The foreign exchange students had lunch and then spent a few hours with some Japanese elementary students. It was fun to play a little basketball and soccer with them. They also showed us a talent show. The part that I found interesting about the talent show was that they were always doing things in groups. Even if it was readily apparent that only one student had any skill in what they were doing, they still had a few other students up there doing stuff with them.

They also asked some questions to the students. Things like what was the first Japanese word you learned, what Japanese food do you like, and what Japanese animie is popular in your country. Tonari no Totaro is apparently really popular in Korea.

 
This monday I went to see the Mitsubishi factory. We toured their motor building factory, their tv and monitar building factory, and their air conditioner factory. I expected to see more polite smilling workers working quickly. It was more of a slow paced workers quitely working with themselves. The lack of talking or music was the really surprising part. I was expecting to at least hear music. I guess that comes from working at the Roundy's warehouse were every worker listened to music.

It was however much more clean than I remember Roundy's being. And not just in the electronics, but everywhere was cleaner. The workers didnt look as ragged as Roundy's workers either. I think a dress code where the company gives you the clothing may help this.

 
This last weekend I went to Fokouka with three other American students. You dont know how small Nagasaki really feels until you actually go to a bigger city. We went to some interesting places in Fokouka. The Shinto shrine that is outside of the city is much bigger and much more colorfull. It was especially cool because there was something going on there on the day we went so there were a lot of people dressed up in traditional wear. Lots of kids dressed up this way. I bought more protective Shinto dealies(cant remember their name). They are little charms made out of fabric that are supposed to be good for different things. Fokouka also has some very good Ramen. It was the first decently spicy food that I had in Japan(Much spicier than the Korean food). We also went to a traditional Japanese bar. I guess I am getting more used to drinking Shochu because it doesnt taste that bad in hot water any more.

The next day we went out to Fokouka dome, and tower. It looks really different from Tokyo tower as they put glass on the outside so it looks more like a skyscraper. We also saw a really nice Chinese Junk in the sea. We had lunch at Hard Rock Fokouka. Better than Wendys and its nice to get some American confort food every now and again.

It was also interesting to see the Fokouka nitelife again. Someone needs to bug Seb until he posts the "Pocky" flyer that I found. He kept it as a souvanier.

Shopping Fokouka also reinforced some thoughts about Japanese malls. These malls were more like American malls in layout but they didnt have any standard chain stores like I see in every American mall. I think to find what you want to buy in Japan sometimes realy requires a Japanese person helping you.

 
I also cooked Jambalaya(Thats how the Japanese MS Word tells me to spell it) for my host family a few weeks ago. It was slightly modified from the normal recipe in that I didnt have any spicy sauce, and that my host mother cooked the rice seperately in a rice cooker. I think it turned out pretty good. My host sister asked for me to cook it again some time.

The most interesting part about it was being on the other end of the ittedakimasu and the gochisosama. I never really thought about how those were really thanking the cheif more than anyone else whan you say that...