We survived the dance!

The square dance weekend at Gotenba was lots of fun. I sniffled and coughed my way through my time on the stage without too many mishaps. I even had enough energy to dance once or twice, although a fifteen-minute set took enough out of me that I didn't do it often.

I have tasted more kinds of sake in the past few days than I had tasted before in my entire life. I have even been gifted with a bottle of sake, along with some chopsticks in beautiful wrapping, some handmade earrings, lots of food items, a spray bottle to get smoke smell out of our clothes, several kinds of cough drops, a scarf, a handkerchief, and a big scroll with a painted illustration from the Tales of Genji. Silly me, I thought our suitcases would be lighter once we gave away what we'd brought! I have square danced in little indoor slippers (shoes are for outside) and I have square danced with people wearing enormously sequinned costumes (Saturday night was costume night). I am sure I hadn't lived until I had seen a young Japanese man dressed up as Elvis.

The dancers went nuts over my very simple Japanese. On Friday I thanked them for coming to the dance, which turned out to be a rather longish sentence, and they applauded for longer than it had taken me to say it. For simple square dance hints I knew the words for left and right, which usually drew a chuckle. On Sunday there was a little mixup -- one caller was finishing up and said I was next, which wasn't true, Takeuchi-san was next, so when I finally got up I told them "Today I am Takeuchi" and they thought that was terrific. I can only imagine how they would have responded if I actually had a real clue and could speak well.

I still haven't found stamps for postcards. Japan is not very into the touristy postcard thing. And yeah, I'm definitely still sick.

Home tomorrow. (It's nearly 6pm Sunday now.)