I heard that today was the activity I was waiting for. Hiking. I’ve bought hiking shoes, and I thought I can do it. But it wasn’t easy. There was my friend Kazuki, and he was sick. He didn’t have much power, so I told I will help him. He gave me a nice thank-you, and I was walking with him. There was a large steep hill. It was like 60 degrees. I was holding Kazuki, and I was pulling him up the hill. Suddenly, my arms hurt, but there was a break, so we rested. I had my full power used, but the mountain water helped me fill my energy. Well, the hike started again. Kazuki seemed to have a little power, so he said he can go by himself. Thanks to him, my leg muscles were hurting so that was nice. I started to walk, and the road became normal. This was even better. Kazuki and I were happy about this, and started walking together. But the road was slippy. We took a risk, and ran through the mud. Hours and hours later, we had went to the top of the hill. So, we ate curry, and chai milk tea. We practiced our skit, and then we went down the bottom of the mountain. My leg was stiff, and when we arrived to the hotel, I ran to the elevator, went to the 3rd floor, and I got my bath goods, and then ran down the stairs, and jumped into the onsen. (I actually took a shower before) The warm water felt good because my body was cold as ice. I then washed myself, and refreshed. I was warm enough, and got out. I was excited for the skit time, and couldn’t wait for it. I was drinking loads of juice with my friends, and we were actually having a little party. Then, we practiced our skits. We were actually done and memorized all our parts, so we just practiced saying the words in order for the last time. At last, it was supper. It was the last supper at Hakuba. I missed it. Then, it was skit time. All the groups came and performed their skits. Our group was number 3, and we actually forgot some words because of panic, but we successfully finished our skit. We were happy the audience laughed. All the skit time was filled with wows and laughter, and we had a nice time. We drank lots of juice, and ate snacks like consomme chips. We did a quiz, and we had a fun time. Then, we started to get sleepy. It was 9:50. We went to sleep, but this was not the end… Masaki woke me up again, he took 10 pictures of my friend Lucas. I was also recording his sleep talk, and was laughing with Masaki. When I discovered myself again, it was 4:50 in the morning. We cleaned our futon, luggage, and got ready.

This morning was a blurry morning. The nightmare had made me awake for several hours and made me sleep for only 30 minutes. I kept sleeping and waking up, but when I washed my face, energy filled my body, and my eyes never shut except for when I wanted to blink. Our breakfast was scrambled eggs, salad, ham, bread, and warm milk tea. When full, we got ready for team building games, and we walked to the Matsu River. (松川) I was with my friend Ren; that made me produce good teamwork, and we had fun playing games. Then, we had a BBQ lunch I ate with Jamie, Hae Won, Mari, and Iruka. Hae Won was a veteran cook and made us kimchi rice etcetera which was great; I’ll thank her for that. I was full again, where we rode the van and went to the rock climbing activity. It took like an hour to go there. I was with George, Mitea, and Harry (Harrison) in the van. We were talking about fun things, (actually it’s a secret so cannot say it specifically) and there was the rock climbing center. This looked cool at first, but I never knew how thrilling this was when I started climbing it. I could not believe I was in a region so high like 11 meters. I wasn’t scared, but I was thinking if the rope was cut I will be.. yeah, really injured. This was when the thing happened. My hand was filled with sweat, and my hand slipped off the grip. I lost balance, but I was ok. When I dropped down when I finished, I was happy. ” Huh”, was the first thing to say. This was my 2nd experience in Rock Climbing, and I was not much happy with what happened today. This night, I kept thinking about a occasion where the rope was cut, this was actually annoying me, quite a bit. The supper was: Roast Beef!!! This was gorgeous! Then, I ran to get my fleece, and my coat. I thought a hot air balloon was just a large balloon flying, but I saw that this air balloon was a humongous object blowing up fire to fly. I rode the balloon with Claude, Jamie, Daniel, Aiki, Lucas, and Ms. Cofino. I was chuckling when we went to the top of the sky and say all of Hakuba. The view was too awesome, and I had no words to say, and just laughed. Then, we went back to the Yama No Ie Hotel, and then I slept. Today was not just a normal- scary nightmare, but a nightmare when I fell from the rock climbing wall.

When, I woke up, it was 5:10 in the morning. I was sitting there for a while, and 30 minutes past..I was quite sleepy, and I found myself in the boys common room at 7:00 in the morning. I changed my clothes, and waited for breakfast. This days breakfast was: Cereal, bread with jam, Apple Juice. When we finished our breakfast, we went to our activities. I was canoeing. I was a group with Rohan. We started canoeing, and went to a little Island. I was tired when I drank some water from my water bottle. We went around the whole lake, and we had a break at the far end of the lake, and we played ball tag. This was fun. We went back to the island, but stirring the boat was the challenging part. My legs, and my arms hurt. I thought that I need to try, and I stirred, stirred, with Rohan. We had only 2 people, so we were really tired, but we had completed our task. There was another problem. I was hungry. A burrito’s smell saved me from a “certain time starvation”. Inside was beef, chicken, tomato, salad. This was the best lunch ever. Then, when my stomach was full, my group got ready for MTB, mountain biking. I got a red bike, and it actually was metallic red. I was satisfied. When I rode the bike first time, it felt good, and I thought I can do it. I went on the advanced group. So, I went with my friends. First it was a smooth road, so I increased and increased speed, but when it came to a narrow mountain road, I had difficulty. Cut my knees, but I was ok. My friend and my other friend bumped into each other, and it was really thrilling, but I was relieved when I found both of them ok. We had went past the Nagano Olympics stadium, and then arrived at the campsite. We drank water, and brought our luggage towards the van. We were going to the hotel. It was called the Yamano Ie. (The House of the Mountain) We first went into our room, 301. Clean tatami! Nice futon! And the best of all, a TV!! We ran for supper. Full course! This was the best! My stomach was going to explode, but it felt good. Then, we ran for the Onsen. We hadn’t been in a bath for one day. Hot water! I almost slept. Walked up to the room, and brushed my teeth. I was thinking that today was also going to finish peacefully. At 11:30 PM, the nightmare happened. A flash, and my friends woke me up. It looked like it was a discussion about scary stories. Suffered for 1 hour, and I was sleeping. To be simple, I had a real nightmare.                                                                                                                                      

First, I woke myself and Kento (my friend; he was sleeping over). We were still sleepy, but ate breakfast, and got ready for going to school. Then, we did it. We actually ran up to the convenience store, and bought our. Later, we were breathing rapidly because we ran to the back gate of YIS. Luckily, we weren’t late, so I was relieved. On the bus, I sat with Kazuki and enjoyed the trip to Hakuba, but it was the longest time ever when I was sitting in a bus. 5.5 hours. This was a tough time for me. Looking outside, skyscrapers and large shops changed to large nature and a lake. This was Lake Aoki. (Aokiko) Finally, to the destination.

It was actually cold there in Hakuba. First the Evergreen Staff introduced their selves. We put our luggage in a large room, and off we went back to the middle of the campsite for instructions. First, we needed to set up a tent. I went to my group and got all tools and products we needed. Setting up tents were not so easy. Holding the tent on the ground was the first difficult thing. We had to get a hammer to hammer all the nails. 20~30 minutes after, we accomplished our task. Next, we went orienteering in the mountains. Our group was: Group 4. I was happy I had my friends. We were walking up the mountain and we found instructions. We needed to find things from nature like: White rocks, dead insects, red leaves. (etc.) We were tired, but when we found a sign saying “Now run down to the campsite”, my “tired” disappeared. My friend Ren and I were running to the campsite, and we reached the goal. When we stopped running, my legs went stiff, but I drank fresh mountain water and my whole body relaxed.

Night, we had dinner. We had Rice with the tomato sauce. (etc.) Well, my lips really hurt because the air was dry in Hakuba, and that made me a handy cap for eating. I was happy that I ate all the food even I liked the food. We had a campfire, and Mr. Jade and Mr. James told us stories and songs. It was warm. It was so warm when we had hot chocolate. When I went to sleep, I found myself freezing in the darkness when a light flashed me. It was my friend Masaki. I told him I was freezing cold and we both went to our common room and wore large sweaters and fleeces. That was 11:20 in the night. Then, I felt a “freezing” wind, and I woke up. It was 5:10 in the morning. The next day for me started.