Hello.

So in my last report I got up to the end of April or someplace like the end of April.

Perhaps I'll start by saying that it's gotten hot again. I'm not even sure when it stopped being freezing cold and started being terribly hot, but it happened, sometime a few weeks ago, and now I sweat every day although I actually have a tan now, kind of.

The tan came from RYLA which was from May 3-5 which was the "Golden Week" three-day holiday in Japan. I was sort of ticked off that I had a week with only three days of school and I had a Rotary thing to go to; I thought "Why don't they schedule it DURING school days?" But it was actually very fun. It was held on the ocean, in the cheapest hotel ever built, the Prefectural Youth Marine Center, which had boats and boats and disgusting food and lots of fun. Day 2 was our big Day on the Water and we raced longboats and little rowboats and had a triathlon sort of thing on the ground. I was in a group with a group of Japanese and Virginie from Belgium, and we lost every single event. Granted, the longboat race was sort of a shoe-in because we were up against Group 1 led by Joern "The Crazy German Freak" who had his longboat keeping time by yelling "Ichi-BAN Ichi-BAN" ("number ONE number ONE") while I

chose the word "Shin-DOI Shin-DOI" ("shindoi" is an Osakan word for pooped). It looked straight out of Ben-Hur.

That night was a campfire and I was put in charge of setting up a campfire song for our group. Virginie wrote it in French. Although I'd like to give you all the lyrics here I'm afraid it would make anyone who can understand French fall over laughing. The basic plot was that a monk had found a little girl's bike in a ditch and wouldn't take it out. OK.

Then, on the third day, we hit the beach, and I go the stupidest tan in history. I had hurt my wrist playing kendo (the guy who was teaching me thought it wise for me to spar one-handed) and so I had a bandage on it. Thus my arm is still reddish brown and my wrist almost fluorescent white.

It's sort of crazy.

So right after that was Sports Test. I was thinking of making up an excuse not to do it but none came to me immediately so I went in. It was sort of ridiculous, actually. We started by doing exercises to piano music played over an ancient tape player set behind a megaphone. The music and our exercises didn't sync so it just served to make the whole thing sillier and I ended up laughing instead of touching my toes. The actual test was just throwing volleyballs and jumping and running. At least I got out early from school.

School went on for another week and then came the district convention. It was held at the huge new International Meeting Hall which is actually right next to my school. The funniest part was the program, because our names and the names of other foreign people were horribly mispelled.

For instance, a woman named Brown was spelled Blown, and Rita was spelled Pita. My name was Joe jones. We did get to see, after about eighty hours of speeches by the governor of Osaka and district governor and chairman and president and president-elect and vice-president-in-chief and emperor... well, you get the point... an amazing Japanese music

presentation, with taiko drums (a taiko is a huge drum that a guy sort of hangs off of and beats like a madman) and shakuhachi (a little, highish-pitched bamboo flute).

Last week was exams at school. I must confess that my grades weren't that good. Japanese history was 0 (I'm boycotting the teacher for making fun of America), home economics was a big 1, and Japanese was a surprising 15. The weirdest test for me was World History because I got a 25 on it. I even got full credit on an essay question about Greece which is a scary first for me in Japan. Of course my best score was in English expression... a big fat 83 because the teacher is horrible at English and can't translate Japanese properly. On my English grammar test I got another zero because I took up the entire test paper telling jokes instead of translating sentences. For instance, below "Santa Claus lives around the north pole" I wrote "He's so fat he really lives *around* the north pole! ha ha ha joke!" Next to the question, written in red, was

"Just don't compare Santa to me." I suppose the teacher is sensitive about his weight. At the end, after a whale of a paragraph about Hawaii's first contact with Captain Cook, I drew a giant cartoon of Hawaiians shooting Cook's ship with lasers and spy satellites. All I can say is: I enjoy not being serious sometimes.

So the report ends here. Sorry, but I'm out of things to talk about. Next month's report will have lots of neat stuff in it if I don't forget to write it.

Until then, sonno-joi and lots of ai.

-joe, in japan

now at crazyredosakadude@yahoo.com



	*Hello.* *So in my last report I got up to the end of April or someplace like the end of April.* Perhaps I'll start by saying that it's gotten hot again. I'm not even sure when it stopped being freezing cold and started being terribly hot, but it happened, sometime a few weeks ago, and now I sweat every day although I actually have a tan now, kind of. The tan came from RYLA which was from May 3-5 which was the "Golden Week" three-day holiday in Japan. I was sort of ticked off that I had a week with only three days of school and I had a Rotary thing to go to; I thought "Why don't they schedule it DURING school days?" But it was actually very fun. It was held on the ocean, in the cheapest hotel ever built, the Prefectural Youth Marine Center, which had boats and boats and disgusting food and lots of fun. Day 2 was our big Day on the Water and we raced longboats and little rowboats and had a triathlon sort of thing on the ground. I was in a group with a group of Japanese and Virginie from Belgium, and we lost every single event. Granted, the longboat race was sort of a shoe-in because we were up against Group 1 led by Joern "The Crazy German Freak" who had his longboat keeping time by yelling "Ichi-BAN Ichi-BAN" ("number ONE number ONE") while I *chose the word "Shin-DOI Shin-DOI" ("shindoi" is an Osakan word for pooped). It looked straight out of Ben-Hur.* That night was a campfire and I was put in charge of setting up a campfire song for our group. Virginie wrote it in French. Although I'd like to give you all the lyrics here I'm afraid it would make anyone who can understand French fall over laughing. The basic plot was that a monk had found a little girl's bike in a ditch and wouldn't take it out. OK. Then, on the third day, we hit the beach, and I go the stupidest tan in history. I had hurt my wrist playing kendo (the guy who was teaching me thought it wise for me to spar one-handed) and so I had a bandage on it. Thus my arm is still reddish brown and my wrist almost fluorescent white. *It's sort of crazy.* So right after that was Sports Test. I was thinking of making up an excuse not to do it but none came to me immediately so I went in. It was sort of ridiculous, actually. We started by doing exercises to piano music played over an ancient tape player set behind a megaphone. The music and our exercises didn't sync so it just served to make the whole thing sillier and I ended up laughing instead of touching my toes. The actual test was just throwing volleyballs and jumping and running. At least I got out early from school. School went on for another week and then came the district convention. It was held at the huge new International Meeting Hall which is actually right next to my school. The funniest part was the program, because our names and the names of other foreign people were horribly mispelled. For instance, a woman named Brown was spelled Blown, and Rita was spelled Pita. My name was Joe jones. We did get to see, after about eighty hours of speeches by the governor of Osaka and district governor and chairman and president and president-elect and vice-president-in-chief and emperor... well, you get the point... an amazing Japanese music *presentation, with taiko drums (a taiko is a huge drum that a guy sort of hangs off of and beats like a madman) and shakuhachi (a little, highish-pitched bamboo flute).* Last week was exams at school. I must confess that my grades weren't that good. Japanese history was 0 (I'm boycotting the teacher for making fun of America), home economics was a big 1, and Japanese was a surprising 15. The weirdest test for me was World History because I got a 25 on it. I even got full credit on an essay question about Greece which is a scary first for me in Japan. Of course my best score was in English expression... a big fat 83 because the teacher is horrible at English and can't translate Japanese properly. On my English grammar test I got another zero because I took up the entire test paper telling jokes instead of translating sentences. For instance, below "Santa Claus lives around the north pole" I wrote "He's so fat he really lives around the north pole! ha ha ha joke!" Next to the question, written in red, was "Just don't compare Santa to me." I suppose the teacher is sensitive about his weight. At the end, after a whale of a paragraph about Hawaii's first contact with Captain Cook, I drew a giant cartoon of Hawaiians shooting Cook's ship with lasers and spy satellites. All I can say is: I enjoy not being serious sometimes. *So the report ends here. Sorry, but I'm out of things to talk about. Next month's report will have lots of neat stuff in it if I don't forget to write it.* *Until then, sonno-joi and lots of ai.* *-joe, in japan* *now at crazyredosakadude@yahoo.com*