It’s Sunday evening, and I haven’t left my apartment since last night when I got back (around 7PM) except once to do laundry. Why am I wasting a perfectly good Sunday in Japan? I’m tired! Haha. Summer IES kids got here on Thursday, and ever since that day I’ve been actually doing a pretty good deal of work and running around.

For the most part, my internship is to shoot video and then produce (by August or September) a 50-minute promotional video for IES to use to promote the Tokyo program. That really isn’t too bad, except also the last few days I’ve been helping out with the orientation and various other things associated with the beginning of the summer program. On Thursday I went to the airport to help welcome and move the new kids in. On Friday I sat through and helped kinda with orientation sessions all day long. Yesterday, Saturday, I helped with the lunch where all the kids met their host families and then move in. I guess I haven’t been doing that much especially, although I have been running around a lot between the IES Center, school, the OVTA hotel where the summer students stayed for the first few days, went to Narita Airport, and etc. Last night, I skipped a BBQ at Huston’s because I just wanted to go home and rest. And I’ve been doing so every since, it’s been nice. I took a slight detour last night before coming home to go to the next station and pick up like 10 volumes of the Detective Conan manga. I’ve read a bit, but am skipping the chapters that I’ve already seen the anime of.

The summer kids, for the most part, are the normal batch of IES kids. And IES groups are usually pretty relatable to the kids you will find in a Japanese language class in the US. There are a few cool kids, a good number of huge dorks, some people who seem to be lost, and some who seem to be here to just party. I’ve associated myself with the cool kids as I see fit. I’ll probably hang out with some of the kids I like, and ignore the rest. Sounds like a good plan to me!

Oh yeah, if some IES kids are reading this (it’s inevitable), it might be interesting. Actually I should go read some summer/spring IES kids blogs (I know a few have them). Might be interesting. I think from here on out, my job is to just go on all the fun trips and film stuff, so probably the heat is over (haha until I go back to the US and actually have to edit this video together).