Basically the rest of September

Hey everybody! So, it's been awhile, huh? I apologize for that, but now I've got a lot to write, so let me get right to it! (And I apologize in advance for my deteriorating English...)

Well, after I finished the last post, me and my host parents set out for the famous Mt. Fuji. And although the ride there was absolutely beautiful (so many luscious, green mountains and valleys!), my unfortunate condition of being unable to stay awake in a car after about an hour prevented me from seeing most of the sights. But it was great once we got there! The temperature had dropped to like the 60s (about a 20 degree difference from Tokyo) and we were surrounded purely by beautiful mountains (and a golf course). We stayed at a little apartment (I only know the word in Japanese, and that is the only equivalent I could think of right now) that my host parents own in the area, which had a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji from the roof, but only on clear days, which unfortunately were non-existent during our trip.

A pretty view of the golf course was all I got instead.

For dinner, we went to a small, but fancy restaurant where we ate a four-course meal that included a delicious steak- my first in 6 years! I'm really shunning that no-red-meat diet here... But I will come back to the topic of my host family and fancy restaurants later (possibly in my next post).

The next morning we went on a walk around the area, which I found was a nice time to talk and bond with my host parents; something we haven't really been able to as they are usually very busy with restaurant. I also learned that many famous Japanese people have vacation houses in the area, which would have been cool, but there weren't any around at the moment...

After the walk, we set off for the Fujigoko, which are the five lakes at the northern base of the mountain. But seeing as they are all very similar, we only visited two. In any case, the lakes weren't much to look at, besides the gigantic koi swimming around in them, but the landscape was amazing! Even the clouds managed to part for about a half hour and I was able to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji! 

Honestly, not as cool looking without the snow...

I know they look small in this picture, but seriously, they were HUGE.

One of the Fujigoko. They probably each have names, but that would be way too hard to remember...

We made it eventually to the base of Fuji-san, but by then it was pouring rain, meaning we couldn't really see or do much, besides visit the shrine, which was nice, but short entertainment.

My host mom got a pretty big kick out of this picture...

Thought this was in miles at first and got all excited, then I realized...

 In the end, we just grabbed a bowl of ramen (which, by the way, while being extremely popular in Japan, is actually Chinese!) and decided to head home. Which was pretty uneventful until we got into Toyko and my host dad had to get out to go somewhere else and he let my host mom drive instead. I have just one thing to say about this: Never again... I was seriously scared for my life....
So ends my adventure to Mt. Fuji!

The next significant event (I've completely forgotten: I'm just going by my pictures now...) was that Saturday. In the morning, I went with my host family to visit the family grave. I'm not sure if it was the anniversary of anyone's death, or just something that they do every once in awhile, but it was definitely an interesting cultural experience. First of all, Japanese graveyards, in cities anyway, have a very small area, as space in precious in Tokyo. This means that (and I don't mean to be creepy in explaining this) everyone is cremated and placed in the family grave. But the graves are more like little altars than tombstones.

Now, at the entrance to the graveyard, there was this kind of station, with a bunch of water faucets and wooden buckets with ladles. When, we got there, my host sister, Yoko, proceeded to fill up two, and brought them over to the family grave. Another host sister, Michiko's, husband, brought over a bunch of incense to place on the grave, meaning that it was time to pray. So, praying at the grave went like this: You fill the ladle with water, and pour it over as much of the altar as you can. Then, you bow, say your prayers in your head, and that's about it. Michiko told me I should introduce myself to their ancestors, which I did, but I forgot to do it in Japanese. Oops. Also, I should mention that my host family's Buddhist, so I don't know if Shintoists have the same method of praying to their ancestors. But seeing as the two religions are very intertwined in Japan, I get the feeling they are very similar.

Then, that afternoon was my first tea ceremony practice (organized by Rotary). Now, as my friend Bianka has kindly put it: "Tea ceremony is not for me." It's really not. You have to kneel for what feels like forever, which might not bother the Japanese much, but it's absolute hell for foreigners. The outbounds got a real kick out of all the inbounds falling down as we attempted to stand up because our legs had gone numb from kneeling for too long. And on top of the pain, you have to remember all the little details of each part of the ceremony. How many times you should rotate the bowl, what kind of bow is used when, what is the correct way to pick up chopsticks, etc. I think our teacher is pretty strict too, but really only towards the Rotex and outbounds, because she knows us inbounds won't be able to understand her scoldings. So, yeah, I don't think tea ceremony is for me. But we have to go for the whole year (I think), so I'm just going to have to deal with it.
However, after tea ceremony practice, we got to go out for okonomiyaki! Now, for those of you not too familiar with Japanese cuisine, okonomiyaki is a savory pancake-like food made out of flour, water, eggs, cabbage, and then the specific ingredients for the kind of okonomiyaki you want to make, such as pork, or vegetables. All of those ingredients are mixed into a kind of batter and then poured onto a grill where you cook them just like a pancake! They were soooooo delicious! It was already my favorite Japanese food before coming to Japan, so I was so happy to eat it again.

Beginning

Middle

End! Doesn't that look wonderful?

And that following week was preparation for my school's festival! All schools in Japan have a school festival, but I honestly don't know why. Sorry to everyone who's been asking... Anyway, in a Japanese school festival, each class and afterschool club sets up a kind of stall (food or otherwise) or, in some clubs' case, puts on a performance. All the students invite their families and some friends, and it basically turns into, well, a big festival. My class's "attraction" (which we had been working on for the past month and I just never realized) was called "Hotel Sakura," Sakura being the name of my class. For this, everybody made posters about, if it were a real hotel, how we, the staff, would cater to different guests from different countries. The class was split into pairs, and each pair was assigned a country to work on. One person would make a poster about food options, and the other made one about cultural services. And then I made a poster about, as a foreign guest, what kind of services I would. In English. Needless to say, my preparation didn't take very long. I did, however, have to make a poster at home all in Japanese about myself and Massachusetts, which would be part of the International Committee's room (I know there's a better word for it, but I honestly can't think of it. My English is getting worse and worse here...)
The best part of the week was Friday, the day before the beginning of the festival, because the entire day was devoted to setting up the entire school for the festival. I had a lot of fun with my class making endless amounts of tissue paper flowers and hitting around the millions of balloons strewn across the floor. It was a nice break since everyone's pretty studious during school hours and it gets kind of hard to socialize.

Also, people enjoyed writing mystery words on people's back in tape, such as "Happy Tree Friends," "Obama," and "Emma" (can you guess whose back they wrote that one on?) 

 I should also mention that the balloons we bought were a rather difficult kind to blow up...

Yeah...

I honestly think I ended up making like 30 of these things...

Since we had too many balloons left over, my friend Chieri decided to draw everyone in the class's face on one and stick them to the black curtain covering our lockers...

My balloon! Chieri had some difficulty with my name...

The outside of Hotel Sakura

The first day of the festival was kind of boring. I mostly hung out in our room, and occasionally I went to explore the different classes with my friends, but they were almost all food shops, and rather expensive food shops at that. Being my usual stingy self, I ended up just getting a little box of edamame. Not bad, though...
But that afternoon, I had another Rotary event! This time it was a kind of welcome back party for last year's outbounds. The first two/three hours were dreadfully boring, as we had to listen to all the outbounds' (I think there were around 12) presentations, which would probably have been really interesting if they weren't all in Japanese. The only amusement I had was when the Rotex president let me ring the bell that reminded the presenters when they needed to start wrapping up. The best part was when one of the girls would talk exceedingly faster every time I rang the bell. By seven minutes, she sounded like she was on fast-forward...

But the real fun was the dinner afterwards. We got to talk, and hang out, and just have fun! They also had a chocolate fountain, which has always been my dream to try. It was just as delicious as I imagined...We also each had to give little speeches introducing ourselves, but at this point we had all done those so many times that we didn't even think about it. 
By the way, I forgot to take a lot of pictures there, so most of these I am stealing from Bianka (Thanks!) 

Wooh chocolate!

My with host parents 1 and 4. And Bianka.

D2580 Inbounds (minus Poopae who's in Okinawa)

Inbounds, outbounds, and Rotex, Oh my!

Some of the new Rotex trying to spell out Rotary...

Alright, finally we have the second day of my school's festival (known as our bunkasai in Japanese). Again, the morning was pretty boring, just hanging out in the classroom. But in the afternoon, Maxim and Veli came to visit! Unfortunately, I didn't recognize Veli's number when he called me, so he ended up wandering around my school for about 45 minutes...And now he knows it better than I do...
We visited a few shops, but spent most of the time at this place that Veli found where you can make your own light that changes colors. Unfortunately, technology doesn't exactly agree with me and it got to the point where I had three of the people in charge of the place bent over my little light trying to figure out how to make the darn thing work...As Maxim continually reminds me, this is a good example of why I will never be an engineer...
After the bunkasai ended, Maxim had to go home, but me and Veli decided to take a quick detour to visit his school, Gakushuin. He kept talking about how interesting the campus was, and I wanted to see it for myself. For sure, it was definitely interesting: they have a random forest in the middle that you can take a short little hike through, and a koi pond!

They weren't the prettiest koi...

Hiking at a school? No big deal.

But I had to get home quickly, because that evening there was a typhoon. The first typhoon (hurricane, whatever you want to call it) that I had ever experienced, actually. Like I said before, there isn't a lot of crazy weather where I'm from. And, like the earthquake, I totally overestimated it. There was a lot of crazy wind, but other than that, I just chilled in my house like everything was normal. Even my host parents grandchildren who were over, seemed to really enjoy watching the wind blow things around outside (even more than the TV! gasp!) So yea, I'm totally cool with Japanese weather now. I don't even feel earthquakes, although they happen all the time! There was one in the middle of Home Ec the other day, but while my class was all excited I just kept on sewing...

Well that's all for September! Sorry for the long wait everybody! I'll try to catch up October as soon as I can, but, you know me...

またね！