of marshmallows and ghost stories

Summer is finally drawing to a close. I'm satisfied with this year's summer adventures, but there was still a bit of time to squeeze one more in this past weekend, so I went camping with some old friends from my days as an exchange student at jouchi, the last summery event of the year.

It was great.. all the camping things you'd expect, we stayed in a log cabin, had a big old barbeque, set off fireworks, and told ghost stories with the lights out.
My rendition of a ghost story in Japanese was a magnificent failure, considering it wasn't very scary in the first place, and adding a whole bunch of "uuhs" and fumbling with the words,kinda ruins the mood. Plus I was interrupted a lot.

Here is what it sounded like:

Me: "My story isn't THAT scary, but it's TRUE, I read it in the newspaper. It starts off like this: An Indian man..."
person 1: "you mean from India? Or a native american?"
me: " like the country".
person 1: "oh. okay."
me: "achem. An Indian man got in a bad incident. Um. um. I mean, Accident. A car crash."
person 2: "In INDIA? Do they have cars there?!"
person 3: "of course they have cars there!"
me: "guuuuuys!"
person 2: "sorry. car crash."
me: "ANYWAYS, so the guy is in the, uh, uh, the hospital. But he gets out. He's ok. He's, uh, uh, he..hea..?"
Takeshi: "healed. The word you want is healed."
me: "healed. So then anyways, he goes home to his village, and.."
person 2: "Hey, if he lives in an Indian village, how come he has a car?!"
me: "er, the newspaper wasn't clear on that point..."
person 3: "will you shut up?? She's trying to tell a story here!"
person 2: "*snicker*"
me: "he goes home to his village, but he can't go home. He can't go in his house."
person 1: "was it locked or something?"
me: "...no no..everyone thought... he was a ghost. He went to the police, but they couldn't help him."
person 2: "Because he actually WAS one! BUM BUM bUM!"
me: "NO! It's a real story. The police believed him, but they couldn't conceive the other villagers."
Takeshi: "convince. the word is convince."
me: "convince the other villagers he was alive. He tried to go home but his family thought he was a ghost so they were afraid of him and wouldn't let him go in his house. So now he's homeless." everyone:"..."
person 2: "aw, that's not a ghost story, that's a homeless story!"
me:"...
gomen nasai... "

So now I am determined to learn a SCARY ghost story and tell it in flawless japanese next summer.
After the ghost story, the fire was dimming, and I busted out the marshmallows. And let me tell you, were they surprised.. normally the main things roasted on sticks here are salty fish. Fish are no substitute for a golden-on-the-outside, melted-on-the-inside ball of sugary fluff. They went over pretty well, I must say, although I had to suffer through some cracks about marshmallows being a "typical american snack"! (aka fattening.) *sighh*.

In other news, I have found a friend and a new ally against the FF. (fearsome females). S-san, my new buddy, has confided in me that she doesn't always like to eat with the other girls either. "I tried eating ramen with some of the guys once.." she admitted, "but they finished in about three minutes. I had eaten about two bites."

Of course the guys, sensibly, were under no pressure to stay and make small talk for the remaining 57 minutes of their lunch break. I liked where this was going.
"I eat ramen pretty slowly.." I volunteered. We struck a deal to be lunch buddies, and now I have a much freer free-time. Hallelujah!

This weekend I'm going to the Tokyo Game Show! E3, the video game show in LA, just had its last run this year, to the dismay of nerds all across america. Now the world's largest game show is here in Japan, about an hour away by train. Of COURSE I'm going!

I'll write up a review here in my blog, so check back in a week or so. ^^