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！

Hey, I'm Alive! (October Pt. 1)

So I owe everyone a big apology. Time flies by so fast here, it's hard enough for me to keep up, so I forget that the people back home also want to know what's happening here too. So I apologize, and I promise I really will try to update more often (although they will probably be shorter less wordy posts). As a quick update to those I haven't talked to recently, next Wednesday will mark the end of my fourth month in Japan (Oh my god). I am now living with my second host family, which consists of a dad, grandma, brother, and dog, and I will write way more about them in a later post. Unfortunately, they live about an hour away from my school, and their internet sucks, which means a lot less time on the computer, making blogging difficult. But I will try my best!
Now moving on to October! Seeing as it's an entire month that I have to cover, I will probably break the post up. Also, since the events of this post happened more than a month ago, my memory of them is super fuzzy, so I apologize for the lack of details! But anyway...


The week after my school festival was pretty much a vacation week for me. Monday was a holiday, Tuesday was off because we get a day off after bunkasai and Monday was already taken, Wednesday was some kind of exams that I didn't have to take, and Thursday we didn't have school, but I have no idea why.
So, despite the ravaging typhoon Sunday night, Monday was an absolutely beautiful day! It was warm and there were clear skies- a complete turnaround from the previous week. My host mom decided to take advantage of the nice weather to bring me on a walk around the Emperor's Gardens: a big tourist attraction pretty close to the house.
Unfortunately the interior gardens were closed that day, but the outside was still really nice. We walked for about two hours (the gardens are huge!) and probably could have gone on longer, but neither of us remembered to bring water and, like I said before, it was hot and sunny that day. I was also really sad because I took a lot of good pictures, but something happened with my camera and only a few of them uploaded onto my computer, and I can't figure out how to get the rest...But please enjoy the few I have!

Make sure to watch out for those green-hooded dog men crossing the street...

Tuesday my friend Bianka (from Hungary) invited me to come with her and some of her school friends to do karaoke- my first time since coming to Japan despite already being there for two months. (I will also briefly mention that before going to karaoke we stopped at McDonald's for lunch and I never really ate much at McDonald's back in the States because of the horror stories I'd heard about the quality of the food, but I will admit that the Japanese McDonald's is considerably better in both taste and quality. But based on Japan's obsession with both of these elements in their food, I can't say I'm surprised.)

So for the people (like me) who have no idea what real Japanese karaoke is like, you basically lounge around in a small, dark room with one big TV (for the karaoke obviously) and sing your heart out along to a vast selection of both Japanese and English songs. The place we went to also had unlimited free drinks and provided us with tambourines. Not too shabby, eh?

You can also dance if you want

Yeah, Haruka reeeeeeally liked dancing...

Like I said, the drinks were unlimited (and these are just Bianka's and mine)

Now for some musings on the next week or two based on what I can remember and my pictures:

I think on Thursday of that same week, I met up with Maxim (from Belgium) and Kae, a Rotex who went to Belgium, where we decided to try purikura (Japanese photobooths) as neither me nor Maxim had tried it before. Now purikura ("puri" for short), is supposed to make you look very beautiful, but seeing as we are in Japan, it is the Japanese's version of beauty, which means big eyes and super white skin. And for Japanese people, it looks great! But for foreigners...well, we end up looking more like cartoon characters.

See what I mean?

But either way, it's still unbelievably fun, especially after you've taken the pictures and you get to edit and draw on them! In fact, it's such a big part of Japanese pop culture that my friends couldn't believe that we don't have it in America. My friend just gave me a surprised look and said "Then what do you do when you go out with friends?"

That weekend, I went with my host sister to a fancy lunch with some extended family, which honestly is not that significant of an event except that it made me realize just how much I went to fancy dinners with that family. I found it funny how quickly I'd gotten used to my host family's wealthier lifestyle. Anyway, the lunch was quite nice, as was to be expected, but there was just one thing that threw me (as a person rather inexperienced with fancy restaurants):

The utensils. Are four knives, three forks, two spoons, and three cups really necessary?

After the lunch, Yoko (host sister) and I went to a Noh-kyogen performance that Rotary had offered us tickets to. Noh-kyogen is a type of traditional Japanese theater, which is supposed to be more comical than regular Noh theater (it also doesn't use the masks). But the most interesting part of it is the language: the actors use a more archaic form of Japanese (like Shakespeare for English) and they deliver their lines in a loud, singsong voice, with a strange use of emphasis on some words when they speak. Obviously, I couldn't understand anything, but just the voices were entertainment enough. Unfortunately there was no filming or picture-taking allowed, but I think this video (courtesy of Youtube) should give you a pretty good idea of what it was like.

The next weekend, me and a friend from Kendo club (I can't remember if I mentioned joining kendo club yet or not...anyway, if not, or if people don't remember, it's a pretty awesome traditional Japanese sword-fighting sport that uses big bamboo sticks/swords) decided to go support our kouhai (underclassmen) at their tournament, which took place at Gakushuin, a prestigious private school in Tokyo, which I also may have mentioned before...sorry guys. Anyway, this probably all would have gone smoothly, except for the fact that there are TWO Gakushuins: a boys' school and a girls' school. My friend was convinced that the tournament was at the girls' school, which happens to be the lesser known of the two (location-wise anyway), so with the help of Apple maps on her iPhone, we set off on a nearly two-hour journey that ended in the realization that the tournament was, in fact, at the BOYS' school, which happened to be located right next to the train station where we met...Anyway, we made it to the tournament in time to watch our team fight. And we ended up getting second place, which I thought was amazing, but apparently we always get first, so everyone else was not quite as thrilled.
After the tournament, I met up with my friend from school who, after learning that I play cello, invited me to come listen to Bach concert that her dad, who is also a cellist, was playing in. It was honestly a beautiful concert (although the male alto singer surprised me a little bit), but my bored teenager instincts kicked in anyway, and I spent the whole time trying not to fall asleep. My friend had the same problem too, though, and her mom even moved to the back row just so she could take a nap!
But the best part was that, after the concert, we got to visit my friend's dad backstage and he let me play on his cello! Well, actually his friend let me play on his cello because the first one didn't have an endpin...Anyway, it was sooooooo nice to be able to play after so long. I could have stayed there for another hour, but the man had to go home. Someday I will manage to get a cello here (and then somehow find the time to play it...)
By the way, can someone let me know if there are kebabs in Boston? They are honestly one of my favorite foods here (although I'm pretty sure they're Turkish) and I had my first one that night. And when I say kebabs, I mean these:

Also had a cool international moment when I, an American in Japan, was eating a Turkish kebab sold to me by a foreigner (unfortunately I don't know from where) and heard a Brazilian song come on the radio. Go multiculturalism!

So in the interest of time, I shall end this post here, but I expect to have the rest of October up soon. I promise! This week and next week I don't have club activities so I should have plenty of time. And if I'm not up to date by the end of that time, feel free to assail me with emails and messages until I am. Also, expect way more pictures in the next post!

じゃあね！

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！