Korean BBQ

This Saturday was the official one week mark for me being in Japan. And I am easily having the best time of my life here. A testament to this fact is how I haven't had the chance to blog for some time now. So many exciting and fun things have happened since I last was able to blog, so I will do my best to jam all of the important stuff into this one megalithic SUPER BLOG. So buckle up your seat belts and pop a liberal dose of anti-nausea medications, because this ones gonna be a doozie. If I'm not able to get up to date with this blog however, I might have to split it up into two parts, so stick with me! I promise all the adventures I've been having lately are definitely well worth the read.

Every day here is so much fun that it doesn't even feel like work. A lot of this has to do with the people that I work with. Obviously the Camp Adventure folks here are amazing, but I was pleasantly surprised when I met the MWR folks that we would be working with this summer (MWR stands for Morale Welfare and Recreation, these are the people that contract us out for the summer). My first real interaction with the folks from MWR was at the “ropes course” that was planned for us on Wednesday. This wasn't so much a ropes course though as it was just a session of really fun team builders led by a strange man that claimed he could talk to a small rubber fish named Puffy. Aside from fish-man's strangeness, the team builders were an absolute blast. I met two of the local lifeguards Kou-san and Toru-san, as well as some English speaking lifeguards along with the head lifeguard that I'll be working with this summer. Although it was very nice to meet the people I would be working with this summer, Kou and Toru were definitely my favorite. They were both very keen about helping me with my Japanese skills, and they also did a great job of keeping us all entertained with their wily Japanese antics, most notably the Obligatory Japanese Realization Sound. If you are unfamiliar with this sound, it goes a little something like this:

“OooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

If you can't tell by my capitalization elements, the variation in pitch seen in the common 'Obligatory Japanese Realization Sound' can be described as a common bell curve plotted on a graph with the y-axis representing vocal pitch and the x-axis representing time.

On a more serious note though, in addition to the entertainment factor that Toru-san and Kou-san provided, spending time with them and and other MWR staff during a day of team builders and fun really made me appreciate and understand how lucky I am to have been given this experience. I'm realizing that not only is it a huge privilege to be a part of Camp Adventure, but I'm also very lucky to have ended up in THIS country, on THIS particular base. I haven't gone too in depth about the privileges that we are given as students on this navy base, but there are A LOT. To name just a few, we are given FREE movies ALL SUMMER LONG at the two movie theaters on base, FREE BOWLING ALL SUMMER LONG, and access to the general mess, which is essentially a really decent, really inexpensive place to eat that even our MWR counterparts don't have access to. SORRY ABOUT THE INTERMITANT CAPITALIZATIONS, I AM JUST SO IMRPESSED ABOUT THE THINGS WE GET AND WANT TO EMPHASIZE THIS ACCORDINGLY. They people on this navy base really appreciate and respect the Camp Adventure kids. This makes me really happy, especially when random, important looking navy personnel stop us on the street to tell us personally how much they appreciate and respect the Camp Adventure kids. But what's that you say? Enough about the boring self-flattery stuff? You just want to hear more about my exciting and borderline inappropriate interactions with the wonderful Japanese economy? Well great! Because that's what I was about to dive right in to!

I realize that this is a duplicate picture... Blogspot is just sucking hard right now and doing weird things like duplicating my pictures and not letting me delete them. Woo.

One of my latest excursions into the cultural hearth of Japan involved the pinnacle of my fine cuisine experiences to date. After wandering around the Daiei mall with the low rumble of my travelmates' frustrations in my leading abilities fresh in my ear, I recognized a restaurant that I knew at once would be a big hit. When I peeked inside the windows of said restaurant, I immediately saw the jovial emotions and outbursts of Japanese restaurant-goers that could only have been the direct responses of a “cook-your-raw-meal-yourself-at-your-own-table-slash-open-grill-apparatus” type of restaurant. Having never been let down by my unconventional skill of extrapolating the quality of a restaurant by the visible behavior of its Japanese patrons, I quickly led my travel group inside. I'm going to go ahead and say right now that my travel group will never be doubting my judgment again regarding meal venues.

When we got inside, a nice waiter led us to a small corner table while being sure to speak plenty of Japanese that we didn't understand. After we were seated, we were happy to find that they had English menus for the exact occasion that a bunch of wily English speaking college students might somehow stumble inside. After we were situated, the Japanese human waiter guy gave a little Japanese schpeel, turned on our table slash open grill apparatus, and then left us to paruse the menu and accidentally burn ourselves a number of times. When we received our food, the real fun began. Essentially it was just like one of those restaurants where you get your food cooked on the big circular open grill thing, except in this case you have the privilege of cooking the food to your own liking, with the fun bonus of a 3^rd degree burn if you're really lucky.

Obviously, it's one of my goals to take a picture with someone from every restaurant I eat at.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop here for now, and then when I pick up next time I'll be able to devote an entire post to my weekend adventures. This last weekend I traveled to Yokohoma, the 2^nd largest city in Japan on Saturday, and then Zushi Beach on Sunday, so I have some sweet pictures and stories for you all. It seems like every time I log on there are more followers for my blog, and it makes me super happy to see that so many people are interested in reading my stuff. Thanks again to everyone! Its nice to have a support network when I'm traveling so far away from home. BE SURE TO TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT OF ARISTON IN JAPAN!