I'll start on March 15, two weeks after the last report ended. I actually didn't do anything for those two weeks except sleep and take exams, so nothing is lost. On March 15 school started again, for a day. This was our becoming-second-year-students ceremony, and it basically meant that we had

On the evening of March 22 a bunch of exchange students packed into a bus and we all went to Nagano, site of the last Winter Olympics, for a ski trip. I attempted to ski on the first day, which didn't turn out well because they only had three pairs of ski boots in my size, one of which was broken, one of which had two left feet, and one of which didn't fit the skis. So, deciding that the skiing god didn't like me, I switched to snowboard on day 2, which worked out fairly well. Actually, the most interesting part was when I hit a skiier. I didn't want to hit him, but I had about four

seconds notice and I couldn't really stop, so I leapt up into the air, clipped him across the back of his legs, and we both fell straight onto our rear ends. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

The other interesting part of the trip was when I tried to shut up a snoring Rotarian on the bus by whacking him with a soda bottle. This didn't work, so I stuck it in his mouth. I think this story would be better ended if I told it in person, so ask me later about it.

The next Monday I went with five friends to Mino'o Falls, north of the city. This is a big park with a waterfall and a walking trail up wooded hills. There are also supposed to be monkeys there. Little monkeys. Dangerous monkeys. If you go to the bathroom near the falls, there's a large red

panic button that you can push in case monkeys corner you on the toilet. The button sets off a loud alarm and red signal lights. Needless to say, we pushed them. There was no response for a long time, so we assumed that if monkeys actually did attack people in the bathrooms, it would be a bad thing.

Then, the next day, I flew to Monbetsu. It was my first time on an airplane in months, and my first time out of the Osaka region since I came to Japan, so I was very eager to go. Of course, there were a few things I didn't know about Monbetsu. First of all, it's very cold. I went in the time of year

that would be officially called spring, and there was about six feet of snow on the ground. Second, there's not a lot to do, especially out of iceberg season. Claudia and I passed most of the time eating and watching old movies. The Monbetsu Rotarians, for their part, did find "interesting"

On April first we returned to Osaka together. Besides looking at the ANA Pokemon Jet and eating samples of cheesecake and trying to keep an old gift shop clerk from short changing us, not much happened on the way home. The next day we went to Kyoto and visited some temples. We actually went to Kyoto with no idea what we were going to do, so we just wandered around for a while, playing Spot the Foreign People (Claudia beat me hands down) until I started asking people at random what the most famous temple in Kyoto was, and a nice old lady in a newspaper stand said to go to Kiyomizu-dera. So we found a taxi and went there. It was a temple up on a hill, with a long

crowded street of gift shops and tourists leading up to it. Actually, I was pretty impressed by it, because once we got past all of that, the temple was quite beautiful. After that, we walked a long way to the train station and returned to Osaka where we ate some giant ice cream and looked for shoes. This was pretty much how the entire week went, except for a couple of days

After Claudia left on the seventh, there was just one more weekend and then the first day of school. So I spent the weekend among the cherry blossoms, which were just then coming into bloom. The Japanese tradition when the cherries come out is to party underneath them, and being exchange students, we couldn't pass up such a wonderful cultural experience. So I spent the

Five days of boring school passed, and then we had a weekend orientation that began at a sports hotel in the mountains. It had all sorts of outdoorsy things to do, the only downside being that it was raining that weekend. Day 1 was teaching next year's outbounds how to survive, talk to their host families, and cope with culture shock. Bringing my drama skills back, I played the role of a small-talky American host father. ("How was your flight?" "Boy, you're short!" etc.) That night, I discovered a blurb in a hotel brochure about a 200-foot roller slide, which a group of us jumped

onto quite happily around 8 PM. It was very wet and fairly cold, but it was very good fun. On the way back to the hotel, we found these huge regular slides, and I didn't hesitate to jump on one. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital... okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but I

Then, on Sunday, we went to the Kabusanji, the mountain temple run by Shindo Kondo, a Rotarian and priest who handles all of the exchange student paperwork and hosts just about everyone in the district at some point. We started with yet another tea ceremony in a beautiful tea house built in a forest, with two glass walls and skylights above it. I think I messed up, though, because I accepted seconds when nobody else did. What can I say, the lady was pushy. "Are you SURE you don't want more? Is it not good?" "OK, OK, give me more!!" Then came Zen meditation, which was very crazy. To do it, you have to sit with your legs folded in a lotus position (which is

painful to just about everyone except me), your back straight up, your hands cupped together as though you're holding something, and your eyes closed, for half an hour. Moving, sleeping, coughing, opening your eyes, belching, laughing, farting, cracking jokes at the monks, and the like are all forbidden, and if you do anything more than breathing, you-- I'll use Mr. Kondo's words

here receive the hitting. The hitting is with a BIG (I didn't mean to write that in caps but it looks good in caps so I'll leave it) stick, over the shoulders, three times on each side, and it's very loud. During the meditation the guy sitting next to me coughed and got hit, and I almost jumped when the first hit came. Fortunately, I wasn't hit, and in fact I was very impressed by how quickly the time passed and how good I felt when it was over.

The same night I moved to my third host family, the Kikuis. My new host father is a Japanese lawyer or "bengoshi," and I have an older sister and younger brother who are both very interesting, although they often watch TV late when I'm trying to sleep in the next room and it drives me nuts. But that's not a big deal. The food is good, the conversations are often hilarious, and they live closer to my school so I can sleep in in the morning.

Finally, on April 28, my school had a trip to a herb garden on a mountainside above Kobe. This might sound boring but it was actually very fun. I hung around with a group of four or five Japanese guys and we went up a hiking trail, raced down the long winding footpaths leading down the mountain, and tried to tip a ropeway car. I got to see some interesting things in Kobe, like a mountaintop view of what will be an airport in about a thousand years (they're making an island out of garbage in Kobe bay for it), a famous church started by an affluent foreign guy a hundred years ago, and lots of miscellaneous foreign people.

So that's my life so far. The next report will be for May, where you'll hear about me racing cutters at RYLA, flying to Tokyo for the first time, destroying The District Convention, failing The School Sports Test, and much much more. If I'm not late again. Until then...



	*April 30, 1999 - Report for March and April* I'll start on March 15, two weeks after the last report ended. I actually didn't do anything for those two weeks except sleep and take exams, so nothing is lost. On March 15 school started again, for a day. This was our becoming-second-year-students ceremony, and it basically meant that we had *to put on our uniforms and stand in line for a few hours at school while people gave speeches.* On the evening of March 22 a bunch of exchange students packed into a bus and we all went to Nagano, site of the last Winter Olympics, for a ski trip. I attempted to ski on the first day, which didn't turn out well because they only had three pairs of ski boots in my size, one of which was broken, one of which had two left feet, and one of which didn't fit the skis. So, deciding that the skiing god didn't like me, I switched to snowboard on day 2, which worked out fairly well. Actually, the most interesting part was when I hit a skiier. I didn't want to hit him, but I had about four seconds notice and I couldn't really stop, so I leapt up into the air, clipped him across the back of his legs, and we both fell straight onto our rear ends. The ensuing conversation went something like this: *Me: (wiping snow off my sunglasses) Sorry!* *Sk: (blinking) Eh? You speak Japanese?* *Me: Uh... (I go down the slope)* The other interesting part of the trip was when I tried to shut up a snoring Rotarian on the bus by whacking him with a soda bottle. This didn't work, so I stuck it in his mouth. I think this story would be better ended if I told it in person, so ask me later about it. The next Monday I went with five friends to Mino'o Falls, north of the city. This is a big park with a waterfall and a walking trail up wooded hills. There are also supposed to be monkeys there. Little monkeys. Dangerous monkeys. If you go to the bathroom near the falls, there's a large red panic button that you can push in case monkeys corner you on the toilet. The button sets off a loud alarm and red signal lights. Needless to say, we pushed them. There was no response for a long time, so we assumed that if monkeys actually did attack people in the bathrooms, it would be a bad thing. Then, the next day, I flew to Monbetsu. It was my first time on an airplane in months, and my first time out of the Osaka region since I came to Japan, so I was very eager to go. Of course, there were a few things I didn't know about Monbetsu. First of all, it's very cold. I went in the time of year that would be officially called spring, and there was about six feet of snow on the ground. Second, there's not a lot to do, especially out of iceberg season. Claudia and I passed most of the time eating and watching old movies. The Monbetsu Rotarians, for their part, did find "interesting" *things for us to do, although they were mostly things that I had already done, like tea ceremonies and kendo practices.* On April first we returned to Osaka together. Besides looking at the ANA Pokemon Jet and eating samples of cheesecake and trying to keep an old gift shop clerk from short changing us, not much happened on the way home. The next day we went to Kyoto and visited some temples. We actually went to Kyoto with no idea what we were going to do, so we just wandered around for a while, playing Spot the Foreign People (Claudia beat me hands down) until I started asking people at random what the most famous temple in Kyoto was, and a nice old lady in a newspaper stand said to go to Kiyomizu-dera. So we found a taxi and went there. It was a temple up on a hill, with a long crowded street of gift shops and tourists leading up to it. Actually, I was pretty impressed by it, because once we got past all of that, the temple was quite beautiful. After that, we walked a long way to the train station and returned to Osaka where we ate some giant ice cream and looked for shoes. This was pretty much how the entire week went, except for a couple of days *that Claudia spent with family south of town.* After Claudia left on the seventh, there was just one more weekend and then the first day of school. So I spent the weekend among the cherry blossoms, which were just then coming into bloom. The Japanese tradition when the cherries come out is to party underneath them, and being exchange students, we couldn't pass up such a wonderful cultural experience. So I spent the *weekend under pink flowers and blue sky, and it was a good way to finish spring break.* Five days of boring school passed, and then we had a weekend orientation that began at a sports hotel in the mountains. It had all sorts of outdoorsy things to do, the only downside being that it was raining that weekend. Day 1 was teaching next year's outbounds how to survive, talk to their host families, and cope with culture shock. Bringing my drama skills back, I played the role of a small-talky American host father. ("How was your flight?" "Boy, you're short!" etc.) That night, I discovered a blurb in a hotel brochure about a 200-foot roller slide, which a group of us jumped onto quite happily around 8 PM. It was very wet and fairly cold, but it was very good fun. On the way back to the hotel, we found these huge regular slides, and I didn't hesitate to jump on one. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital... okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but I *landed on my right wrist and it was sore for two weeks.* Then, on Sunday, we went to the Kabusanji, the mountain temple run by Shindo Kondo, a Rotarian and priest who handles all of the exchange student paperwork and hosts just about everyone in the district at some point. We started with yet another tea ceremony in a beautiful tea house built in a forest, with two glass walls and skylights above it. I think I messed up, though, because I accepted seconds when nobody else did. What can I say, the lady was pushy. "Are you SURE you don't want more? Is it not good?" "OK, OK, give me more!!" Then came Zen meditation, which was very crazy. To do it, you have to sit with your legs folded in a lotus position (which is painful to just about everyone except me), your back straight up, your hands cupped together as though you're holding something, and your eyes closed, for half an hour. Moving, sleeping, coughing, opening your eyes, belching, laughing, farting, cracking jokes at the monks, and the like are all forbidden, and if you do anything more than breathing, you-- I'll use Mr. Kondo's words here receive the hitting. The hitting is with a BIG (I didn't mean to write that in caps but it looks good in caps so I'll leave it) stick, over the shoulders, three times on each side, and it's very loud. During the meditation the guy sitting next to me coughed and got hit, and I almost jumped when the first hit came. Fortunately, I wasn't hit, and in fact I was very impressed by how quickly the time passed and how good I felt when it was over. The same night I moved to my third host family, the Kikuis. My new host father is a Japanese lawyer or "bengoshi," and I have an older sister and younger brother who are both very interesting, although they often watch TV late when I'm trying to sleep in the next room and it drives me nuts. But that's not a big deal. The food is good, the conversations are often hilarious, and they live closer to my school so I can sleep in in the morning. Finally, on April 28, my school had a trip to a herb garden on a mountainside above Kobe. This might sound boring but it was actually very fun. I hung around with a group of four or five Japanese guys and we went up a hiking trail, raced down the long winding footpaths leading down the mountain, and tried to tip a ropeway car. I got to see some interesting things in Kobe, like a mountaintop view of what will be an airport in about a thousand years (they're making an island out of garbage in Kobe bay for it), a famous church started by an affluent foreign guy a hundred years ago, and lots of miscellaneous foreign people. So that's my life so far. The next report will be for May, where you'll hear about me racing cutters at RYLA, flying to Tokyo for the first time, destroying The District Convention, failing The School Sports Test, and much much more. If I'm not late again. Until then... *uh...* *nanoo nanoo!* *-joe, in japan*