The better half is sleeping.

This is Don this time. i don't think i can do as good of a job as Chrissy (sorry only two pictures) but here it is. Tokyo wasn't so fun a few weeks ago. All I saw was the inside of the hotel. Nice hotel though. I think you already know about the toilet.

Rumoi: we are now in our home in Rumoi and I have been going to the office everyday for the past two weeks. I sit at my desk in the corner of a big office filled with 32 people who don't speak English. It helps that I have absolutely no work to do right now. The students are on summer break so I am not sure what anybody else is actually doing either. I sit at my desk and make flash cards and read a million different Japanese language books for hours on end. NO INTERNET ACCESS. NO EMAIL. Lunch gets my blood going though. We order our food by going to a vending machine and getting a ticket which we hand to the lunch ladies. Since I can't read Japanese I never know what I am getting. Most days I get lucky and the food is really good (except for the bowl of cold noodles soaking in what looked like human spit [not joking]).


This week they threw us a curve and invited us to an "enkai"- or work party. They took Chissy and I out to a what we think is their version of TGI Fridays. It is thier big chain restaurant that is in every town and has a large American style selection on the menu. We had a great time. The men were all trying to drink really fast and commented a lot that gai-jin "are strong for alcohol." I think they wanted to test their metal. They sat us with the bosses and they pounded their first three or four beers before we even had food served. We think they chose the place in honor of us because it had American style food but we ruined their plans and ordered sushi anyway. Next came out a huge bottle of sake for the big boss' birthday (who introduces himself as "boss"). For the first time since we have been here we were really able to communicate because they sat us with a former English teacher who translated for us. It wound up being a lot of fun.

After dinner most of us (including all of the bosses) went to a karaoke place. We sang "We Are The World" as a group!! They sang a lot of Japanese folk songs that put me to shame (Chrissy always holds her own though) and they had bottles of whiskey on the table and a a matron who sat and drank with us that kept filling our glasses. We were fine before we got there but with her filling our glasses everytime we looked away the bike ride home was was dangerous. We made it home OK and our first night out in Rumoi was a success! Next morning, show up to work, me and my 32 new friends go back to ignoring each other for 8 hours like nothing happened. Weird.