Conservatory, Shinjuku

Okay so last week I went to a conservatory with my host mom and took 474 pictures.
And Tuesday I had a class trip to Shinjuku. The class is urban society of Tokyo and so we were looking at how in such a short distance you can go from a crowded place with a ton of high rise buildings like kabukicho to only low rise buildings and less people like the mini korea town that is just an alley way away. Well maybe it's not an alley way...all Japanese streets look like alley ways... :-\ Also we considered how there is like no zoning in Japan. You can have love hotels right near video game arcades and pachinko parlors (gambling) right near respectable office businesses.

I tried to withdraw money from my card today but it didn't work. This is especially annoying because my train card expires on the 30th and I need money to buy a new one (I want a 3 month one but it's close to 70$ a month). Not to mention I will be going places during golden week and then would want to buy things. I have about 100 dollars. I also have money on my train pass but since I can't get a new one, I'll take that money off for travel.

Oh, and the IES center is closed during golden week so I will have no internet access.

Oh yeah, so there are different train lines, and a lot of people (not me) have to take the musashino. And the train is awful, runs irregularly and well, frankly, it seems to be the train of choice to jump in front of. And so half of our class is late at least once a week.

The weather has gotten much better. I mean, it's getting humid and it's still raining, BUT AT LEAST IT ISN'T COLD.

Golden week is coming up and my plans are more or less- Explore Tokyo with Shelby 29th and 30th, Go to a beach with my host mom one of the days, visit a conservatory, visit a zoo, visit some parks, go to akihabara.

Stuff like that.

I didn't really do anything last week so there's not much to update on but I can add some more pictures that I was finally able to upload.

The food is eel and the taste was fine but I didn't like it because it was soft and mushy. Yuck.

To answer some questions

Sorry it's been forever. To answer some questions, the earth quake did wake me up. My first reaction was that it was a train, and the second was that someone was shaking the house (a totally legit thought, no?) before I realized what it really was. It lasted qute a long time, about 15-20 seconds so I was nervous and of course to me it felt like a big earthquake. We has a small presentation before we moved into our housing so I knew not to try to run outside or anything, also they said it was better to be upstairs and I was so I just stayed in bed and didn't worry too much about it. Later my host mother said it was a small earthquake. I wondered if she meant small on the scale or small as in they usually get larger ones, and a friend told me it was small as in they get larger ones.

My commute... okay so I wake up at 6:30, breakfast at 7, leave at 7:40, walk to the station, get to the station a little before 8:16, take the 8:16 train for like 15 minutes to the station for the city/area my school is in, then walk about 10 minutes to the actuall school. I do that every Monday Tuesday Thursday and Friday. Tuesday and Fridays I rush to the station after class to take the same train back to my home station to go to my afternoon classes that are held at another school. I don't have to transfer.

The other picture was chocolate chip melon pan. Melon pan is sweet bread lightly covered with cookie dough.

Classes are fun but there is too much reading.

Everyone in the program is super nice. I was really surprised, everyone seems to get along and if you want to go somewhere, you can always find someone to go with you.

My host mom's name is Nakayama but she says to call her obaachan which means grandmother. She's a good cook and cooks things that I like. Sometimes there are things that are okay so I eat them but sometimes, like last night there was fish that I didn't like so she actually went and made me beef to eat >.< I guess the fish wasn't that bad but I wasn't in the mood to eat it. ANd it was more fishy-ish. She makes tuna too so I eat that and another fish um..budou or budo but that's the japanese name. The meat is kind of chicken consistency and it's not fishy so I like it. The cakes here are AMAZING. I think they are lighter and the slices are much smaller but they taste so good! Another think I like is inari-zushi. It's like very thin fried tofu but it's soggy bucause it's been put in a sweet sauce. I like the tofu just like that but when you wrap it around sushi rice (i think there is vinegar in it) then it's called inari zushi (It's shaped like sushi i guess). There's some story about a fox so it's like food for the fox god or something.

Konnichiwa means good afternoon and that song has a foul alternate meaning i believe.

I'm glad you're enjoying the blog ^_^


pic one is a rock with turtles on it taken near a temple in Narita during the drum festival. The second picture is a bento box for when we went to view the sakura trees but I didn't like anything. Even the rice had egg in it... The third picture is a yummy dessert I had the same day and the last picture is of random dressed up people from the drum festival. I have better pictures and even video from that day but it's on my laptop. I'm having trouble connecting my laptop to the internet at the center so I can't upload much stuff.

oh and here is a castle I went to but the inside is very modern looking.Not cool at all.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30588346&l=c4e2edff3c&id=1434060117

Pictures!

So yesterday or two days before or something we had a "small" earth quake which shook the house and lasted for like 20 seconds. It was a 6:15 am.

Today there was such strong wind that we couldn't get to Meikai because it's too close to the sea where the winds were stronger and the train would have crashed so the trains were closed.


Of course I didn't know morning classes were canceled until I was on a crowded train and woke up early. *sigh*

But at least on the way back home I got to visit the shrine that has the gong that rings every morning.

4:21 pm

SO I put my pictures on my laptop, and transfered some I wanted to post onto my usb but when I got to the schools, the computers wouldn't upload the pics (to facebook) maybe it would work with blogger... I don't know. Anyway you have to wait longer for pictures.

I think I'm taking a long way home (not by much) but I'm going to wait for it to warm up before I check another road so I don't freeze if I get lost. Today I took a Japanese placement exam and tomorrow get to find out how little I really know. My first class is tomorrow.

The sakura have started to bloom but not all of them but hopefull by this weekend I can get some better pictures. My host mother is taking me with her friend to see the Sakura. April 10 is the narita drum festival and I should get good pics there too...

Oh! This morning I rode on the train alone for the first time. I didn't catch the rapid so it took me a few minutes longer to get there, but on the other hand, I didn't get lost either.