Rat Screw, which was quite enjoyable and reminded me of Set at the points where I would fail to slap the cards fast enough.  Also, I got talking to this guy name Yuuki.  Apparently Yuuki isn't a TUJ student, and was invited somehow to come along on the trip.  He is actually a student at the Tokyo Science University, and even though he is studying there he wants to someday become a novelist or a writer for video games.  You can see how this very quickly became relevant to my interests.  Anyways, we stayed up talking with him about books, movies, and video games for many hours on end.  When we finally went to bed we exchanged cell phone numbers, and I have sent him a few messages since then we've exchanged emails as well so we can keep in touch.

6:30am hurt, a lot.  We had to clean up our rooms and fold up our beds, and then get our belongings and bring them down to the big meeting room.  After leaving them there, we all moved on to the kitchen to consume breakfast.  I don't really remember what it entailed, but it was alright.  Certainly better than the bento from yesterday.  Once we had finished breakfast we had until 11:30am for free time, so off to the nearest couch I went.  I woke up at about 9:30 and went to the gym where most people were, apparently.  Oh, and during breakfast it was sleeting rather badly.  Around 10am it had shifted to snow, and was coming down even harder.  During the time in the gym I played table tennis against this native Japanese girl, who was pretty good, then this native Japanese guy, who was very good, then against Li, who was about as good as me but couldn't serve as well.  Our saving grace from the cold was Nahomi, who decided that instead of have everyone go outside and freeze while we made our lunch of Yakisoba, only the student helpers would be forced to go, along with any students who wanted to.  Naturally, Li and I did not want to.  I realized an opportunity and busted out my poi for the first time in a very long time.  After a while I was finally able to master the 9-beat weave!  My transitions have also gotten better.

Around 12:30 we were told food was ready, but we needed to go outside to eat it.  Myself and about 4 other people, one of whom was Li, decided that it wasn't worth it and we would rather huddle around the heater in the big meeting room.  Pretty much all of us took a nap, and awoke at 1:30pm when everyone came back inside for the final event of our trip: candle making.  Apparently candle making really meant painting these odd cone-shaped candles, then dipping them in boiling wax to seal the paint.  We all spent the next hour and a half painting our candles and such.  I made mine a flame, with red at the tip, then fading to orange, then to yellow for the majority of it, then blue, then I ran out of time and couldn't figure out how to make clear on a slightly-pink candle so I just made it grey.  Holy crap some people are extremely talented.  Anyways, we got a big group photo out in front of the building and then hopped on the bus and went home.  We returned at about 5pm, Li and I went for our daily Gundam, grabbed some groceries, and finally settled into our rooms at about 7:30pm.

All in all it was a pretty eventful trip.  Oh, and apparently the reason it was so rainy/cold was because there was a Tsunami on the way and it was pushing cold wet air ahead of it.  Somewhat fortunately it was going to hit only Hokkaido, but I kind of wanted to go see it since they said there would be 10' waves.  Oh well, maybe there will be another before I leave.

PS: I forgot to mention two things.
1.)  During breakfast one thing we had was called Kinpira Gobo, which was actually quite good.
2.)  The native Japanese students were playing this card game Saturday night called Daihinmin.  Turns out its almost exactly like the game "Presidents and Assholes" here, except there is an Uno element in the form of a reverse card.