Canoeing and Orienteering

My schedule for today consisted of "canoeing" (kayaking, to be technical), and orienteering (jah- you read that correctly- more on word usage in a minute).

The kayaking was fun-ish: I got meet some more of the children I would be working with, and paddle around a brackish river mouth for awhile. It was good exercise, and good fun, but actually not that helpful in terms of getting to know the kids. You can't really carry on a conversation (especially across a language barrier) while paddling aimlessly around in the middle of a river. The best moment was probably actually when I had to get out of kayak to help a bunch of children grounded on a shoal- they appreciated that, and it gave me a chance to interact with them a bit. I also accidentally sent my sunglasses down to Tethys' bosom, so I'll have to pick up a new pair at the 100¥ store.

Lunch and orienteering were much more fun, and actually afforded more opportunities for interaction. During lunch I managed to pique some of the children's curiosity by drawing in the sand with a stick. My intent was just have some fun drawing with them, but they were very excited to show off what English they knew and learn a little bit more, so the whole thing turned into an impromptu English lesson.

Orienteering (or scavenger hunting) is one of those bizarre instances in which Japanese has opted to borrow a fairly cumbersome and low-frequency English word for common use (another example would be metabolic- which is used as an adjective for overweight). I had to check myself when I saw the Katakana on the itinerary: o-ree-ehn-teh-ree-n-gu. What it means here is basically a scavenger hunt with a map (although I imagine it might have the simpler English meaning as well). I was put on a team with two sprite-like girls, with whom I tore around a woodland looking for checkpoints for an hour. Neither of them spoke much English, but pointing excitedly and generally being animated worked almost as well for our purposes. Very fun, dirty, and hot, and by the end I think I had established something like a rapport.

I'm writing this during my last couple minutes at work- encrusted with dirt, sunblock, and salt, so I'm going to wrap it up right here and go take a nice long Japanese bath. Cheers all!