Hey everyone! Long time no update!

It is getting late here and I don't have much time so I am just going to give a quick recap of things that I have done recently.

Last week I went with my girlfriend to an aquarium on an island near Yokohama called Hakkeijima. There I saw many animals that I have never seen before. I learned that Japanese call the Beluga whale a white dolphin. Is it a whale or is it a dolphin? Difficult question. I also petted a dolphin and caught some wild jellyfish.

The next day I began working on a new English summer camp program called RED (Research, Essay, Debate) as a Teacher's Assistant. I will give more details about this later. After 5 days of classes we were given a day off.

On this day Suay (my girlfriend) and I went to Tokyo Summerland. This is Tokyo's only water park that I know of. It is basically a very toned down version of the water parks in Orlando. More details on this later!

The following day I departed for the next part of the RED program, a 10 day camp in the mountains of Fukushima. Tomorrow will be day 5. It is mostly mountains and forests and is incredibly beautiful. We are staying in a four star hotel on one of the mountains. The food here is amazing. More details later.

Today we had breakfast at 7am as usual, had a short one hour class, and then headed off to a forest nearby. There some forestry workers gave our students a short tour, explained the different trees and their importance, explained how to take care of the trees and forests on mountains, how to use a saw, and how to cut trees down safely. The students then each cut down a few trees.

The forestry workers explained how a mix of at least three different types of trees was essential for a strong mountain forest. Trees with long roots, trees with medium length roots, and trees with short length roots are all needed so that the ground remains stable and does not turn into a landslide when it rains. The trees in this area with the longest roots (around 20 meters deep) are cedar trees. I don't remember the name of the tree with the medium length roots. Karamatsu trees have the shortest roots; they are sometimes knocked over just by the wind.

After the foresty workers finished their tour, we ate lunch and began to explore the forest ourselves. Our (Teacher's Assistant) objectives were to guide them to an area in the forest, give them a list of vocabulary words of things in the area, and have them make a map of the area. After this the students were to pair up (each TA has six students) and hunt for nice/interesting things to take pictures of. Unfortunately Japan does not have very many animals, but they had fun nonetheless searching. Our group found many tree frogs, a bullfrog, different types of cricket-like bugs, worms, caterpillers, strange mushrooms, bees, centipedes, and spiders.

There are four main animal-related dangers in these forests. They are: Bears, Mamushi, Oosuzumebachi, and Mukade. We found some Oosuzumebachi and Mukade today, but I will explain these on a later date.

While flipping over logs looking for things, one of my students fell and landed on a log. He got a small cut on his hand. Unfortunately for him, the cut is likely the least of his worries. This particular log was from an Urushi tree. Urushi is a poisonous tree that contains the same substance found in Poison Ivy and Poison Oak that causes rashes. In fact, the substance in Poison Ivy and Poison Oak is named after the Urushi; it is called urushiol. Tomorrow he might have a very itchy hand.

Urushi is very common here. Everywhere we have gone so far this week has had no shortage of urushi. It is like poison ivy, but instead of being a little and hard to find plant, it is a big tree that is everywhere.

I plan on updating this blog more often from now on. Look forward to it! Goodnight!