Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas Illuminations
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Sagamigawa River
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Leaves!

Thursday, December 4, 2008
Enoshima
Monday, November 17, 2008
Our Fuji-san Excursion
Next, we went to Lake Kawaguchi, one of Fuji's five lakes.
We took a boat tour on the lake.
Posted by Vanessa. Maddie says, "Peace!"
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Halloween....and more!
The next day, Nov. 1st we went to the Naval base in Atsugi to see some live outdoor music. It was an absolutely beautiful day. The first band was a local band called Middle of the Road that included one of our new friends on vocals. They were great but the crowd was sparse. The next band was called Vinyl Soul and were very good with songs in English and Spanish. The next band was wildly amusing. It was a Japanese James Brown tribute band. They were surprisingly fun and had an incredible amount of energy. The crowd was really growing by now and most of them were dancing with the band. Vanessa really liked them and got funky. Finally the main event, an American rock band, SmashMouth, played for us. They were extremely loud so we had to move back away from the stage. Maddie and I had a great time dancing and goofing around while they played. In addition to some of their hit songs (like "I'm a Believer" remake) they played some really good Van Halen tunes. Here's a few photos (click to enlarge):
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Jelly Bean
Monday, October 20, 2008
Undokai

Saturday at my school was undokai, or, in English, Sports Day. It was really fun. The first thing the 4th graders did (that’s me!) was a type of relay. The part that I did in the relay was where there were two sacks tied together. Me and my partner ran as fast as we could, then got in the sacks and jumped. It was exhausting. We handed a ring to five people on two ski-like things with their feet attached on it. They all walked a little bit and then handed the ring to three people with their ankles tied together. They ran and handed the ring to the sack people again. The second thing the 4th graders did was the 80 meter run. Everybody ran 80 meters. Almost every grade did this. The third thing the 4th graders did was a huge game of tug-of-war. There was a very long rope and two classes would get on each side (40 in each class). We would pull as hard as we could. It was very fun! Our class would say, “yu sho” which means “we will win” in Japanese. Tug-of-war was one of my favorite events. Each team had it’s own two songs. My team was red, or in Japanese, aka. We were singing one of our songs over and over again through the whole undokai. There was also an event for parents. It was very cool. There were four lines of parents. There was one big ball for each line. They would start from the front and pass the ball over their heads to the back. It looked like it was rolling backwards. The last person in line would bounce the ball back to the front. It was very cool looking. There were lots of other cool events for other grades. Undokai was very tiring, but it was worth it because red won!!! I was very happy when they announced that red won. I hope next year is as fun as this year was.
By Maddie