Okidoki. We had another shortened school week to make way for JUMP, ASIJ's Japan Understanding Motivational Project. (Oh, how I hate the name...) I was stuck on the cheapest one which lasted from 8:30 to 3:30 on Thursday and Friday. To put the ease into perspective, some people left for Okinawa on Thursday morning and will be returning on Sunday night. I would have preferred to be on the trip with Mrs. Gotterson, which was also a cheap day trip, but there were a bunch of seniors that chose that as their first choice and seniors get first priority.

...but yes, my trip ended up being quite nice. On the first day, we met in Musashi Koganei and went to the Tokyo Open Air Architecture Museum. There are lots of volunteers there and some are retired artisans in Japanese crafts. We first did ai-zome, japanese tie-dying, with an awesome old man who insisted on having one of the kids in our group translate for him but ended up explaining everything in English. After we set our lovely work out to dry, we sat down with another old guy and made rope out of straw. Lots of fun. The rope thing was quite fascinating. We got eight pieces of straw, tied them together at one end, and separated them into two bunches. The simple technique he taught us caused the four pieces of straw to twist together one way while we twisted the resulting two bunches the other way into an unbreakable rope. Wahee!

After our udon lunch, we met our volunteer tour guide at the front gate and I volunteered to be her translator. VERY FUN EXPERIENCE. When I left, I was talking to the chaperone on our trip about doing some volunteer work there as an English tour guide. But yes, this museum was really incredible. They have brought a variety of houses from all over Japan from a variety of eras, but the most interesting were the ones that were built during World War II or survived the war. The household of the ridiculously wealthy Mitsui family of Japan, for example, burned down in the war and their next one was built from a hodge podge of rooms from houses in Kyoto, Osaka, Roppongi, etc. Another had a telephone pole as its central support pillar and the metal facade of a store that was pelted with shrapnel. There was a bathhouse from the 30s and a stationery shop and wow, it was just too cool. You can go inside all of the houses, which we couldn't do since the explanations doubled in time with both Japanese and English. I want to go again.

A claim to fame for that place is that Miyazaki Hayao goes there and actually got inspiration for parts of the movie Spirited Away from three places in the museum. He even left a signed drawing in the place where we ate udon.

Second day, we did taiko, made yakisoba, and watched Shall We Dance. I have nothing more to say about it.

Exciting news flash! My two favourite stores in Japan, Uniqlo and Mujirushi, are coming within walking distance of where I live! Hurrah for chain stores!!

Unfortunately, I don't think the camera is going to work. There is no cord that seems like it will connect to the computer, but I could take it to an electronics store to see if such a cord exists. Yes. Maybe that'd be best.