hey everyone!
    I've finally caught up with all my pictures to this day. I think I have 321 on my flickr site and 1 video of our last taiko drumming practice. You should def. go check them out!!!!
    As of late I've been taking it easy. Aside from practicing various things and brushing up on Japanese I've been helping coach at my host sisters volleyball practice! Although I'm pretty small when it comes to volleyball I dominate pretty much everywhere here lol. The nets are a little lower which helps. Most recently I played with some older women betweent he ages of 30-50. It was insane!!! They could hit well and their ball control was excellent. I felt like I was playing back in high school!     
    Tonight I have shishimai practice. shishimai is lion dance. Most people are most familiar with dragon dance which is many people under a long dragon like costume and one person operating a head. this is similar but the head is a lion's head and there is usually only one or two people under the lion. Also with that I may learn how to play the yokobue which is a wooden flute which i bought not to long ago.
    July 4th is coming fast!!!! Our plan here is to get some fireworks and go down to the river and shoot them off while BBQ'in. Following that were going to see a huge shishimai presentation. exciting right?
    Well keep in touch everyone and I'll try to respond as quickly as possible.

~ryu~

flickr.com/photos/roxus7a7c7/

Since I’ve not had much time to write a lot I’m going to skip ahead a few chapters in my story and give an overview of whats been going on to clarify.                                                      First of all I have some of my hundreds of pictures up on a different website. If the want to check it out go to flickr.com and search for a user called roxus7a7c7. As I get more time I will try and put more pictures on it.                                                                                  I’m currently living with the kurogouchi family. They live not too far from downtown Iida and it’s about a good 30min walk. My family consists of my host father (whom I call father), my host mother (whom I call mother), my host grandmother (who I call grandmother), and two younger kids. The oldest of the siblings is 12 and his name is Tatsuya. He loves soccer and playing video games. The younger of the two is 8 and her name is Takako. She plays volleyball and loves to watch t.v. and aside from that is really very loud. Since nobody in the house speaks any English it’s a real challenge for me. Talking to the kids is tough since they use a lot of slang and talk very fast. It also doesn’t help that I’m seen as an outsider. They tend to keep to themselves. My host mother is very kind though. She talks to me a lot and it is really good practice. She teaches at a school during the day. My host father is a business man for some company I’ve never heard of. He normally keeps to himself though unless I ask him a question or need help getting somewhere. He also talks very very fast and it is very hard for me to understand words that I know most of the time. As for my host grandmother. Well, she is pretty old and hard of hearing which makes talking to her near to impossible. She also has a small dog which is incredibly loud and annoying. Anytime you walk past her room no matter what time of the day it is the dog goes nuts and barks for a good 5 minutes. The best part about it is that her room is located right next to the entrance of the house. J aside from that I really enjoy living with them.                                     

After we arrived we ended up staying at a hotel that happened to be right in front of the train station. Hotel New Iida happened to be the name of this fine establishment. Since the rooms were doubles I ended up rooming with a guy named Paul. Paul is a shorter Philippino gent. It was pretty late by the time we got everything situated so the guys decided to look around Iida city for a bar. The first bar we hit up was called blood. out in front of the building jutting out above the entrance where two gothic looking statues of angels with spears. This had to be one of the single coolest designs i had seen for a mere bar. We marched up towards the entrance and entered casually. Brett (a student coordinator) was the first one to enter and soon realized that  there was something  going on. I peeked my head in and saw that the place was packed with people at the bar and  the tables around  the room. Apparently there was a wedding party taking place. After rushing out and apologizing to 50 pairs of eyes staring at us we heading deeper into town. We ended up going to a karaoke place. Karaoke is a serious deal in Japan. all 8 of us piled into a small cramped room and proceeded to sing our hearts out. Most of the guys we were with didnt know any japanese songs so me, brett and proctor were the only ones doing those. We ended up staying for about 3 hours and headed back to the hotel afterward.

The bus ride from Tokyo to Iida took about a good three hours. At this point in time I was getting really antsy about getting to Iida. We stopped at a store  at the halfway point and I decided to buy a piece of bread. The Japanese are amazing with bread. There is nothing they havn't done. My favorite was the melon bread. AHHHHHH. soooooo gooooood. its basically a piece of bread with a sugar coated top that is baked sepereately and attached after both pieces are done baking.
    Anyways, we arrived in Iida about mid-day.