To whom it may concern (also to those who take the interest to read this), Where do I begin? It has been a while (again). I wish to apologize first for the tardiness in this report, but my access to the Internet recently has been less than hoped for to put it nicely. Either way, I am pretty sure that I will be able to get more reports in now that I can access the net more. I cannot blame my recent drought of reports solely on my surroundings, as I can recall a few times when I caught myself saying: "I should go write rotary a report - after I'm done with (insert excuse here)" So I will take the responsibility on myself and say that I am sorry that I have not written as often as I could have, but I will truly try harder to write more often. By threat of physical pain if necessary, though this may fuel my masochistic tendencies. That was a joke by the way. I hope I haven't completely succumb to the world famous dry Japanese humor. Either way, here I go, as it was so eloquently put "the good, the bad, and the ugly". I should probably talk about the holidays since I am sure that everyone mentioned them already in their reports, but I sent my last one right before the barrage of "Christmas spirit and holiday cheer" hit. I will make this brief since as   many people may know, fond of the holidays. In fact many of my so-called friends back home constantly referred to me as "Scrooge" during the holidays. A name I did not fight to hard against. Don't get me wrong, I am not completely evil I do enjoy the coming together of families and the forgiveness (even if it is just for a day). I just do  not think that it should be done for the wrong reasons (i.e. presents). I think this may stem from when we a children and are basically bribed to be good for the month of December under the threat of Santa watching at all times. This made Santa seem more like a CIA spook than a saint, but that might just be me. Either way, the point is I like the family aspect and detest the commercial angle of the holiday. So, here goes my Christmas: Prior to coming to Japan I believed that I would be able to escape most of the usual Christmas things. I was very much corrected on this when old Santa came around. Christmas here was a week long festival of sorts. Not just one day. They managed to make a huge commercial blitz of the holiday. Basically everything I don't like about the holiday was shoved in my face (you know, the American kid who OBVIOUSLY LOVES CHRISTMAS). I was now in my own little hell (pardon the strong word, well for some anyways). I must have seen at least forty or fifty people dressed up as Santa in the course of a week. Not all these people were paid for it mind you. I was one. There are two other exchange students in my school with me, but they we do not have any classes together, so no worry about my not learning Japanese there. These two gentlemen are Peter Maenpa and Henrik Habermann, Finish and German respectively. A Rotary club which none of us were familiar with asked us to dress up as three Santa Clauses and gives out presents to about thirteen preschools. We agreed because we really did not have a choice. I had mixed feelings about the whole affair due to the fact that I like doing projects involving kids, but I detest the whole commercialized Santa image (elves and all). So, a couple of days before Christmas the three of us were dressed up as Santa Clauses and driven around to schools together. I questioned the wisdom of showing three Santa Clauses at the same time to children so young they were struggling to put together why the cylinder block wont fit into the square hole. I did not believe that they needed this extra puzzle to complicate their already complex lives. This fear was reinforced when we arrived at the first school and immediately one of the children looked up and counted out loud in Japanese "one -Two...THREE!?"  I saw the confusion in this young child's eyes and I knew we somehow managed to destroy all his illusions in a matter of seconds. Like I said, I am not evil, so I did feel bad. In case you are wondering, the way Rotary wanted to pull this off was by saying that Peter was the Finnish Santa, Henrik was the German Santa, and I was the American Santa. In case you are wondering again, it only managed to confuse the children even more. In fact, one of them looked as if they were going to cry. The next twelve or so schools we just stuck to "HO-Ho-ho" and no one even tried to explain why there were three Santa Clauses as that only caused more problems. The day after that, or a couple of days after we had a Rotex Christmas Party in which everyone buys a gift of about ten dollars and we play "Draw secret Santa". I was under the impression that we were to buy presents that were unisex so that anyone can enjoy. I was of course not that lucky as to get a gift from someone with common sense. I got a purse. I�fm serious. I still have in fact since I do not have anything to do with it. At home my host family did not really do anything for Christmas being as they were Buddhist (not very Buddhist as they never went to temple or anything, but like most Americans are just Christian enough or just Catholic enough, they were just Buddhist enough) Either way, it was just another day for them. If there was one thing I missed about Christmas it was definitely that holiday meal. This was my Christmas, I think in it you can find all three "good, bad, and ugly". My new year was a definite change. I am used to waiting for midnight with my family and friends and celebrating most of the night with the next day reserved for sleeping late and eating leftovers (how I miss those). This year in my last host family nothing happened at midnight, at all. Alone in my room I saw my pocket-watch click into twelve and said: "happy new year!" I then proceeded to throw some confetti into the air. Did I mention by myself? Either way I could not sleep that night due to the fact that it was the first hours of the New Year. I finally fell asleep around five thirty or so. I was awoken at six and told to come downstairs for a traditional Japanese New Year breakfast. Was I ever surprised to see my host sister in a Kimono and both my host brothers who live in Tokyo at the floor table in the traditional room. There was an arrangement of food at every seat. I was told that everyone had to eat everything on the plate before we can get up; as groggy and zombie like as I was I managed to eat everything (some things which I do not wish to know if they were animal, mineral, or vegetable). I was then given a gift by my host family and told that it is Japanese tradition to give gifts on the morning of New Years. Luckily I was prepared for such an emergency, two nights prior to that day I won a bottle of wine at a Rotary dinner with my Bingo card. I was planning on giving it to my host family at the next gift thing (whenever that were to arise) because of the "No Drinking" rule I agreed to. They were surprised to see me give them that gift for two reasons: because it was a fairly expensive bottle of wine, and because they thought that I had known about the traditional Japanese gift giving and I was just pretending not to know. I was praised and called "clever. As with most things I took it, grinned, and moved on. The next day the whole family packed and we went to the house of a family member were we stayed for several days. We literally did nothing. The entire time we were at this house we reposed. Most people slept about sixteen to eighteen hours of the day. Luckily I had a horrible headache during a couple of the days and was able to cope with this much sleep without my body and mind atrophying. I am not too fond of sleep so, I could see how this could have been bad. Once again luck helped me out. Valentines Day followed soon after that. At least it seemed soon because not much really happened until Valentines Day. This is one of the few holidays that I actually like. I was always very fond of it in America, many of my close friends may be able to explain why. I was not looking forward to it here because of another Rotary rule �gno dating�h. I found out something about Valentines Day that made me grin. In Japan the guys do nothing on Valentines Day, absolutely nothing. The girls however, give chocolates to the guys that they like. The girls do not confer with each other over who gives whom chocolate. They do not claim the guys for their own. In the end, the popular or good-looking gentlemen receive more chocolate than they know what to do with. I will stop my Valentines tale here due to the fact that anymore would seem either like bragging or complaining. I will leave the rest to the imagination. Nothing else has really happened in my life here, just the usual learning and coping. I am excited about two upcoming events. One is on the sixteenth of March through the seventeenth of March. I am participating in a one hundred kilometer walk/hike. It is open for anyone in my school who has the courage or stupidity for it, I am still debating over which category I fall under. This year about two hundred students are participating including the three foreigners in my school, the Finnish, the German, and I the American. I heard that only a few made it to the end last year due the fact that the last thirty-five kilometers are up a mountain. It goes for thirty hours without any sleep and only a few breaks. I believe that you eat what you bring as well, this I am not too clear on, but I will bring a mass quantity of food in order to fuel what it is I am pushing forward. You can give up at any time on the walk, but the big one is after sixty-five kilometers, I did not pay too close attention to the give-up points because I am not one that gives up, ever. I am very excited about this because I want to test myself and I want to see if the years of martial arts have hardened my will to an unbreakable level. The other event I am looking forward to is a ski trip to Nagano (where they had the Olympics a few years back). This is on the twenty-first of March, about four days after the walk. I have asked for a snowboard instead of skis because I think I will find that more to my liking. It is five days of snow and cold. I like the former, hate the latter. I will write about these two events when they occur.  My health is good, in fact it is really good. I am speaking both physically and mentally. I do have one fear creeping into my brain though. I can honestly say that I am almost afraid to return to the US. There is only one reason for this. It is not the typical "I've gotten used to this country", "My English is now bad", or "I will miss my friends". The reason I am afraid of returning home is because people will actually understand me. Let me explain. I have a tendency (which has grown here) to complain to myself out loud. I think that the fact that no one can understand me has fueled this once slight habit into its present "tendency" form. Don't get me wrong, some people do understand English, but when I speak to myself I tend to mix high vocabulary proper English with some youthful slang. Trust me when I say that no one can understand me when I do this. If all else fails however, I can always rely on Spanish or French. I do this best in English and I tend to do it in English regardless. I am afraid I am going to return home and everyone will look at me and think that I should be committed. I believe I may have spoiled myself in this case. Well, onto the uncertain future. Like I have a choice.  Until the next time sooner than later I hope. Sincerely, Rolando Carlos Reyes Chronos