Fire and some bricks, Nagano

This year, the Sophia University Photo Club took a trip to… Heck! Not really. We went up to Tets’s cabin in Nagano. I guess the idea was that there’s lots of interesting stuff to photograph up there, and that the ten out of eleven of us that are actually in Photo Club would get all sorts of excellent photos. However, we mostly hung around the cabin and grilled things outside over the fire. When everyone was all gathered around a table or something, it was hard to keep up; sometimes you feel like the people you’re with are part of some kind of exclusive club, but in this case, they actually _were_ part of some kind of exclusive club. It also didn’t help that they were speaking a dang foreign language and that I’m plain shy. However, sitting by the fire with one or two other people was quite fun, and I got to know some people pretty well. Ueki-san in particular was fun to talk to; he’s into rap and had me explain some of the more obscure terms and expressions in his A Tribe Called Quest collection. Ueki-san was also the designated fire maintenance guy; he was happy to keep it blazing all night. This photo is of one of the little ventilation holes on the side of our brick fire-pit.