Where did the weekend go!?! I tried calling a bunch of people, but nobody was home. I did talk to Kayla for a few minutes; she asked if I was still in Japan, and if I had tried Hello Kitty gum. Answers: 'yes' and 'no'. I also talked to Warren for a half hour, and told him a little bit about the Japanese environment. Coming from Canada where there’s pretty well untouched wilderness a couple hours drive north from the major cities, it is a big change to live in a place where almost everywhere has been touched, where there isn’t much wilderness left.

On Friday Nancy had a ‘forget the year’ party, so I listened to music and practiced kanji for a couple hours. I know about five of the over 2000 kanji. It’s a start! When Nancy got home, we watched Ally McBeal. She’s hooked! She rented the entire third season and watched it in two weeks!

On Saturday we did some cleaning and putzed around before heading up the mountain to Nicole’s party. She held a fundraiser for her trip to Thailand, where she will be volunteering for a week at an orphanage. She made an amazing Caribbean feast with three or four different curries, coconut milk rice and fruit salad. There was a guy at the party, Dara, who travels with his bike. He says by the time most people have waved down a cab – or figured out the next bus into town – he’s already got his bike locked up at the hotel and is enjoying his first meal in a new country. Sounds good!

Sunday we went to a culture festival at one of Nancy’s schools. We bought a few strawberry plants and an orange tree, so now we’ll have fresh fruit all the time. After the culture festival we went to this coffee shop a friend from taiko recommended. We were there for three hours, doing Christmas cards and planning our trip to Vietnam, which was fitting since the coffee shop had a southeast Asian flare. We leave in ten days, so it’s getting exciting! We plan to spend two days in Ho Chi Mihn, looking at museums and going to the war tunnels, where you can fire a machine gun. Then it’s up to Na Trang and the beaches before we go to Hoi An to get a new wardrobe made. A day trip to Sun Mai to see the remains of the ancient civilization there (4th – 11th centuries), and then it’s a short flight back to Ho Chi Mihn to connect with our flight back to Japan.