This happened about a week after the Furano trip, during the first weekend of September. I had a camping trip for TIEC, the Tokachi International Educator's Circle. (At least, that's how I think it goes. I'm kinda too lazy at the moment to check. Sorry. I'm sure it will show up again sometime.) But remember, I had Furano the weekend before, work all week, this camping trip on the weekend, work all the next week, and another camping trip the weekend after. I wanted a break. I was exhausted and frankly, I'm a homebody. If I get invited out with a group of people, even if I really,
really want to go, there's a slight better than 50% chance that I'll talk myself out of going for one reason or another. I'm not comfortable around groups of people. I don't like asserting myself to talk to them, because I always feel like I'm bothering people or getting in their way. Which is dumb, but there you are.
Anyway, point of this micro-
exposé is that even though I wanted to go to the TIEC trip, I'd pretty much talked myself into not going. Like, I even wrote it down in my planner that I'm "probably not going." So I told my supervisor on Tuesday or Wednesday that I was tired, mentally, and needed a break, and could I please skip the camping trip this weekend?
He crossed his arms over his chest, held his chin, and tilted his head in the pose that generally means, How can I dumb down my Japanese so that I know she'll understand?. It's a difficult process, tho I swear I speak Japanese. (T-T) Finally he says that because there's some classes in the afternoon it'll be considered a business trip, I'll get paid for it, and it's better to go.
Well, damn.
Okay.
Kori-san printed up a map and drew out directions for me, despite my telling him I'd just use my cell phone for navigation. Really, it's better to have a map, too... And then Supervisor-san went and fetched an atlas, which he gave to me as a present (really it just meant that I could keep it and not give it back). Then Kori-san went over the directions with me just to make sure I understood them. ....I think I got it. It's pretty much a straight shot. Thank you, tho. Bob knows I need all the help I can get.
So Saturday morning rolls around and Supervisor-san picks me up to take me to the office so I can get the company car. Tho by this time I've had my own car for about a week, I've not been allowed to drive it because of insurance issues. Which generally isn't a problem--Supervisor-san picks me up for work and takes me home every day, I drive the company car to school, and I ride my bike to the grocery store. It helps that I don't eat. xD' Google Phone says it'll take about 90 minutes to get there, and they want us there by 1, so I left at 11. Just in case, you know. I couldn't get my iPod to work in the car stereo, but anticipating this, I brought Mr Panda, my panda-head shaped speaker, and had it going in the passenger seat. Yay, jams! Google Phone took me along the same route as the directions Kori-san printed for me, so I kind of stopped paying that much attention.
Look at all the pretty scenery.
(You can't. I didn't take pictures; I was driving. But it was really pretty.)
There should be a cemetery coming up somewhere around here that I turn left at.
Oh dear lord, a teeny narrow bridge with two-way traffic. I even tucked my elbows in against my ribs. Because that will make my car skinnier, you know. 9-9 It's like turning down the radio when you're looking for a house number.
I made it to the campsite. Without passing the cemetery.
In 45 minutes.
........
Granted, I was speeding. 10 kmh over the speed limit, usually. But you know... even at speeding.... I looked it up. I wasn't even going 45mph.
.......
I drive faster than that around deaf children at home. wtf.
Anyway. So I make it to the campsite about an hour and a half early. And there's nobody there. x.x I followed the signs for the parking lot around the building (kanji practice is paying off!) and parked my car. As I was typing in a message to the group on facebook about three more cars pulled in and suddenly I wasn't alone! Yay!
The building was really big and pretty! You also can't see it. Sorry. I promise there will be other pictures, tho!
After setting up the main room where the meeting would take place, we played basketball in the gym with whatever game balls we could find. We had two basketballs, a soccer ball, and a volleyball. Then one half of the gym were playing Horse and the other were just doing dunks. I tried to play volleyball against the wall, since next week was the mini-volleyball tournament for teachers in town. Don't know what mini-volleyball is? Don't worry, we'll get to that.
This guy was hanging around outside. (Pun possibly intended, possibly not.) I tried not to look at him.
The boys took the wheelbarrow to get firewood for the bonfire. We even had s'mores stuff! Except someone wound up spilling/pouring beer right into the last bag of marshmallows. As in,
into the bag. Dafuq. But we'll get there eventually.
Setting up for the barbecue.
This little path went around up the mountainside on one side of the campground. I don't know if you can appreciate how steep it was. The answer is preddydam. It was preddydam steep.
This is Ian. He took me and another girl up the slope. Apparently there's a little shrine up on the top. He went last year and Nico wanted to go, and I'd glued myself to Nico. See above confession about socializing. The way it works for me is I generally glue myself to someone for awhile, and when I start getting anxious that they're getting annoyed with me, I change hosts. At the time I was with Nico. So up I went with them.
We made it up the slope. The shrine? Here it is.
The attached plaque. What does it say? Be nice to and love your children. Love, the town of Obihiro. Obihiro believes in loving children.
So it's not a real shrine.
Going back down that preddydam steep slope was
fun. You know the kind.
Anyway. On the opposite side of the campground there was a path that wound away into the depths of the forest. (By the way, the campsite was at a place called 自然の村、the Nature Village. So yeah.) Nico wanted to see where it went. We also found that a gorge ran along the side of the campsite and the path that went away from the campsite, and Nico wanted to see if we could find a way down to the river at the bottom of the gorge. I didn't particularly want to go, but where my host goes, so goeth this social parasite. So off we went.
We passed a sign. What did it say? I can only tell you the gist, because kanji is not my strong suit. Nor is it Nico's or Ian's. I had the best reading Japanese out of us. Yay? Basically it said be careful walking at night, and the Rest House was this way. What's the Rest House, you ask? Hell if I know. Our best guess, once coming across it, was that it was another, larger guest house.
That's where the path led, to the Rest House. Not to the gorge. Poor Nico. Guess we have to go back.
Oh wait.
They found a side path. And now they want to go. Oh, goody... We're going to miss dinner. Oh well. Off we go.
And you know what? It's a good thing we went.
We found Narnia.
Not this. This is a small brook. It's pretty, tho.
This is Narnia.
According to the gospel of Ian, anyway. Here's Ian and Nico.
The stone of Narnia!
Apparently Narnia used to be part of an old park golf course. What's park golf? It's like the redheaded stepchild of real golf and putt-putt. The clubs are closer to putt-putt, but bigger at the head. The balls are somewhere between tennis balls and baseballs. You don't hit the ball like you do in golf, but rather along the ground like in putt-putt. But the course is big enough that you get decent walking exercise. So it's harder than putt-putt, but easier than golf. And it's really popular in Hokkaido. Anyway.
The Magic Pool of Magic. Here there be dolphins and unicorns. And if you go into the water, you'll get magic powers. Again, according to the gospel of Ian. The new powers? New Monia. (Get it?)
There was a playground! Random jungle gym. I played on it!
The Pink Bridge. We weren't high. I swear, there was a random pink suspension bridge.
You could see and hear the water in the river below. It was actually a really peaceful place.
You can sort of see the waterfall back in there. Sorry, my phone wouldn't zoom any more, and I couldn't find my camera.
Sure enough, by the time we made it back it was dark and they'd started dinner without us. We went to the least-crowded grill, which turned out to be the meat-eaters grill. Like, we don't believe in veggies. That's hippie talk.
(Except there were only two people at our grill old enough to know about hippies first hand. One of them used to be one.)
Do not be alarmed, that is not a bear. Not really.
Speaking of bears, I decided after dinner that I wanted to go back to Narnia in the dark. It'd be pretty, right? But nobody wanted to go with me. Poor Ashli. So I decided to go by myself!! I took the flashlight and off I went! I made it to the Rest House, but I couldn't find the path. Then I found
a path, but it didn't look right. I was going to go for it, but then I thought, I really don't want to be lost on this mountain in the forest by myself at night. I decided not to. But then I decided, screw that, if I stick to this rail I won't get lost.
But then I remembered the bears.
See, every time I go anywhere, especially if I'm driving, everyone tells me to be careful of the animals that jump out on the road, particularly the foxes, deer, and "the occasional bear." I swear, everyone uses the same words! They always say don't really worry about it so much, but just be aware of "the occasional bears." And here I was, in the middle of the woods, in the dark, quite alone. And suddenly "the occasional bear" didn't seem so occasional anymore. I went back to the campground.
The bonfire was lit! People were drinking, there was firedancing (basically we skipped in a circle around the fire and tried not to trip on the firewood), and we taught an Irishman about s'mores. It was amazing.
I didn't bring any alcohol, but once people found out that yes, I do drink, they started giving me theirs. Apparently a bunch of people decided that if it was out, it was for general consumption, because the contents of a bottle of rum and one of vodka disappeared, and their owners were rather miffed. Nico made me drinks, then Day-chan made me drinks, and an English chap gave me some bourbon and Coke. And by then I was pretty happy.
Day-chan decided she wanted to go to Narnia, but Ian didn't want to go and I didn't really remember the way to get there. Nico's boyfriend had showed up earlier and drank the entire contents of a bottle of sake or wine, I don't really remember, all by himself, and was quite drunk, so she put him to bed. I was starting to get really sleepy.
「デイちゃん、ねむい！」 "Day-chan, I'm sleepy!"
「ダメ！」 "No!"
She really wanted to go to Narnia. But she wanted to go naked. o.O Day-chan has this obsession with nudity, it seems. I told her I wasn't going to Narnia nude by any stretch of the imagination. At about 3 am I realized we probably weren't going to Narnia, so I went to bed.
The next morning we all went to Narnia. Day-chan said that when she said
naked, she really meant topless but with bras on, because bug bites in delicate places are not fun.
Uh, Day-chan? We need to work on your definition of
nudity.
Anyway. That was the first camping trip in a nutshell! A group of peeps found the way down to the river, but I didn't go with them. I needed to turn the car back in at work.
Quick note about the mini-volleyball tournament.
What is mini-volleyball? Anyone know? It's a sport that was born here in Taiki! It's like volleyball, which I'm sure you got. It's played on a quarter of a basketball course. The net is lower--like, it's not much taller than I am. The ball is the same size as a volleyball but is an inflatable ball. Kinda like a beach ball, only a lot smaller and a bit heavier, so it's not so wishywashy about direction or speed. It's played to 11 points, with two sets per game. The server rotates each time the ball changes back to your side, and you don't have to serve to get the point. So, say my team is serving and I'm in the back left corner. We score, so we serve again. Oh no, we missed! The other team gets a point. They serve and hit the net. Oops. We get a point, and we move one space clockwise, so now I'm the server. That kind of thing.
The tournament was set up between the teachers at the Taiki and Oda schools. Each school had a team, but Taiki Elementary had three teams, I think, because they have a large staff. It's four or five people to a team, you see. Some teachers decided to play park golf instead, but I picked mini-volley. The Education Center (where I work) had its own team, even tho we're not really teachers.
And you know what?
We're really bad a mini-volley.
But it was fun! And we didn't get last place! Second to last, but not last!
I don't have any pictures of it because I was playing, but I think Chi-sensei took some. I'll ask her on Tuesday.
After the tournament (which was over in about an hour and a half, by the way) there was a drinking party. It seems almost like the tournament was an excuse to have a party. xD But it was fun! There were prizes for the top two volley teams, a consolation prize that the losing teams competed for, a "lucky person" prize, and prizes for pretty much everybody who played park golf. We were placed at tables, with assigned seating--you had to find your nametag and sit there. They put us at tables with teachers at all of the schools, so you generally didn't know the people you were sitting with. Kori-san from the office was at my table, so I knew him, and Shi-sensei from Oda Middle (you've obviously picked up on the fact that I'm not using people's real names, right? We were told not to do that. Privacy issues and gossip and whatnot.), and I knew the guy sitting on her left from Taiki Elementary on sight--he works in the office and comes to our office every now and again--but I don't know his name. That was all. The two people on either side of me were from Taiki High, and I don't teach there. Anyway. It was fun! I don't eat fish, so people kept giving me everything else and feeding me. x.x People feed me everywhere I go, it seems.
One of the teachers from Taiki Middle brought his "PET Bottle Beer"--Plastic Bottle Beer. Beer he made in a plastic bottle. xD It actually wasn't bad! Well, not terrible, anyway.
For the consolation prize, each of the non-winning teams picked a person to go up to the front. They didn't tell us what we were doing, so it was kind of scary. Dmon-san was going to go from our team, but halfway up to the stage he spotted me and made me go instead. x.x Did I mention I have no idea what's going on?
The announcer guy starts talking about this and that and about the prize. Shi-sensei leans over to me and says, "Don't worry, Ashli-sensei. If you win the salmon, someone at the office can cook it for you."
.... Salmon. There were three fish as a prize, in a Styrofoam coffin of ice. Welcome to Japan. I don't want to win, particularly.
So the contest was this: we played janken (rock, paper, scissors) to decide the order. Then we had to kick a sandal off our foot at the mike stand, and whoever got closest won. Again. Welcome to Japan.
And guess what?
I won.
Yep. The fish gods either love or hate me, I'm not sure.
Next was the "lucky person" prize. My boss's boss was the presenter for this one. So he goes up to the stage and turns to look at the crowd.
He says, 「今日は何月、何日ですか。」
"What's the date today?"
Oh, how I hate this question. In college, every class for my first three years of Japanese started off with those dreaded words. And it wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that about half the days of the month have a special name, which I can never for the life of me remember. But I knew the date. It was September 4th.
Right. 9, 4. So the people with 9 and 4 written on their name tags were the "lucky people." So I looked at my name tag. On the inside was written a large 9. I won! This is what I won.
A bag, with three packs of rice inside. ^-^
I can't help but think this one at least was rigged. "Let's make sure the foreigner has a good experience, that she wins something!" I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it makes me happy that they're being so considerate of me. But still.
There was also some prize given out for the winner of a room-wide game of janken. We were playing against the announcer, who was wearing a Micky Mouse glove. I'm serious. If you won the round, you kept playing. If you tied or lost, you sat down. It came down to Mr Announcer and the Vice Principal of Taiki Middle, who then also had to wear a Mickey Mouse glove. It was funny. ^-^ The VP won.
Other prizes were given out, eating and drinking, some socializing. Then everyone had to get up in their teams, introduce themselves, and say something they like. Some of them were silly answers (sweartagawd someone said "I like cheese." The teacher I kind of thought was cute and was beginning to crush on said that since he was recently married he liked/loved [since the word is the same] his wife), and some were serious. Finally all the school teams were done and the announcer released us to our socializing. Yay!
Until someone pointed it out.
He'd skipped the Education Center.
...... I hate you, whoever you are.
So we all five or six of us lined up against the stage, with me at the end of the line. The mike was moving closer to me. Have I mentioned lately that I abhor speaking in front of people? Pretty much the only reason I survived the first three weeks with the endless self-introductions is that after the second day and twentieth rendition, it was pretty much reflex. But I couldn't use that whole speech right now, it wasn't quite appropriate. Well, crap.
It was my turn.
I could kind of hear my voice echoing on the speakers. I sounded so cute and sweet, all girlish.
「みんなさん、始めました、こんばんは。新しいAETで、アシュリーと申します。アメリカのオクラホマ州から来ました。私、 日本と日本語が好きです。ありがとうございます。」
"Good evening, everyone, nice to meet you. I'm the new AET (Assistant English Teacher), and my name is Ashli. I'm from the state of Oklahoma in the United States. I like Japan and Japanese. Thank you."
Of course, you couldn't hear the "thank you" because everyone was laughing and applauding. Apparently it was a good answer.
PET Bottle Beer-sensei came over and hung out at our table, talking with me and some of the other teachers the rest of the time, which was nice. He's funny. His desk is fairly near mine at the middle school, which I didn't realize until I saw him there the next time I went. I like him. ^-^
The night wound down and everyone started collecting food, drinks, prizes, and cleaning up. I wound up with a container of fruit and three bottles of drink, my bag of rice, and my coffin of fish and ice. But I gave that to Dmon-san and the other office peeps. I wouldn't eat it, after all. Along with the coffin came a second wrapped box.
Ramen! It's pre-cooked noodles in packaging, and mix for the broth. The miso flavor is a paste, the soysauce flavor is more of a liquid, and I've not tried the salt one yet. It's really,
really good ramen, even if you're like me and don't have anything in it but noodles and broth. I really liked the miso flavor. Unfortunately I ate it all.
If you look at that picture closely you'll see a preview for the next chapter!
