Hi my name is Max, I'm 14 years old, born on January 31st of 1991 and I live in Portland Oregon. I am currently a student at Central Catholic high school, and I am a freshman (9th grader).
       My family consists of my; Mom, Dad, my two Brothers, my Dog and my self. My Mothers name is Aimee, my Fathers name is Denny, and my Brothers names are Mason and Rylan. Mason is 12 and Rylan is 7, and lastly my dog's name is Goji.
       My hobbies include Sports. My favorite sport is Baseball and next is Basketball. I play both of those sports mainly during the summer but I'm more serious about Baseball then.
       From kindergarten to now I have been studying Japanese and have been to Japan twice and plan to go in 2 or 3 years.
       Last year (2005) in the month of May, from the 9th to the 22nd I journeyed on a 2 week long field trip vacation… the destination JAPAN! This was my second time to travel into the land of the rising sun. The destinations that my class and I had in Japan were Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima, and Santo (A small town in Hyogo ken) and to Takeda Jo (castle) and other places were people did field study homework. Everyone went to Hiroshima, Himeji, Miyajima, and of course Santo because that's were are home stay families lived, but there were a few places that were on a list to chose from. That list included, Takeda Jo, Kyoto, Amanohashidate (bridge to the heaven), the hot springs, and some people actually did a field study in Santo.
       I believe that my favorite place I had the opportunity to go to was Amano Hashi Date. The picture above is a picture of my group and I. we were the Orange group. There were 7 groups and the names were different colors. The first picture's background is Amano Hashi Date. The rule of this place is to look between your legs out towards it and you can see the bridge to the heavens. My group chose to go to Amano Hashi Date, and Takeda Jo.
       On this field trip, every morning we all met at the community center. There we would get the itinerary for the day, the field study work sheets, and the money that was used for; Train tickets, lunch, and whatever was left after that was used for souvenirs. After we completed our studies for the day we would take a train back to Santo and return to our home stay families.
       After the field trip, when we returned to school we had to put together an omiyage banashi. This is were we put together a poster board with the topic of one item that we had designated to us before the trip. My board was for Manga. 
       "Goodbye"  "Goodbye" "Goodbye" "Please come back to Japan" "Please come to America" "See you later"
       These were the last words between families and students as we started our last day on the 22nd of May at the Hyogo ken Santo city community center. Soon after we said our goodbye's we were to take a bus to the airport and return home to America.
       The second picture is the last picture my home stay family and I took together. The family's name was Yamamoto. The only two people that weren't in the family that were in the picture were the kid to the right and his name was Daisuke and me. The name of my home stay brother and sister was Takayuki (15) and Hikari (7). I never knew the first name of the parents but that wasn't a big deal because they had me call them Otosan (dad) and Okasan (mom).
       The picture above was taken at the community center in Santo. And it was our last day of our research residency field trip, which lasted the 9th of May to the 22nd of May.
       My Home stay family brought me too many cool places. Those places included a rotating sushi bar, a natural history museum, and many other great restaurants and cool shopping stores.