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Today, my English teacher asked me to share pictures of my summer vacation with the students...

This is something I was happy to do, until I had the horrible realization that my students and teacher had no comprehension of what a burrito --possibly the greatest delicacy known to man-- is. What follows is pretty on target with what the actual dialogue of my class was when I showed them the aforementioned picture:

ANDY: "...and this is a burrito,"
JAPANESE KIDS: "Ooh," "Sugoi!" "Kore wa nan des ka?"
JAPANESE TEACHER: "Andy-sensei, the students want to know what that is?"
ANDY: "Well, you know a burrito, it's Mexican food."
JAPANESE TEACHER & STUDENTS: "Tacos?"
ANDY: "No, no, there are many types of Mexican food. You see you take the chicken and mix it with the cheese (mix gestures), add a little salsa (adding salsa gestures), and, you know, wrap and microwave (wrap and microwave gestures, plus sound effect). Just that easy, totally the best thing ever."
JAPANESE TEACHER & STUDENTS: Blank Stare "Tacos?"
ANDY: "You see you make a Taco like this," I grab a piece of chalk, "You take a little meat (draw meat on board), put it in the shell (draw aarow to shell), add some cheese (draw "+" and "cheese"), perhaps some other tasties ("other tasties" written diagonally above with "+"), and viola 'Tacos!'"
JAPANESE STUDENTS (The teachers is just staring in utter confusion at this point): "Tacos?"
ANDY: "Yes, Tacos" --and against my better judgement, I continued with-- "and this is a burrito."
JAPANESE STUDENT: "Tacos?"
ANDY: "No, I'm sorry Uji, it's a burrito, but real close! Here's a sticker. Alright class, let's move on, but before we do, --one last time-- what's this? (point to picture of burrito)"
JAPANESE STUDENTS: "Tacos?"

I could have had an army of Mexican chiefs in that room frantically creating burrito-godliness, and I still would have received: "...Tacos?..."
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ON THE HORIZON: Tomorrow night is the Japanese comedian.

Sunday, we are doing traditional Bamboo fishing. This is easily one of the coolest things we did last year, and I will try to get some pics this year. Essentially, we are all given Bamboo poles with little tassles on the end and we go snorkeling, "herding" the fish into a giant net on the other end of the port. And then we eat it as Sashimi afterwords. I didn't eat too much last year, and I can thank my lucky stars because loads of people got sick. Apparently, the particular type of fish we catch needs to be cleaned over and over to be eaten as Sashimi-- and last year it wasn't. I just gave my share to the cats.