As a way to get out of school, I spent two afternoons chatting with a group of 7 advance English speakers at the big paper company in my city. The group of young, attractive, and interesting Japanese men were selected by the company to take intensive English all-day, everyday for a year and a half in order to move them into trading positions with companies abroad. On the first day, after some short introductions from John, Al, Jack, Jimbo, Ian, etc. (their chosen English names), the group quickly launched into what felt like a small-scale version of Love Line. Apparently, most of them had never met a female foreigner and had written down all kinds of questions inspired from their current reading assignment, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps. I was unprepared but highly entertained by their questions regarding not only the American female but the mysterious female brain in general. For example, I was asked, "is it ok to approach a woman in the grocery store?”, “how can women always tell when we’re lying?”, "is it ok to check my girlfriend's email?" and some more inappropriate questions that need not be written. Paul then asked, “What are the physical signs that a woman is interested in a man?" After a lot of thought but no concise answer on my part, they cited a passage explaining that a woman will play with her hair and bite her fingernails which were both things that I was doing at that very moment. They got a good laugh out of this and I, of course, turned bright red. We also took and analyzed a series of personality tests to decipher exactly when and where men and women differ. I'm not sure that I helped enlighten them about women but they certainly taught me more about men. As if that wasn't enough, I was also given a year's worth of household paper products which have been happily received by nearly everyone I know.

Hanami

I spent the past five days hopping around cities for hanami (cherry blossom viewing). Cherry blossoms are the national flower in Japan and their one-week long blooming directly coincided with the beginning of the new school year, the new fiscal business year, and perfect warm weather in my area. Unfortunately, today has been extremely windy and rainy and so I think it's safe to say that the blossoms will soon be scattered all over the ground and will apparently look like a beautiful pink and white carpet. It sounds to me like another great excuse for picnics and celebrations.




Learning tea ceremony under the cherry blossoms

Night party at Kawanoe Castle





Matsuyama festivals

The emphasis at these parties is definitely on the beer and sake

For a friend's birthday, a big group of us went out for an amazing French dinner after a day of rugby practice, going to the onsen, and many more hours of gathering under the trees.


Kawanoe festivals including some intense sumo wrestling and more tea ceremonies






Last weekend, I went with two friends to the next prefecture over for a day of museums. We saw a huge range of Japanese and Western style art and found lots of tasty little shops and restaurants. At one point, amidst a European photography exhibit, my friends thought a huge wall-size photo of a cow-pasture with hundreds of cows was very entertaining since cattle are rarely seen around here and the few dairy cows that do exist seem to be tucked away inside barns. After a little struggling with the Japanese phonetic alphabet, I realized that the picture was taken in non-other-than Greeley, Colorado. I explained that it is those very cows that we smell as the winds shift right before it snows...ahhhh, home.

a cool reflection