So I realized alot can happen in one month (October Pt. 2)

So, I'm just going to jump in right where my last post left off...

The following week, after another boring tea ceremony practice (ugh, why are they twice a month?), a few Rotex took all of the inbounds and outbounds out for karaoke as an early Halloween party. I honestly don't have much to say about it, besides that it was fun, except that I decided to bring along a mask, that had been given to me after the summer camp, as a sort of costume, and it turned out to be pretty popular!

Like so! (That's not me, by the way)

I believe the next significant of the month was when I decided to do some American cooking for my host family! Apparently a popular thing to do among exchange students is cook food from your host country as a way of sharing your culture, and since I was going to leave them soon, I figured it would be a good time to do so. Given my lack of real cooking experience, I decided to stick with something easy: burritos! Thankfully, there was a supermarket near my house that specializes in stocking foreign food, so I got all the ingredients I needed! Well, except for the thin pizza crusts mislabeled as tortillas...but they worked out anyways.
The burritos went over pretty well I think. It was quite a sight watching my family try to figure out eating with their hands, and struggling (in vain) to not let any food fall out of the pizza crust/tortilla.
My host sister Yoko decided to go at it Japanese style anyways and ate the whole thing with chopsticks. 

Like a boss

I even taught my host mom how to make them, and the next day, while I was out with friends, she made them for her grandchildren! (who came running up to me when I got home to tell me all about it)

In the end, we just cut them up

The last Saturday in October was Maxim's school festival, so Bianka, Veli (Finland), Laura (France), and I all decided to go visit together. And his high school is not just any normal Japanese boys' high school, no, it's THE train (yes, as in the metro) high school of Tokyo. Which meant trains EVERYWHERE. I'm pretty sure every single classroom had trains in some way, shape, or form (pictures, drawings, boys dressed as train conductors) in them.

Toy trains...

Mini (but rideable!) trains...

Life-size models of train cars located right in the middle of the school...

Otherwise, it was a pretty normal school festival:

One of the classrooms had a bunch of old games (e.g. Jenga, checkers), including this one, where you have to stick swords into this pirate's barrel until he pops out (whoever's sword made him pop out is the loser). And as some kind of mean joke, this pirate would only pop out when I put one of my swords in...

There was also this thing: you had to hit away the bottom block, but couldn't let it fall

Yeah, that game didn't work out very well...

Discovered this in one of the classrooms. Welcome to Japan

That night was Michiko (host sister) and Yuki (host sister-in-law)'s joint birthday party, as well as my farewell party, so my entire host family, all the children and grandchildren included, went out for shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu is a type of Japanese cuisine (although I'm pretty sure it originated in Korea), where you dip super thin slices of raw meat in boiling (and I mean boiling) water, and it cooks almost instantly! It was actually really good! Along with the meat, we also cooked vegetables and ramen noodles. I'm pretty sure I gained a good 5 pounds that night...

What the hot water pot looked like (and Yoko when she photobombs)

Afterwards, all the grandchildren gave gifts to Michiko, Yuki, and I! Due to the fact that I have a never-ending cold through the winter months, my host family was really thoughtful and bought me a panda blanket (although it's only for the waist...) and thermal socks. Also, all their grandkids, with whom I probably hung out with the most, made me a card where they each wrote a little note to me. It was so sweet! It was really hard not to cry...I'm going to miss this family so much!

All the messages were super sweet, even the one in the bottom right corner (from Konosoke, who's 6) which is just a drawing of him and me. Everyone was making fun of it because he made me bald, but I think it's adorable.

The Hotta family! (minus my host dad) Thanks so much to all of them!

And to finish off this month, the Rotex took us to the Ueno Zoo! Now, just as the biggest (or most famous) attraction in the Franklin Park Zoo is the gorillas, the same goes for the Ueno Zoo and its giant pandas. So everyone was really excited to see it, since, there are very few zoos outside of China that have pandas, but guess what we got in the end? Panda butt. That's right, I get to see my first real panda and it's sleeping. Mooning the crowd. Perhaps it wanted to make a statement?
Actually, since it was raining that day, there were a lot of sleeping animals. But I still saw a fair amount, although not many that I hadn't seen before. Anyway, seeing as the animals were not very active, it would have been great for pictures, but my camera died! I did get a few before that though, which I will share with you now:

No idea what these things were, but they were adorable!

You can't really tell from this picture, but this cliff was covered with monkeys

Easily one of the cutest and most delicious lunches I've ever had

I present with the mighty giant panda

And even though I sound like I'm complaining, I did still have a lot of fun! I would definitely like to go back- this time with my camera (although I think Blogger would explode if I tried to upload so many pictures onto it...).

Also had the pleasure of watching this man reenact the entire movie Titanic, which ended in him dramatically dunking his head into that bowl of (probably freezing) water.

After the zoo we went to some kind of science and nature museum, but it was pretty boring so there's not much to talk about.

I think that about sums it up for October! I apologize again for being so late with these posts. I will start working on November as soon as possible to get you readers up to date. I can't believe it's almost December already! Where does the time go?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this guy. We met him at Maxim's school festival. He was pretty darn cool.

じゃあね！