Almost done

So I`ve finished and turned in all of my papers and had my final test for Japanese today.
My host mother gave me her old suitcase after I mentioned that I was planning to buy one and last week I did a practice pack. I could barely fit all of my stuff and the bags were 42 and 38 pounds. I`ve bought more stuff since then... I will be paying an agency to bring them to the airport.
This afternoon I will go to a maid cafe with some friends. I`ve already been to a butler cafe so I need to even it out. A few weekends ago I went to the Zoo but I don`t have the pictures with me right now. I am looking forward to going home but only because then I will no longer have to wake up at 6:30am every morning.

Oh and I had to write a stupid poem for class.
I also had to write an explanation for it but I don`t feel like typing it. After that presentation Thursday I will be done with all of my classes.

Ito and skit

Saturday I went to Ito and picked green tea leaves and went to a temple. Near the temple was a foot onsen. We got all dressed up to pick tea leaves but we only actually picked them for like 5 minutes which was obnoxious, but oh well. My host mom made tempura with the leaves. On the way back, we went through Tokyo and since the Japanese team color is blue, Tokyo Tower was lit blue.

On Wednesday we had skit performances for our japanese class. My group's skit was called "300 musume" 300 because we're in Japanese 300 and musume means daughter and it is a play on the real Japanese girl group "morning musume." Actuall I think our real skit name was "how to create a Japanese girl group." but...oh well.

Edo Tokyo Architectural Museum

sample of some fabrics I bought




















Class Trip.

Okinawa and Nikko Pics

glass blowing
Okinawan Guitar

Shuri Castle









Okinawa from the plane






other thing...
5 story Pagoda
me in front of the 3 wise monkeys
view from a temple/shrine in Nikko





me and katie at the pottery town

Nikko and Okinawa!

And no pictures. hahaha

I can`t upload any pictures until Wednesday but I`m taking a break from writing my paper so...yeah.

First- Nikko.

Last Last weekend Katie and I went to Nikko and stayed with the very nice Tanya who showed us around. Saturday we went to an awesome pottery town with tons of big badger statues and- what else? Awesome pottery. After that, we visited a fabric store where I was finally able to start buying fabric for my mom. Sunday we went to the to...something shrine where the three wise monkeys and the sleeping cat are. We also saw a lake (I forgot the name) on a mountain which was VERY beautiful. There were were able to wander through a...I believe Italian or french diplomat home which had a nice view of said lake. After that we went to a waterfall which was AWESOME. I adjusted the colors and set it as my desktop on my laptop, and when I turned my laptop on the other day I thought `wow, I took that picture, I was there.` So look forward to when I upload that.

2 days after we got back from the Nikko trip, we went to Okinawa! It was about a 2 and a half hour plane ride from Tokyo (and about a 1 and a half hour bus ride to get to the airport...) and when we walked through the airport I could just feel the humidity.

I`ll get the days mixed up so things we did: walked around Shuri Castle, learned to play a song on Japanese traditional guitar, did glass blowing (we made cups), watched an Okinawan drum performance, and then learned a dance, walked through a cave (which wasn`t as cool as the caves in Delaware Ohio), went to one of the world`s largest aquariums, saw a dolphin show, went to a `tropical forest` which was more like a conservatory, went to the WW2 peace memorial museum and DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME AT ALL. Everyone wished we had more time there, we were like halfway through the exhibit and realized we needed to be on the bus in 5 minutes. We went shopping, and saw very old native Okinawa houses (from the days of the hut).

And ate a lot of ice cream.

Asakusa Festival

So this past weekend I went to a festival, Akihabara, and participated in a charity event. Pictures were taken at the charity event but not by me so I'll look around facebook for some.

The Makuchary (makuhari Charity) was a small event. I got a free T-shirt and I helped the CD booth sell CDs and DVDs. Sometimes it was really fun by it was also kind of boring. It would also have been better if it wasn't so cold. A bit too chilly. I bought 2 Globe CDs which is an artist I like one song by but wanted to look more into them and luckily I do like the CDs.

The festival at Akasuka is one of the biggest if not the biggest festival. There are 3 nikoshi (?) that are huge and heavy and have gods inside them and people carry them around town. Asakusa was more crowded that day than it was even during golden week! There were also Yakuza there. We saw a few black shiny cars and at least 2 bosses passed by me, easily noticeable by their entourage making way for them so they didn't have to deal with the crowd.

Then I went to Akihabara to get some more naruto books. there was a sale! So I got 105 yen books for only 90 yen.

Golden Week

Okay so Golden Week actually started on Thursday and went till Wednesday of the next week.

So day 1- Akihabara and Shibuya with Shelby and some people from her program. We went to an anime something that had anime things that I WANTED but were expensive. Then we went to animate which was basically more anime stuff but MORE of it. In Shibuya we went in this ridiculously expensive department store which had an awesome leggings store and was terribly crowded. Also we saw the statue of the dog that waited for its master and died. (Also I was able to withdraw money from the post office so all was well)

Day 2- Tokyo Tower and Yokohama. (with Katie) Yokohama isn't actually in Tokyo, it's another city. There we went to a french park (i think it was called like france mountain) We were going to go to the american one but found the france one and didn't really care that much. It was pretty and then there was this viewing spot where we could see the harbor. I got some cool boots in the shopping street. Also Yokohama has a huge China Town so we walked around there too.

Day 3- Asakusa and Akihabara with Katie. Asakusa has these two shines or temples or somethings and between them is a huge street of shops. There we rode a rickshaw which was really fun. Also from Asakusa we could see the Tokyo Sky-liner (sukaitsuri or something like that) that is being built. Then Katie and I went to Akihabara and had dinner. But we went into this building where you go in an elevator and have to know which floor you're going to, but we didn't know and so the Japanese girls were like which floor and we were like...*blank stare* but they got off before us and I chose the 10th floor in a rush but it was like japanese restaurant something so i was like, at least it's food. And we asked to see the menu first and the prices looked good. We both ordered pizza.

Day 4- Makuhari. I live in Makuhari and there were some places there that I wanted to explore so we went to a lot of shops and there was supposed to be a local market but the map lied and it's wasn't there. Also we wanted to go to a book-off and the people at the train station said there was a used book shop a station over but it was not there but we did find a new books store which had awesome art books.

Day 5- Iidabashi (or iidebashi...prob da) (there is a park/garden there) uhh the place with the sunshine building...um...Anyway in the Sunshine building there is an aquarium so we looked at that but it didn't take long so after, we went back to iidabashi because there was a book-off there. (cheap used books)

Day 6- Homework day

Day 7- Iruka (dolphin) watching with my host mom in some small town in Chiba. Chooshi, i believe. There i tried cafe o lait melon pan and it was disgusting.