The other day Nancy used her birthday money to buy a yukata. Tonite we headed into the city for a matsuri at one of the local shrines. More pictures and a story tomorrow. Promise.

What the hell?

On the train into town, Rob decided to take some pictures of the girls.

That's it, work it girls.

Nancy and Helen in their new yukata.

Torii gates somewhere near the top of Ishizuchi-san, Ehime-ken.

On Friday, we had our first ever Japanese home stay. With total strangers. Which is sort of the point of a home stay, I suppose. Only we didn't meet our strangers through Oxfam or something like that. We met them at the bar.

The initial plan was for camping and a barbeque somewhere near Kuma. But when we got there, in the mountains about an hour from Sakawa, it was sort of drizzling, and we couldn't really find anywhere to camp and didn't feel like cooking in the rain. So we went to an izakaya for some food and to figure out a plan.

For those who don't know, an izakaya is the equivalent of an English pub, what most Canucks call a bar. It's almost always the kind of place where everybody knows your name. Of course when we head into an izakaya nobody knows our name. But everybody wants to. So they buy us drinks. Lots of drinks. Of course, this happened Friday.

Our hosts were Kenichi and his wife Tomeki. At first we told them we were driving and couldn't drink. So they bought us a small drink, to which we toasted. After some initial small talk – Kenichi is the deputy mayor, works at the golf course on weekends and his wife volunteers at the local temple – they discovered we planned on camping. "Are you kidding? Its raining and where are you going to camp anyway? You're staying at our house." I swear this is what he said. How could we argue?

We ate and drank, talked about declining birthrates and multiculturalism. Around nine we headed to the local snack bar, where Kenichi had a bottle of whiskey. Once again, for those who don't know, at snack bars customers usually pay by the bottle. The snack bar owner writes the customer's name on the bottle, and the customer drinks from his bottle until there's no more left. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Aside from whiskey bottles with peoples names scrawled on them, the snack bar owner had a karaoke machine. Luckily for us, the karaoke machine had English songs. First we sang the Beatles, then John Lennon and finally Paul McCartney. After that it was all enka, the equivalent of Anne Murray on valium.

Then the Hawaiian party came in. They weren't really Hawaiian, mind you, but they had grass skirts and flowery necklaces and stuff. So Nancy sang Kokomo by the Beach Boys and I sang Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin. And we did Hawaiian dances at the Japanese snack bar with our home stay parents until midnight. At which point it was bedtime.

Did I mention they were retired? That everyone was retired?

At the house – which was positively saturated with mothballs and dust – Kenichi showed us family pictures from the time in Canada. We ate cheese and chocolate and had a nightcap. In the morning we ate a huge Japanese style breakfast – rice, miso soup, broiled fish, fried eggs, and pickles – and headed on our way. What a nice home stay that was.

Nancy and priest.

Three islands.

Three statues.

Who ever said I was trying to be attractive?

Tonight I ate a fish heart. Not like the heart of perch or even a jack. Rather, the heart of a katsuo. Which is to say the heart of an 18 pound bonito. Which isn't so special, now that I think of it. Sort of like chowing down on bull testicles. Mmm... bull testicles.

Anyway, tonight's fish heart was cut into four, each piece about the size of a loonie. I tore mine in half and popped it into my mouth. Of course it tasted like fish, but with the consitency of chicken liver. Mmm... chicken liver. I almost barfed.

Oh, the funny things I'll eat.

Farm woman planting this seasons rice.

Looks like the rains have started. From my office window the water is a steady stream. Now, the water pouring forth from the sky is cooling, life-giving. Biking to school this morning I saw the happy wet birds flit and sing from half-drowned worm to babbling brook. Like the water-leaden bamboo, I can breathe again.

It will rain like this – or should, anyway – for the next three weeks. The rice paddies will fill to bursting with fresh, clear water. When the rice seedlings rice from the murk, the green is enough for a thousand prairie lifetimes, near tropical in intensity, more-so even, for it is shorter lived.

The frog chorus outside my bedroom window will turn baritone. City friends will claim fright at the cacophony emitted from the fields behind my house. What they are used to is the vacuum left by cars roaring past in the night.

As the rains progress, the heat will rise. Shortly it will be unbearable. Appetites will be lost and replaced with sloth. Air-conditioning and its false promises simply won't do. The only respite will be in the clear running rivers, pregnant with the seasons' rain. Surrounded by the immature shades of early summer and the fluorescent swim trunks of children playing hooky, I will drift downstream toward the Pacific and wonder why it is I'm leaving this place.

"You are just too kind!" was all Joanna could say when she got this kimono as a welcome to Japan gift.

She got help in wearing the kimono from Hirose-san and Ozaki-sensei, both of whom really are too kind.

Ozaki-sensei, Joanna and Hirose-san trying on kimono.

Just over two months and I'm leaving Japan. Hard to imagine I've been gone for almost two years. I'm writing in my journal again, so that years from now I might remember the day-to-day. Like mom said, I probably don't realize how different this is from Canada. Certainly, I never had to pull a set of six year old fingers from out my bunghole before. Probably wouldn't have even imagined it.

Been spending a lot of time thinking about accomplishment and change and what I want to be when I grow up. About how I came here not knowing much of anything and now… well, I still don't know much of anything. About what I'm going to do when I leave this place and what it might be like when I finally land on Canadian soil.

The plan is looking more and more like an extended vacation. My employer has agreed to give me some cash instead of a return flight home. I'll have to use that money for a flight at some point, but first is the ferry to Shanghai. Then a really long train ride. Or something like that. Not much of a plan, really. I can hardly wait.

For now, though, there's English that needs teaching – apples and soccer, as I like to think of it. There's goodbye parties that need attending and boxes that need packing, sushi that needs eating and friends that need visiting. It isn't goodbye yet. There's still two more months.