This week is o-bon week here in Japan. It is one of the biggest holiday festival times of the year, and it means that I have the whole week off from sitting in the Board of Education office doing nothing, so I can sit at my apaato and do nothing. ACtually I am trying to gety it set up, but it is proving very difficult for me so far. I am used to having everything that I need, and many extra things I do not need, and the real challenge is simply to arrange them in some sort of livable way. Now I don:t have anything that I need, and I can barely figure out how to get them either. For instance, I don:t have a trash can yet, which is not as bad as it sounds because I don:t generate much trash at all. But I don:t even know how to go about getting one. I guess I will go to the hyaku-en store. It is like a dollar store, except hyaku-en is really worth maybe 80 cents, but the stuff they have is really great for a dollar overall, especially plates and other home necessities. There is a store across the way that sells old junk, which has always been my favorite kind of store anyway. The stuff in this store seems pretty great though because no one in Japan wants anything that is even a little bit old. So I picked up a decent amplifyer for less than $30, and a decent pair of 100 watt 3-channel speakers for the same low price. SO I have a decent stereo, although I still need to find the store which sells little wires to connect things to it.

But as far as doing things around here goes, not too much to report on so far. I did get to hang out with Kimiko-san the other day, with whom I stayed when I was here a few months ago. She is a really amazing person and I always have a great time hanging out with here, which for some reason surprises me. I suppose I am not expecting to enjoy the company of a 50-year-old woman, but she is really cool. The other day I met her daughter, who has been an exchange student in Towson the past three years. Despite living ten minutes from me, I had never met her before. I brought as a present a jigsaw puzzle of Baltimore but she could tell by looking closely at it that it was a little outdated and missing some important things. We went to dinner at an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. In contrast to America, all you can eat here is not a buffet, but they just keep bringing you dishes for an hour, or two hours, or however long you signed up for. And Chinese food is of significantly higher quality, at least where we went.

Also the other day I went to McDonald:s. It wasn:t particularly good or bad, just strange. What I had was called Teriyaki McBurger, and it was decent. I like the really sweet mayonnaise they have here, although the "burger" itself was small. If you are ever coming to visit me, and of course you are, I would say that McDonald:s is not worth going to.

One thing that I am doing that is really cool is taking part in the obon festival that is going on in the next few weeks. As part of this, we are doing the awa-odori dance in the parade for a few hours. It is a very difficult dance for someone as weak as myself, for although the movements are simple, you must keep your arms straight and above shoulder height for extended periods of time. I have just come from a two-hour practice and mine feel as if they will fall of at any time. But it is really a lot of fun and the people I have met through it are really cool. And of course everyone gets really drunk before the festival, because something like 500,000 people come to watch the many teams dancing in the streets. In fact, we practice getting drunk at rehearsals too, for a more authentic practice.