Japanese High School

So I started school on Tuesday, and its been a lot of fun!

On the first day, it was SO hot (its been SO hot every day actually. people bring towels around with them in japan to wipe off their sweat). I had to do a speech in front of all the teachers first thing, and I was so hot. It just wasn't pretty.

When I first walked into my class, there was a nice little sign on my desk, "welcome to yugakkan ashleigh!"

and a plus giraffe and some pens. It was from a couple of really nice girls, Gami and Lisa. From the moment I walked into school that day, EVERYONE stared at me. All day, all I got was people staring at me or people coming up to me saying something in bad English and when I would reply they said "kawaii!" That means cute. The culture in Japan has some obsession with being "kawaii". I was told I was kawaii only about 238 times on my first day, its only because i'm pretty different looking. My hair being the main thing too. People touch my hair all the time..

So my first was was a lot of fun, despite being stared at all day. But walking home? Well, see, in Kanazawa there's barely any foreigners. Seeing a foreign girl in a Japanes

e uniform causes people to turn their heads. Some guy actually stuck his head completely out of his car window to look at me, even after he was way down the street. That's h

ow much I stick out when wearing my uniform.. But I like the uniform, it looks like "sailor moon". If you say that to people here, they say no, because they don't like sailor moon, or something to that effect.

My first 3 days of school were really fun, everyone in my class is very friendly and helpful. Another thing is that EVERYONE wants to take a picture with me! Its the same with the other exchange students too in their schools. I'm starting to learn more Japanese. It's really hard because NO one speaks English. My homeroom teacher does, but no one in my class does! So there's a lot of miscommunication. But it's fun, and I'm starting to get it. For the past two weeks, Japanese basically just sounds like background noise because I can't understand any of it. It's a really hard language, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

But I think I'm starting to get it. I start Japanese lessons in October.

Anyway. Today was my school festival(it happens tomorrow too, despite tom

orrow being Saturday). It was SO hot out, so obviously, everyone had towels to wipe off their ridiculous amounts of sweat. You know what Japanese people are so small? They sweat out half their body weight everyday here because it's so humid.

SO anyway. We spent all of yesterday preparing for the festival. Meaning we sat outside in the 30* heat all day in our uniforms making signs and stuff. But today was fun, but hot.

My class was making waffles. Other classes made floats or yakisoba or hot dogs or pancakes. Today was my day off so I got to have fun while the other half of my class sold the waffles. But the waffles were like, packages and store bought and were flat and round like a pancake. I still refuse to actually call them waffles. But anyway. Japanese people seem to really like haunted houses, so two of the classes made a haunted house. There was also karaoke in the gym and there was "couple feeling" which in the real world basically means speed dating without the speed. So my friends took me there, and dropped me off, despite my "i dont understand what this is" - in japanese of course - I went to the room where I was greeted with a HOORAH! from a group of like 15 cocky japanese guys. So it was just me and a bunch of guys. The first question they asked in their broken English? "whats your type" ahaha, and every answer of mine was responded with a HOORAH from everyone. Quite entertaining to be so popular..

I think I really like Japanese school. It could just be that the people at this particular school are really friendly and nice and helpful. But the school has a lot of school spirit and its really fun to be at. Of course, real lessons haven't started yet, but the few classes we've had, everyone really tries to include me even though I can't fully understand everything. For example, to the right you will see a note from history class. What does it say? No idea! But the teacher told me to "koh pee" it anyway.

Some interesting things I've found out about Japan this week is that 1) there are no garbage cans on the streets. But when there are, there are 4 or so beside eachother, all for different things! I can never tell which is which..

2) Washrooms at my school have no soap nor hand dryers. Odd.

3) Japanese people can not speak English what so ever (its like Canadians speaking Japanese), so I really think more people should come here to teach English.

4) Karaoke is a way of life here. I've done it three times in the past three days. I went once with the other exchange students (again, if you're reading this, hi!) and then I went with my friend Ayumi who came to my district in Canada last year, and then today we had it at the school festival. Crazy!

5) It's SO humid here, you wouldn't even believe.

6) I have school, on Saturday!

Thats it for this week.

Ps. I've been here two weeks as of tomorrow! Its seemed like much longer though..

アシュリ <-- my name in katakana, its written on my uniforms too!