This past weekend, Chase and I were planning to attend our first camp out. Unfortunately, heavy rains and severe storms were approaching the campgrounds and just as Chase and I were about to get into our taxi (with all our gear), I received an email from Den Master that the campout was cancelled. This was probably for the best given that the last typhoon, St. Mary’s “toughed it out” and kept kids in school as the typhoon approached only to have a bunch of angry parents chime in the next day when their kids couldn’t make it home. Well, they salvaged the Cub Scout weekend and organized a barbeque near the school grounds yesterday. We were scheduled to be there from 10am-4pm and we were going to resume our Bobcat duties. Fortunately, one of the Webelos who has befriended us (Nikita/boy and Svetlana/mom) lives close to us AND owns a car. I have to admit, being at the mercy of other car-owning people is not my style or my choice. It is really tough to relinquish this bit of independence. I feel like the high school kid with “poor parents” because they didn’t get me a car for my 16th birthday and now I have to bum rides from everyone. It’s worse when you are a 2-for package and by the way, I’m bringing half my apartment in a rucksack. At this point, I am inserting a slideshow. By the way, the badge on the left is mine.

Camping, Tokyo Style:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Yes, those are skyscrapers in the background, and yes, that is a train bridge overhead, and yes, that is some funky water from some unknown source. Despite the “camping conditions” which happened to include another 3-400 people all crammed into whatever rocky dirty craggy area they could throw a tarp over, we managed to hold our own and cook our meat, reconsitute our potatoes, crank open our Costco-size corn, etc…. Having never camped before this was truly eye-opening. Of course it is always interesting to “shop around” and check out other people’s equipment I quickly realized my stuff was too small, I needed bigger. You know, bigger pots, pans, portable stove… I know you all think I’m making some sort of not-so-subtle sexual double entendre, but not so! Get your minds out of the gutter! I am talking about Scouting! Think about the children for God’s Sake!

So what started out as a huge pile of supplies and seemingly aimless people turned out to be an exhausting day of fun for the children. Throughout the day, Svetlana (Russian) and I are making our own observations about the group and people around us. She teaches Russian to the Japanese. I know, I don’t get that either, but whatever. She and her family have lived here a while and they will stay here. They aren’t transient like a lot of us. So first thing we noticed was the group next to us. They were first brought to our attention when one of our cub families evidently put our tarp too close to their tarp and I guess they were too cool to be associated with a bunch of cub scouts and the mom whose tarp was too close had a fit. getting all in their face because to her point, what gave them the right to decide what patch of craggy earth was theirs and not someone else’s? It was made worse for her because her Japanese wasn’t great, but what Svetlana and I found weird was she was arguing with 2 AMERICAN guys who were with 6 Japanese girls and everyone was acting like they didn’t understand each other but were very offended nonetheless. So Svetlana and I kept an eye on these people who set up camp next to our group. They had 2 chairs which acted as thrones and evidently the 2 American guys were their Lord and Master, because all day, the girls cooked, cleaned and flirted while the guys just sat there laughing and eating and drinking. These were not even good-looking guys. These were guys you might find working behind a counter at Blockbuster. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head and suddenly I realized why these guys come to Japan, and stay.

As I was hanging out with the women, stirring my powder and water mix, I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to try to communicate how this seemed so strange to me. That in America, the only people you find laying down on tarps and eating on tarps under bridges are Homeless people/Bums. It was quite a challenge trying to communicate this without sounding elitest or offensive. I said, “I know why we’re here… I just don’t understand why all these other people are here.” Then one of the moms pointed out that in America, we have backyards or decks where people grill and get together, but here in Tokyo, yards are VERY rare. So if you want to have that type of experience, under the bridge you go.

One last funny note about camping observations. There is one guy in one of the pictures wearing sunglasses and a blue shirt and Svetlana and I had the hardest time trying to figure out if he was someone’s dad, wife, or just a plain pedophile. I swear, we never saw him talk to anyone and no one talked to him. It wasn’t until the very end when I thought he was leaving (having eaten our food and sat with our group all day) alone, that I saw him pose with one of the boys for a picture and realized “Oh, that must be who he is with” but I swear, he was so creepy.

As a last note, I love reading in magazines and seeing the charts that tell you what’s in or out, what’s hot what’s not, so I started doing my own chart. I’ll tack it on here at the end.

I just want to add that I really miss my peeps. Life is definitely not boring, but I do miss the conversations and comfort of knowing the people around me.

Until next time…