I Can See Mt. Fuji From My House! (November Pt. 1)

November, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, began with the first of my three changes in host family. The move itself was pretty smooth and uneventful. I think the transition is going well, my host family is really kind, although there are many differences between them and my last family, but as an exchange student it is my job to adapt. The only thing I left out was pictures of my house, mainly my room. So here you are!

I actually get half of the third floor to myself (the other half is my host brother's), which includes my room, two balconies, and a storage closet. I mostly use the balconies for laundry, but one of them has an amazing view:

To the right...

...And to the left. Yes, that is Mt. Fuji

That weekend, I decided to go visit my friend Veli's school festival (which I admit, was probably a bad exchange student move seeing as it was my second day with my host family, but my host mom said she didn't have anything planned for that day, and that is was fine with her) and Maxim came to join me. By the way, September through November is the season of school festivals, which is why I've been going to so many.
We spent a little while at Veli's high school, visiting a few of the classrooms. I saw some cool posters from former exchange students (since exchange is pretty popular in that school), many of whom had gone to the US, and some really awesome dinosaur skeletons made out of cardboard.

Like so

I also discovered that ROTC classes exist in Japan, which I found surprising in a country where the military is not nearly as prominent as it is in the States. But hey, there are plenty of things in Japan that have surprised me way more, haha.

But the real fun was Gakushuin University's school festival. Gakushuin, Veli's school, consists of all schools from primary to university (and possibly a kindergarten, I'm not sure), and although they are not all on the same campus, the boys' senior high and the university are next door to each other, luckily for us. And since this was a university festival, the students had a lot more freedom to do whatever crazy things they wanted.

Like around the grounds as a drunk Jack Sparrow

Actually one the most entertaining parts of the festival was the vast amount of people dressed up, mostly as movie, tv, or game characters. And yet they were still surprised when we said we wanted their pictures...

Not sure if you can tell from this picture, but she also has magenta hair

There seemed to be a multitude of horse-headed people at Gakushuin...

Throughout the festival, there were numerous dance/singing groups performing on a large stage near the center of the university. For some reason almost all the ones I saw felt some need to incorporate cross-dressing (usually by a guy) into their routines. Can you find the one in this picture? 

Also, near the end of the festival, a bunch of the characters we had seen throughout the day, plus some others, got up on stage and danced a pretty hilarious version of Gangnam Style. Sadly, I was too far away and could not get a good video of it.
We even got some nice guides to the festival when Veli introduced us to Gakushuin's university exchange students. They were a pretty international group, including France, Italy, and South Korea. They were really nice about letting us tag along with them, and from the way they described how their exchange had been so far, it made we really want to do another exchange when I go to college.
We made some other friends too, when Veli decided randomly go take a picture with a group of guys he saw standing in the window of one of the university buildings:

Apparently they were just on their way to a party

Moving on to the next weekend! Saturday we had a pretty boring Rotary orientation. I had to make a two-three minute speech about my life in Japan so far, which I think went pretty well. (although you can never really tell how good your Japanese is from a Japanese person's reaction. I get told I have amazing Japanese for saying things like "Nice to meet you" and "Get well soon") There was also a sad moment when we had to give advice to next year's outbounds, in English, and several of the inbounds spoke better than I did...By the time I get home next year, I'm going to have to pretend I'm still an exchange student to make up for my inability to speak real English.
Afterwards, Bianka's host parents took me out to dinner with them (Italian!) which was super nice. I actually really love Bianka's host family. They let me come over all the time, and eat their food (sometimes they even leave food for me), and just treat me kindly overall. Plus, they live really close to a big shopping/hangout area!

But enough of me gushing, let's go on to Sunday! On Sunday, the Rotary club of Kyose invited whatever Rotary-involved people (inbounds, outbounds, Rotex, Rotaract, Interact) that were interested, to join them for an imonikai, which is a big Japanese potato eating party that happens just after their harvest. First, though, since this is Rotary, we had to do some community service, which involved cleaning all the statues along the area's street-side art gallery. But they weren't actually very dirty, so it was mostly us pretending to actually clean while the Rotarians took pictures like they were the paparazzi.
After that, they took us to the imo (Japanese potato) plots, where they had already dug up a bunch of the imo plants. All we had to do was hit the dirt off and break apart the potatoes, which we could take home to our families. I happened to keep getting really big plants, so in the end I had a ton to take home. More than my host mom wanted I think...

My "harvest." I'm still not sure what my host mom ended up doing with these...

The imo plants looked pretty funny after you pulled all the potatoes off. In my case, I got on that looked like an alien's shrunken head (or more specifically, an Ood for any Whovians out there)

Then came lunch! Using the imo, and a whole bunch of other things, the Rotarians had cooked this huge stew (in what looked like a giant barrel), that is now one of my favorite Japanese foods (which may also be because of my love of stews...). It was sooo good!

Trust me, it's tastier than it looks

After everyone made their short introduction speeches, the Rotarians decided that it was time for some games, to work off our meal. The first was a jump rope competition, where all the team members (about fifteen to twenty people) had to jump at the same time, and whichever team got the most jumps without stopping, won. And my team, despite our location disadvantage (we were on a slope) managed to come out victorious!
Second, was a huge game of kick the can where, instead of having two sides for each team, we could use the whole giant park, and there were no boundaries. I had alot of fun, and my team managed to win that game too. I think that's the most I've run in a long time!

I forgot to mention what a nice town Kyose was. It's climate and landscape reminded me of some kind of place you would find out on the Cape.

The imonikai ended at around 3, which means we still had a whole afternoon free, so Bianka, Maxim, and I decided to go out for dinner together. Bianka knew about this buffet that she had been to before with her friend, so she took us there. And it was so cute! In the entrance to the restaurant, there is a line of waiters that yell "Buongiorno!" as you walk in. Probably because the buffet serves Italian food, but along with many other Western and Indian style foods. I was pretty hard to find something I didn't like. They even had crepes and Belgian-style waffles for dessert! The only thing was that it was rather expensive, but that might be good thing, seeing as if I could go back whenever I want, I would get so fat that no one would be able to recognize me!


So that's about it for your first part of November! Sorry it's so short, but believe me, the next one will be much longer, featuring American week, when a group of girls from Connecticut came to my school!

Happy Chanukah everyone!

じゃあね！