District Conference, Geek Stuff, Depaato Sale
Sorry, the format is messed up---enjoy the post anyway. I gotta go test some tires...on ice!

Our karaoke night. If it was Japanese Idol then these two were Simon and Randy.

You can tell from the heading this is my catch-up, catch-all entry. We had a free morning and Heather, Jennifer and I went shopping. We caught the Tobu Depaato (department store) 50th Anniversary sale. If you're old enough to remember the Blondie comic strip, think "sale at Tudbury's." It was a madhouse but we found Jennifer some nice things--even managed to figure out the correct size. (She's a D!)

We also managed to spend our own money on food for the first time in a month. We had Kenta gyoza (the dumplings for which Utsunomiya is famous). One of Dustin's hosts owns the Kenta gyoza company. Having to figure out even a simple menu for ourselves made us appreciate all the help we've received from our Rotarian hosts this past month.

Yesterday we did the opposite of girly stuff as we toured Utsunomiya University's engineering school. We got to see their formula SAE car and lots of other cool stuff--hopefully they will let us know when UU's SAE team returns to Michigan.

Over the weekend we were pretty much consumed with the district conference. They pack a lot into a little time here! Japanese are masters of multi-tasking. Read about that in Heather's entry. They do some pretty neat stuff like calling the roll of all the Rotary Clubs in the district. Each club is seated in a bloc and the all stand up and shout "Hai!" when their club is called. It gets a little competitive.

We really enjoyed the fellowship and entertainment and though I couldn't fully follow the speeches, what I could understand was inspiring and the feeling behind the words certainly came through. I'm really proud of the team. Not just anyone can give a speech to 1000 people and you've got to be pretty special to do it in Japanese. Preya, Jennifer, Heather and Dustin rocked! And we got some nice compliments on our "GSE in 60 Seconds" slide show.