It's not a real festival 'til there's a drag queen

I think I will start off this blog post by saying that if there's anything that makes an exchanger feel  proud, it's acknowledgement that they have assimilated into their host country's environment. Let me explain:

The day after the end of my last blog post, marked the beginning of American week in my school: when a group of Americans from our sister school in the US come to Tokyo, and are hosted by Bunkyo students, while participating in school activities (only the girls come to Tokyo, the boys go to another part of Japan). I'd been aware of this for awhile, as my school adviser had asked me if I wanted to participate in some of the extra Japanese activities that the girls were doing, and because I would not be left alone until I had taught every one of my classmates how to correctly pronounce each girl's (there were nine) name. That task was never fully accomplished.
Anyway, I thought that it wouldn't be such a big deal for me, I mean, once you've been around Americans for fifteen years, they kind of lose that foreign appeal. My class would be hosting one girl, Cynthia (or Shinshia, according to my classmates). But as soon as she came into the room on her first day, I was at a loss. Do I speak to her in English or Japanese? Should I act like a Japanese or an American? I went over to introduce myself, and ended up just standing there. This happened twice. Twice. I have no idea why my brain can't handle to make the switch (although that visit has made it easier), and even now, I will bow and speak in Japanese to any foreign stranger, even if they talk to me in English. So yeah, just keep that in mind, people back home.
 But other than that, my ego was absolutely spoiled by these girls. They thought I was fluent, that I lived in Japan, that I was amazing at kendo, that I'm learning Japanese so quickly (after I told them that I'd only been seriously learning since I got here). It was pretty hard not to get kind of a swelled head (that got cured right after they left though...) It was nice, though, to realize that I have made at least some progress this exchange year, and it definitely gave me motivation to work harder at improving my Japanese. がんばります！

But you all just want to hear about what we did and see some pictures right? Well, fear no more, your patience has been rewarded!

Wearing kimono for the first time!

This picture brings me to the first of my extracurricular activities with the Americans (I unfortunately couldn't go to all of them, since I couldn't miss too many classes or practices): kimono wearing! My school brought in these two elderly kimono master ladies with these absolutely beautiful kimono (this kind was especially for young, unmarried girls- you can tell because of the long, wide sleeves). It's actually a fairly lengthy process to put the whole thing on, and seemingly difficult to do by one's self. I'm astounded by the Japanese women that do it every day of their lives!

There's so much intricacy that goes into this work, too. This is probably the third or fourth "draft", if you will, of my obijime

As you may be able to tell, every last detail must be perfect, or the whole flow of the look will be off. And in the final result, you should not be able to tell that any effort went into it at all. I think I'm starting to detect a pattern in the traditional Japanese arts...

Then on Friday, I got to take the morning off to go with everyone to Asakusa for something I never really considered to be a typical Japanese activity...

Making fake food!

 It's surprisingly easy! Granted, we were given the easiest food to make, but still! There were plenty of much more amazingly realistic foods in the shop below, which would usually be quite a sight, but not right before lunchtime...
Anyway, the food we were tasked with to make: tempura and cabbage.

My final product

Why did they have to look so realistic?

The fake-sushi clock was pretty cool though.

There was also a giant (probably 4 foot) wax fish hanging from the ceiling. I really don't know why I didn't take a picture of that...

That day (a Friday, by the way) after school was their goodbye party. Of course, there were games, and speeches, and plenty of tears, but my emotions were pretty stable until Cynthia (who I'd actually gotten pretty close after I sorted myself out enough to finally talk to her) reminded me of my own goodbye party. I don't even want to think about it, but I'm almost at my five month mark! Where did the time go!?

I'm going to miss all of them, but the goodbye was not so hard, seeing as they live in the neighboring state. If any of you are reading this, I hope we will see each other soon! I'm going to need someone to practice my Japanese with once I get back home!

Which brings me to the next part of this post...

That following weekend, two men from Bianka's Rotary invited us to come with on a boat ride around Hayama harbor (not sure if it's famous or not, but apparently it's got some great tuna).
Now, the fact that I can get horribly motion sick is nothing new to me. I've been like that as long as I can remember, and depending on the vehicle, I know how to deal with it. And usually with boats, if they're big, and I don't stay inside for too long, I don't normally get too sick. So my host mom told me that we would be "cruising" around the harbor. When one thinks of cruising, they think of a big boat right? Well, as I thought that would be the case, I didn't take any precautions against motion sickness, and here is what awaited me when I got to the harbor...

It was a pretty cool boat though

So I ended up spending most of the boat ride wrapped in a blanket, huddled up next to Bianka with my eyes firmly shut (if I can't see the choppy waves, I can pretend they're not there). Did I mention it was also freezing cold?
But there were some good points. For example, our guide/guy-who-drove(not sure if that's the right word)-the-boat was one of the most amazing people I had ever met. From a small, average town, he used to be a deliver goods by carrier to different ports of the world. He is now one of the most cultured people I have ever met. He has some basic knowledge on pretty much every single country in the world (as well as advanced knowledge in both the US and Hungary), he's an avid classical music fan and reader, and he speaks great English, which he claims just to have "picked up" from Australian ports. On the outside he just looks like your average elderly, Japanese fisherman! So, if you're ever in Japan, visiting Hayama harbor, I suggest you look this guy up (he runs a yacht service there). I also suggest you try the popcorn tuna. First time I've ever liked tuna!

You'll know you're in the right restaurant if you see this fishtank.

And to finish off November, I went to--can you guess?--another school festival! This time, I went with Maxim and Bianka to Keio University, where my friend Kiki goes to school. Kiki is the daughter of a family friend's friend who went to high school in the States, and has also been kind and helpful guide during my time here so far. But anyway, her school's festival was like most of the others I've been to: plenty of stalls with great food, a few interesting attractions (we went to go see a very amusing fortune teller), and, of course, plenty of ridiculous dress-ups.

Just one of many

Besides cross-dressers, there are always an abundance of cosplayers (people who dress up like anime characters), and other crazy costumes of unknown origin.

I honestly have no idea what they were supposed to be...

Bianka and I also discovered a little shop/stand that sold old Japanese snacks, and now we are both absolutely addicted. We went on two shopping sprees there. Seriously, corn potage is the best flavor any snack could have.

Everything there was also in mini

After that, Bianka and I met up with some of my friends from school for karaoke to finish the day and my November!

I'm not sure when I'll be able to get my first December post up, as my internet here is quite...well, it's absolutely terrible (from 10-20 minutes to upload one photo). But thank you everyone for your patience! I really appreciate it!

And a late Happy Hannukah/Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (which I hear is going to be quite an occasion over here)!

じゃあね！


P.S. While writing this post for a second time (because I'm pretty sure blogger hates me), I went with Bianka and Antonia to see both Breaking Dawn Pt. 2, and Les Miserables (loved both of them!), and we happened to see a most curious ad before both movies, that I think people will enjoy. Believe me, this is SO Japanese.

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！

Some Quick Introductions

Alright, so I'm still working on my longer post about the first part of November, but in the meantime, per request from my family, I figured I would introduce my new host family!
I moved to my new home about a month ago (wow, that went really fast...). I now reside in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo, which is the biggest ward, and I believe lies in the western part of Tokyo. My house is kind of out of the way from everything (30 minutes by train to the nearest major station and about an hour from my house to my school), but the neighborhood is very quiet and relaxed which is a nice change from busy Chiyoda. Also, the major street of the area is fairly close to where I live, which has all the basic shops we need. On the weekends I walk with my host grandma to the supermarket to do the groceries.
Moving on to the family! My second host family, the Fujii family, is considerably smaller than my first family. It consists of my host dad, host grandma, host brother, and (host?) dog. And like my earlier blog post, I will give each of them a short introduction:

Jo Fujii (host dad): The head of a small funeral services company (although you wouldn't be able to tell that's what it was from his office). I think he's around 40. He is also an accomplished shamisen player (you should see his trophy room) and has a second job as a shamisen teacher. A shamisen, by the way, is a three-stringed, Japanese-style guitar (but it's shaped more like a banjo). It's a traditional instrument, and if you've ever heard traditional Japanese music, you've probably heard a shamisen in the background.

Remiko Fujii (host grandma): I call her Remi, for short. Although technically she's my host grandma, I think of her more as my host mom, since she does everything for me: cooking, cleaning, keeping track of all my activities, etc. I also spend the most time with her, since she's home most of the time that I am. She's a retired Japanese as a Second Language teacher, so her English is amazing! She still works now as an English tutor to a select few people. Despite her age, she runs the whole runs the whole house single-handedly and is, obviously, extremely good at it. Her cooking is the best! Also, her daughter (who unfortunately passed away recently) lived in Switzerland with her husband and two kids, which means my host grandma has spent alot of time in Europe, so she likes to enjoy her European food as well. That means she has a great taste in bread (goodbye Japanese wonderbread!) and a nice stash of Swiss chocolate which is almost exclusively for me, as I'm the only one who really eats sweets in this family. Life is good!

Remi-san and my host brother, Reigen

Reigen Fujii (host brother): a 20-year old college student who also just happens to be one of the best shamisen players in Japan! (you should see his trophy room) Each May there is a contest among the most elite shamisen players in the country, to see who is the year's best (although I don't think you can enter again once you've already won), and Reigen was this year's champion. He's also a talented piano player and singer, so I'm always hearing music around the house, especially jazz, which is his favorite (yes, you can play jazz on the shamisen too). Surprisingly enough, he's studying law at university.
Here's part of his performance from last May:

And last but not least:
Rikki the dog: My family's huge, adorable, Akida (at least I think that's the breed's name). He's around 7, so he's not super hyper, but he really likes being pet, and he comes to greet me at the door when I come home, and sometimes, if he feels like making the trip up the stairs (my room is on the third floor) he comes and sleeps in my bed with me! He's also really well trained, and can do basic tricks like sit, wait, and shake hands. I already love him so much!

So that's it for the new host family! I'll put more about my new house in the next post, because I still have to finish uploading the pictures, and blogger is being ridiculously slow at the moment (as is everything else on my computer). If my internet connection decides to start working like it should again, then I should have the new post up by next week, and if not...then we'll see...

じゃあね！

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！