Long time no write

Mutch to do, little time!

06/30/2008

So, what’s new?
I don’t even remember what I wrote the last time. It’s been very intense these last few days.

The participants have arrived, we survived the first few days, and now I’m settled in with a finnish guy named Ilkka in one of the nicest hostfamilies I’ve encountered so far.

My first responsibility on this tour is the arigatou eventou. People come to this program from all over the world. They want to learn about japanese culture, through experience, travel and so forth. Many of them have been waiting for weeks, even months to come here.
For the first few days they’ve been living together in a schoolcamp-ish place.-no hostfamilies to begin with.
That’s because we’d like them to get accustomed with the rules and regulations of WCI, and somewhat used to adapting to a new culture before they get thrown into the awesomeness that is japanese culture.

But still, from their point of view, they have finally arrived in japan, and so far they have weird food for breakfast, not that many japanese people, and a classroom to attend every day. After a few days of this, a guy enters the stage for two days, and makes them dance and sing songs.
Taking on that role isn’t always as fun to do.
Many of these participants wants to contribute with great iadeas. They come to me with them, and expect me to work them out and put them into action. That is (sadly) not how it workds, no matter how great that could turn out. If every tour had that active participants on that front it would definetly be a sollution to be considered. But for timesaving reasons, and not to mention the fact that a lot of these iadeas requires someone elses expertise to actually work; that is sadly not an option.

So it’s been a few discussions back and forth, and the attentionspan of the participants aren’t always on top, so a few messages get missunderstood too.
I don’t like having to defend my or WCIs decisions. Partly because a lot of them aren’t my own, no matter how mutch I agree with them, and partly because they simply don’t have the experience to make decisions on the matter. There is a reason why these chioces were made as they were.

With that said, the group is fantastic when it comes to learning and performing. They are ahead of schedule, and they sing like angels.
A lot of their iadeas for arigatou eventou will definetly be used, and I know the hostfamilies will love it. Even though I am somewhat stressed out about it now, I know for sure that we will all feel very good about ourselves when the time comes.

Some of them also critizise japanese food a lot. I don't get it. It's SOOO good. The people here have grown vegetables for us. They were planted with the intent of us eating it. They have even cooked them for us, and prepeared both breakfast, lunch and for us so many times.
But some participants prefer meat for breakfast, and "don't really like" a lot of the food.
I'm so suprised.

But they're learning out of this, and if they won't eat they'll just have to go hungry home.. that's my opinion anyways, there's a lot of variated and delicious food here.

In other news, me and Ilkka are having a great time with our hostfamily here. It consists of 3 people, Matsuhiro-san (father), he works with cars at nighttime, Makiko-san (mother) works at an “itarian restaurant” (that’s taken from a sign outside a restaurant) and their daughter Raimu-san, who’s 17 years old.

Welcoming flags.
My name is a little misspelled, but I really love it!

They are all into anime, manga, movies and to some degree videogames. We get along so well it’s scary. Raimu-san is SO good at drawing. She’s making a manga for her school club, and I am so impressed by her drawings. I looked at them for the first time this morning, and I was wondering if I could keep those copies, as I really liked the drawings. But when I studied them closer they were not copies, but actually hand made. It looked –that- good. She spends about 30 min per page. I’m so impressed I don’t know what to do.

They also have four dogs. Today, as Matsuhiro-san was getting me a Goku statue (it turned out he wanted to give me! Super Sayan lvl.3! XD ) inside our bedroom, the oldest one ran onto my futon and peed on it.
Wow.
I’m pretty sure that dog has a grudge against me or something, but I don’t know why. I thought we were getting along fine.

Ilkka has a great curiosity I’m really enjoying. I also get to test my translating skills out with all his questions, limited as it might be, it’s still a lot of fun. Beeing somewhat accustomed to the japanese culture, it’s great to have such a soul in the same room. Makes me think of my first family in Omura, and how absolutely everything was cool. (trust me, it still is.-but I now know how the showers work for example. It took me a few days to get that one right, and even though I’m still not quite sure how to use everything, there’s just not the same eksightement in entering a bathroom anymore. (Ilkka on the other hand was wondering how to stop the sink on top of the toilet that starts going automaticly when you flush. He got me and Makiko-san in there to see a sink that wasn’t running because it automaticly stops. These moments are priceless. I’ll always miss this in Norway.)

Allright, that should be it for a quick resume for now. I’m going to bed very sleepy after a great day with a super hike and a visit to hokuto, a mushroom company.

In the mushroomfactory.