3kagetsutachimashita!

So yesterday I went to my school's BATON TWIRLING Club's recital, and it was honestly amazing. Broadway quality showmans ship! I mean they were such amazing dancers and then on top of it, trirling and throwing batons. Then they just kept bringing out more things, like hoola hoops and ribbons. They did about 10 costume changes and at the end was a colaborative dance with music from movies - starwars, pretty woman, a jackie chan movie, harry potter, titanic. I mean the way they put it together was amazing!
The school clubs here in Japan are so different than in Canada. Students here don't get homework, so clubs are everyday, and they're really intense. I think my schools baton twirling club is one of the best in the prefecture! Amazing!
At the end, everyone shouted "encore", and of course they did an encore, which with another costume change, was amazing. But the funny thing is, in Japanese, "encore" is "on-ko-re! on-ko-re!" ;)

It's getting really cold here. Houses don't have central heating, they just heat the rooms they're using. My room in my host families house gets SO cold at night! I turn on the heater so its 21* when I go to bed and I wake up and the thermometer says it's 9*. Cold. Plus I have to walk to school for 40 minutes and it has been raning everyday here, so it's freezing. Kids at my school don't wear coats, they just wear clothes under their uniforms. I weighed the shirts I was weighing yesterday, they totalled to 10lbs. My salor uniform shirt, my sweater and my long sleeved sweater underneath. Heavy, and I'm still cold! School also doesn't really have heating, so kids bring blankets to school and wear them over their legs. It's pretty unfortunate that Japanese school uniforms are so sex-ist and girls have to wear skirts all year round.

Time seems to be flying by so quickly. It's almost been 3 months! I change host families on MONDAY! I can't believe how fast time has gone by. I've been at school here for 3 months too, it does not seem like it's been that long! They're starting to put up holiday lights in the streets here and I can't believe it's almost Christmas either! Time is flying by,　but I'm really enjoying it here :) In theory wish time wouldn't seem to go by so fast (but I wish it would go even faster when I'm sitting in Japanese math class. hah)

Well, It's time for lunch now. and yes, it's 1:00. They eat really late here, probably because of all the clubs that go on after school, this is the middle of the day for those students whi go home at 6 or so. It's such a difference from BT and having second lunch, 9:37am ;) Let me tell you, Japanese school is COMPLETELY different than Canadian school. I think kids here would die if they tried to do the work we did in highschool. Here, no homework. Tests once a month. And the work they're doing here as grade 11 is work we did in grade 9. Maybe it's just my school, it being a school for the 'less smart kids' but it's completely different. But needless to say I'm having a blast here and I absolutely love it! I was invited back for my grade's graduation in 2011! How sweet :) Apparently Japanese graduation, they have to wear their school uniform - and it's not that big of a deal at all. ぜんぜんちがうね！

Thanks for reading! I will upsate again once I've moved host families and have new adventures to tell :)

hey thereeee

So, its been awhile. my apologies!

I've done lots in the past month, so let me try to summarize it..

Sandy, Jared and I have found the top floor of the local department building, called the Diawa. And it’s a childrens floor on the roof! But it also has an amazing view of the city and the sunsets too. It’s never busy, there’s usually one kid and their parent or the random businessperson getting a few moments of quiet up there. It’s really nice!

I received a package from my mom in Canada this month too! It was HUGE. Filled with host family gifts, and the clothes and the random things I forgot – like the lens cap to my camera etc. It also had things I can’t get here, like Canadian toothpaste(Japanese toothpaste tastes kind of funky, and I don’t find it cleans very well), and candy! There’s a good selection of candy here in Japan but you know, there’s nothing like the candy you used to eat as a child to make you feel better!

I went out for sushi again with my host grandparents (they take me out to really nice restaurants almost every weekend). I absolutely love sushi! It’s amazing and delicious. But Japan takes so many fish out of the ocean, and I’m sure not all of it gets eaten. Japan basically just rapes the ocean, kind of sad.. but I’m ashamed to say that Japanese fish is delicious! Sushi bars are really cool. You can take the sushi from the convayer belt goingaround the room, or you can send in an order to the sushi chefs who make it right infront of your eyes. The plates are all different colours to tell you what the price of the dish is you’re getting. By the end of the meal, you end up having 20 or 30 dishes infront of your table.

Then when you get ready to pay, they come by with a scanning gun and they run it over the plates and it totals the cost. Pretty cool, eh!

I went to my friend Yoshi and Masa’s house for a barbeque for exchange students. Yoshi came to Canada last year on exchange, and Masa went to Australia. Therefore they both know English. They invited their Japanese friends so the day was filled with eating and playing Texas Hold’em in Japanese while it RAINED the whole time. Kind of a bummer about that, but it was fun.

I visited Gifu Prefecture (I live in Ishikawa Prefecture), to see the “Supa Rinda”, meaning super forest highway – or something to that effect. It's a long highway winding through the mountains and the beautiful trees in Gifu. We were a little late to see all the leaves all red and orange. They had already mostly fallen, but it was still really beautiful to see the mountains and everything!

There’s no such thing as Halloween in Japanese culture so I stayed in on Halloween night, and did nothing. But I did a little presentation on Halloween and brought my macbook to do a little slideshow. I brought them all candy and we had a Halloween party, probably their first and only. Then at lunch, all of my friends were just amazingly awestruck at photobooth on the macbook and we had a photo session for half an hour! I have some hilarious videos of it too. It was a lot of fun ;)

The candy I brought them was Japanese. I went to the grocery store to buy some and encountered “ramune” flavoured kitkats. That’s a type of Japanese pop, it’s delicious. The kitkats ended up being blue, and the most delicious thing I have ever tasted! Turns out in Japan, they come out with new flavours of kitkats every month! I guess last month was ramune and this month, I saw sweet potato in the store. I’m yet to try them, but that’s a really cool idea that they have so many flavours!

I take Japanese lessons at the local international centre, but I was in Level 1 and it was way too easy. I mean, the very basics of Japanese that I learned months ago. So I moved up to level2, but now it’s way too hard. They go by textbooks, so in level two they expect you know everything in level one already. So its as if to say I’m trying to build a house of Japanese language and I’ve got the basement floor and I’m trying to build the second story but theres half of the support beams missing and the house just, can’t be build. Get what I’m saying? It sucks. So I’m temporarily quitting lessons, and I am going to keep studying myself at school like I do everyday and just keep practicing with everyone here (because NO ONE speaks English here). Then try another place for lessons maybe next week. Wish me luck? Japanese is the hardest language ever. Well not ever, but it’s pretty difficult. Its basically teaching yourself to speak backwards grammatically and write in a secret code of symbols – but you’ve got to follow rules, its not like you’re the one making it up.

Let me know if anyone out there is even reading this, I’d love to hear some feedback.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

亜朱里

ps。I forgot to mention I visited Kyoto with my host mom and host grandma! It was pretty cool. We only visited a small village and some gardens, but it was good to be able to travel again!

Speaking of travelling, my school trip in March (all of the second years go on a trip) is to Kyuushu! The other trip is to Tokyo, but I guess my homeroom teacher picked Kyuushu for me, so that is where I will be going for 5 days in March with my school J