the next stop is ko-rin-bo

So I've been in Japan for three weeks now.

What has happened in the past week or so? Not too much.

School everyday, which is still fun because everyone wants to talk to me. But its still boring, because I can't understand much yet. So I sit there and draw or practice Japanese writing for like 3 hours at a time. Also, I can't remember if I already said this but in Japanese highschool the teachers move to different classes and the students stay in the same room, and eat lunch there and everything. It reminds me a bit of Canadian elementary school.

I started my 'Saturday" school, and I decided to take karate. So I went to the class, and considering I've done karate for 11 years, it was horribly easy. I think I'm going to switch out and take cooking for my school on Saturday instead, and maybe sign up for a "musakashii" (that means difficult) karate class.

Karaoke is the main activity of teenagers here. I've been four times now. And yesterday, it was for four hours with my two Japanese friends who went on exchange last year, and an exchange student from Australia. 3.5 hours were Japanese. Can I do karaoke in Japanese yet? No. It was not fun. For them? Tons of fun. I can't wait to actually be able to read Japanese at a normal speed.

Another thing that's all the rage here is "purikura". Its basically an interactive photobooth with green-screen technology where you get to edit the photos really cute-ly and add backgrounds and stuff. Then you get a copy of the 6 pictures, with 4 copies of each picture. aka its VERY small, and each person gets a copy of each picture. It's fun, I like it. Girls at school have photoooks just filled with millions of the little puri pictures. As of right now, I have 12. 6 of those are seen above.

I have my Rotary welcome party this week, and we have school holidays from the 19th onwards for a week. And my host family is taking me to Osaka to go to Universal Studios Japan! How wicked is that? I'm exited. Then the next week I have a weekend, thing, with the other exchange students. That should be plenty of fun as well.

Now I'm off to laze around and watch Japanese tv that I can't understand.

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