I was re-reading my blog and I am going to stop complaining about how sad I am to be leaving, and start talking about all the amazing opportunities that I have had!

Well, let's see.. what have I done since the end of April? A lot.

I moved out of my 5th host family just about three weeks ago. It's a blessing in disguise how once you leave someone, you

come to realize how much you really liked them. I didn't do very much with that family - we didn't go on any trips or go out to dinner all the time but it was definitely a great experience. My host parents were really caring and helped

me with everything. They taught me a lot of Japanese and were just like my real parents if not better. I would stay up taking to my host mom for hours and hours every night. I really miss being able to do that. I really liked that family!

I've moved in with another family - they volunteered to host me, so they're also a good family, really sweet. But, you can't help but have favourites, and this one isn't in the top rankings. I guess it just kind of bothers me how I'm going to be going home so soon and I don't really want to think about it - but they keep bringing it up. That, and the fact that they keep inserting English words into the conversations. That may seem good, but no, it's annoying. It's truly annoying. I've lived here for 10 and a half months now and I understand Japanese now a days. I don't really need you to make me even more confused and put oddly pronounced English words into your

Japanese. I will stop complaining.

In May, my real mother came for a trip to Japan for two weeks! My host family at that time was super awesome and offered to drive us around everywhere and take us places. My mom came to my city, Kanazawa, for one week. We got to put on kimonos and do a tea ceremony. I took her to all the tourist places in my city such as the geisha district, kenrokuen garden and the samurai district. We ate a ton of matcha ice cream whenever it was available and had a lot of fun. I have the pictures on my facebook if you want to check it out, here's the link to the album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=432930&id=513680245&l=7db0d64713

My Rotary club hosted a lunch for my mom to meet all of my families. It was really amazing to be able to have the people I love most in the world all in the same room!

For the second week, the two of us went on a trip to Tokyo!

It was my only time that I've ever been to Tokyo this year.

Here's a link to the pictures so you can follow along:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=434853&id=513680245&l=f8a729e87b

I've wanted to go since I was a kind and am really glad I got to go! It was so much fun!

We went to Shibuya, Harajuku, Asakusa. Shibuya was packed with people. We watched the shibuya crosswalk from the third story window of a starbucks. It was really cool to get to go there! I've only ever seen pictures! Harajuku is usually packed with people but we went on a Tuesday night so it wasn't full at all. Not the true Japanese experience but I guess it's better than not even being able to breathe. When we went to Asakua, a lot of people took my picture. They said "sugoi kirei gaijin". This would be fine if it wasn't that like 15 of them were old men. Kind of creepy. In the next days we went to Yokohama, where there have a big ferris wheel and a lot of shopping malls. They also have one of the biggest China town's in Japan, hahahaha. We also went to Kamakura where they have the second biggest buddah in Japan - the biggest is in Nara where I went on the Rotary Trip. We also went to Shizouka, where we saw Mount Fuji from a train and had some delicious tea. The trip was fun, I think my mom enjoyed it as well.

In May I also started a new Saturday course at school. I used to take cooking, but now I take Hip-Hop. It's not anything traditional, but it's so much fun. Or should I say, it WAS so much fun. It ended last week. The sensei was amazing at dance, and other university dance students helped teach too. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. It was also fun because the senseis always talked to me and i even ran into them once downtown at a festival. We were going to have a goodbye party, but it turns out that the courses at the university for Saturday school had to end a week earlier for some reason, so we never got around to that. But i enjoyed that course, it made waking up on saturday mornings at 6:30 way better.

In June we had a Rotary orientation. It was average. I would tell you more about if it I could recall, but I can't. I love my exchange students.

In June, Japanese high schools have their sports festivals. We spent a month practicing for it. But we weren't practicing sports, oh no. We were practicing cheerleading. The way the day went was that there were random events such as tug-o-war and re-lay races but the big event of the day was the cheers. I'm a third year student in class number 8 so the teams were set up as the same class number or all three years. First years, Second years and Third years 8 class were all the "yellow team". Our cheer was to the music of a really popular manga. I've never read it or ever will read it, but my class made me one of the main characters because he has "blonde hair". My hair is apparently blonde. It was a ton of fun, but it was SO hot that day and my outfit for my character happened to be wearing black pants and a black jacket. It was HOT.

We didn't end up winning but we had a ton of fun. My whole class cried when the day was over because we put so much work into the day and we really enjoyed it and was sad that it was over.

In June my dearest Sandy left Japan. We also lost Michael and Andrew. It's crazy that exchange is ending! It went by really really fast, but it's been an amazing experience, that's for sure.

I have two more weeks in Japan and every day until the day I leave is packed with plans. For the past two weeks my school friends has testing so they couldn't hang out, so I'm hanging out with a majority of them in the next two weeks. It's going to be super busy, and I'm going to be poor by the end of it - taking purikura with each of them. I was looking through my purikura book the other day and counting how much I have spend on purikura in the past 10 months, and it equals over 125 dollars. After this week I bet it will be 150. Such a crazy passtime, but it's so much fun. My Japanese friends were astonished when I said that we don't have purikura in Canada. They asked, "but what do you do for fun if you don't have purikura?!"

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=310158&id=513680245&l=a454273e88

AND

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=429499&id=513680245&l=d104452cd3

I hung out with two friends from school yesterday.

The one girl's family owns a kimono shop. How Japanese is that! So we went and we tried on a bunch of kimonos.

We're planning to have a "花火", which in English means fireworks, sometime over the next two weeks in our kimonos. It's traditional in Japan that in the summer you get dressed in your summer kimonos and you do fireworks. There's actually a big fireworks show in July, but I'm going to miss it, so my friends are going to do one with me.

The picture to the right is a picture of the kimono I bought!

I have two more weeks left - a lot to pack, a lot of people to hang out with, a lot of food to eat, but its just not enough time. I wish I had more time! It's been the experience of a lifetime. There's no way I can express in words how grateful I am for this experience this year Rotary gave me!

leaving?

i don't even want to talk about how upsetting it is to think I'M LEAVING JAPAN IN A MONTH AND ONE WEEK.

that is absurd. i feel like i just got here. it was just yesterday when i was still going through interviews to get into the exchange program!

im so sad to be going back to canada, but it's purely for the fact that i just wish this year wouldn't stop. it's been the best year of my life so far and i just dont want to stop making memories with all the people i've had the pleasure and opportunities of meeting.

i don't know what else to say. i don't even really want to think about it more than i have to..

...

"often the greatest enemy of present happiness is past happiness too well remembered"

lately

i've been thinking a lot lately..

i also wish i would have wrote down all my thoughts about every single thing interesting or new that i found in japan, and all the feelings i've had over the past few months. i know it's a little late, but let me start with this list about what i've been thinking about lately:

1. i can't believe how fast time has gone. it's almost time to go home! my plane ticket has been bought and i am going to be back in canada this july 18th.. my heart broke into pieces after reading the confirmation e-mail from the travel agent..

2. being away from your family and traditions for such a long time makes you miss the stuff you thought you hated, and also makes you wish you had spend more time with your loved ones and didn't complain so much about things you could have fought your way through.

3. i'm going to miss the friends i've made here so much. i don't think they realize how much they mean to me, and i wish they did. i want to hang out with my friends from school more and i've been trying to stress that i only have two more months in japan, but it's difficult to make finalized plans with japanese people i find..

4. i haven't been accepted to the universities that i really want to go to yet. that's a problem. i don't really want to go to the other universities i'm already accepted at.. what am i going to do with my life? all i want to do is move to tokyo, go clubbing in osaka, and dress up like the crazy japanese girls do - for every day of my life. i don't want to go back to the country of jeans and a t-shirt!

april fools

Time has really flown by. It seems like I've only been here a couple weeks - but yet it feels like I've lived a lifetime. I've lived in Japan for 8 months now. I'm living with my fifth host family right now, and it's already that time in exchange where the countdown to going back to Canada is ticking down..

My fourth host family was absolutely amazing. I was their first exchange student, so they tried to give me a really good experience in Japan while not having any rules or past experiences to live up to. They were great and so caring, and now that I'm living in a new host family, I realize how much I miss them. Not to say that this new host family is bad, but I've lived here 3 weeks and haven't done anything with them yet. I have two host siblings - both don't talk to me. Nor to eachother really so I guess I shouldn't be that concerned. My new host dad owns a famous company of Japanese sake - and my host mom is just a sweetheart. I have my first real Japanese style bedroom where I have paper sliding walls and a traditional futon bed that I have to take out of the closet every night. It's cool, it's a new experience.

April has gone by really fast. I went on the Rotary trip at the end of March with all of the exchange students. We went to Miyama Jinja, Hiroshima, Osaka, Nara. We saw a lot of great traditional / touristy things in Japan. We also had a lot of late nights and about 8 hours of sleep total over the 4 days. I would expand on those goings on, but I'm not going to. hahaha. But the trip was an overall success I would say - despite having to sleep for 3 days straight after coming home.

School started up again. I had a fight with my classmates the day before Spring break, but they sort of forgot about it over the two weeks that we had for vacation. Now I am a 3年生(a third year student). Our classes changed, but it’s not like they got harder. Now we have arts and crafts class, and music class where we learn children’s songs. It’s because over half the class want to be kindergarten teachers.. This past Friday we spend class at a kindergarten playing with kids. It kind of sucks how I couldn’t answer some of the 3 year olds questions because I’m not fluent in Japanese..
School is fun, BUT I feel like my brain is melting a little bit from not actually doing anything at school anymore..

April was a beautiful season in Japan. The cherry blossoms bloomed! I went out many times to see the flowers, it was absolutely beautiful! There were a ton of tourists around in April, but no wonder, the country was so gorgeous.

My Rotary club had a special dinner in honour of the cherry blossoms – in Japanese they’re called sakura. There were geisha’s and I got to do taiko with the geisha’s on the stage which was pretty cool!

At school this week we had a third year student barbeque. It was sort of raining and chilly so that kind of sucked, but it was fun. We made yakisoba and roasted marshmallows. T’was a good time.

I probably should update this more often. Life is actually way more interesting that this blog makes it seem, I swear! Sorry. I will update more in the next few months. Can you believe it? I go home in less than 3!

This month was easter - but not it Japan. My mom sent me a couple cadbury cream eggs from Canada and the dogs in this family legit broke into my room, into the box and ate the chocolate. Totally was afraid they committed suicide in my room - but they're okay. They just ate my easter. no big.

i'm not very creative with these titles..

Wow, time goes by really fast. I keep wanting to update this blog but I can never find any time. And that isn't very good because I'm always doing stuff and after a months worth of adventures, I end up sort of forgetting a lot of the good stuff I had worth saying. But anyway, here it goes.

Since last February 14th, I moved in with a new host family. The parents are only 28 and 33, really young. maybe the youngest in rotary host family history?

but it's so fun living here, they have no kids - it's just the three of us. they're so great with wanting to give me a good experience while in japan! they've taken me out to a bunch of local historical spots, and in the start of my March Break they even took me for a two day trip to Kyoto! That was awesome, because I got to see a lot of great and famous places, and it's always nice to go with people whose company you enjoy. Life seriously turns around when you have a great host family! I am sad to say I'm moving out on April 4th.. It will be exciting to have another new host family, but I am really content living here! My host "parents" feel more like siblings, and I feel so at ease. Well, I guess that's the life of an exchange student, moving on..

I went on my school trip to Kyuushu at the beginning of March! That was something I was looking forwards to since the beginning of my exchange -

a 6 day trip with my friends from school. I can't believe it's over.. On the calendar in my mind, once the school trip is over means that it's almost time to go home to Canada.. and it is! There's only about 4 more months! That seems like a lot, but it's oh so very short. Anyway, my school trip was wicked. We took a bus to osaka, rode a plane, then rode in more busses. It ended up being that for the 6 days we mostly rode in busses. They would let us out for like 10 minutes at a famous place then stick us back on. We drove in a crammed humid coach bus all the way through the bottom island of japan (kyuushu) from kagoshima airport to nagasaki. We had a day trip in Nagasaki and saw the atomic bomb site, we saw Kumamoto Castle, we ate a ton of food, and even went to universal studios japan for the last day.

It was a good trip, a lot of fun! I also had my first onsen?

In Japan it's totally legit to bathe with everyone in a hot spring. It may not have been so bad if it wasn't with a group of your skinny school friends? My teacher told me I didn't have to do it, on account of the culture is so different - so I didn't do it the first night. But the second night, I took the plunge and did it. It ended up being a lot of fun! The weird thing was that they brought their camera's and were totally fine about taking pictures of eachother? That's apparently not normal - so don't be frightened, it's just my weird school.

Speaking of weird school.. In Japan, school ends in March and the new school year starts in April. The last day of school is usually a sports tournament. My school's sports day was fun, but everyone was acting weird and immature and the day ended up with me yelling at my entire class for how immature and mean they all are - and me storming out of the class on the note that I was going back to Canada. Apparently I'm a horrible person in their eyes because I have a lot of guy friends. It's apparenlty a horrible thing for a girl in Japan to have a lot of guy friends. It's not my fault if the guys are more friendly and act their age in compared to many of the minnie mouse loving girls in highschool who act like they are 10. It was about time I yelled at them. Yeah, I know I'm in the wrong for doing it - that's their culture, but the amount they bully eachother and the way they act towards each other .. it was about time I called them up on it. Can't take it back now either - what's been done has been done. I guess it was good timing, now they have a 2 week break to forget about it and we will all return back to school in April in a new grade and with the adventures of spring break on our minds.

I just want to point out that I'm not getting an average look at the average japanese teenager. My school is for very, let's say, "not so smart" students. And because of that, they are all very immature and it doesn't truly show me the japanese highschool student culture - although my school is fantastically fun! I believe normal japanese highschool students study a lot, go to cram school after school and all of that which we would imagine. But my school is different, I don't even want to imagine them trying to take a test that I took in highschool.. I don't think this school even gets homework! It's crazy, but fun. I enjoy it.

See? I forget everything that's happened. I guess when I remember or have something new to talk about, I will re-update. Oh, well, I am going on a Rotary trip this saturday for 4 days - kind of exciting! I will update about that afterwards.

Questions? Feedback? Anything? Send it my way!

アシュリー

huh? wher'd time go?

it's been almost a month since my last post. what?

where on earth has time gone?

speaking of where time has gone, I can't even remember. everyday is so busy, but nothing too extravagant happens everyday. it's just so tiring to listen so intently to japanese all day long, but i love it here. time is going to fast and i don't want to leave! we have to book our flight dates with the travel agent in two days, greeeattt. i don't wanna leave!

even though, i feel like i've hit a wall with the language. i try to hard and still cant speak properly and writing and reading is killer.. even though i try so hard, it just doesn't come easy. and i definitely had a breakdown over that a few days ago - along with having my first catfight in japanese with a friend over the fact that i didn't help sweep the classroom one day out of the past six months.

im moving to my FOURTH host family today! time has been flying so fast - and i've accumulated so much luggage. i think i have just about double what i came with. crap. i feel so embarrassed!

so, the olympics are in canada - and i feel so patriotic about it. i love canada so much and am glad that people are finally going to pay attention to it a little more :) watch the opening ceremonies? they were amazing! it was cool to see all the countries and realize i have a friend in so many places - i love exchange students! the world is so big, yet so small. there are so many more places that i want to go to, and as soon as i can. theres so many more languages i want to learn and cultures that i want to experience. it just sucks that my wallet isnt deep enough for these dreams of mine. anyone wanna hook me up with some lucky lottery numbers? thanks.

anyyyway, i don't feel like writing anymore - but i should update more. soo, i will do that another day. i move to my new host family in twentttyyyyy minutes! scary, but exciting as always. wish me luck?

ash

ps. i can't believe i was in temagami a year ago - it seems like just yesterday we were all getting ready to go out on exchange and didn't even know what country we were going to. now we're all off and out in the world becoming new people for the year. time flies.. make every moment a good one eh :)

pps. valentines day in japan is very different - girls only give chocolate to boys?

best days of my life

So, I’m going to talk about myself in this post. Maybe a little conceited, but my birthday and the day after have been the most amazing days of my life. Went through every emotion to the extreme, it was amazing.

So, my birthday was coming up. And, my classmates know I’m getting better at Japanese – but I guess they still don’t believe I know as much as I do. The day before my birthday, I knew they were making me a big card and planning a birthday surprise. I smiled to myself all day and pretended not to know a single thing about it. It was so cute knowing how much effort they were putting into stuff! They kept asking me really obvious questions like, “what time are you coming to school tomorrow?” and such. I knew, and that made me really excited.

So, my birthday rolled around and I went to school and one of my best friends at school kept me outside in the hallway, even past when the bell rang. I totally knew what was up and played into it, it was so adorable! So when she finally said we should go to class, I walked in, on the chalkboard they wrote “HAPPY BIRTH DAY ASHLEIGH” and wrote all their names! Then they sang “Happy Birthday” in English! It was amazing! In Japanese, they pronounce birthday bas-day, it’s cute. By the way, “Happy Birthday” in Japanese is “Tanjouubi Omedetou” :) We took group pictures with the writing on the chalkboard. It was so cute of them to do that for me :)

Then time past, and it was lunch time. That’s when they showered me with gifts! People got me all kind of packaged treats, and many people made me cards with cute charcters (hand drawn) or with pictures of us of together. I could read all of what they wrote to me in the notes, which I find amazing. I would have had NO IDEA what so ever what they said 4 months ago! One girl even wrote to me in English. Of course, it’s broken English, but her message was so sweet. She said how I became one of her best friends, etc. That’s when I started to bawl and realize how great my classmates are! Then a boy from another class gave me chocolate, and a boy in my class came inside, and handed mea mini snowman – made of legit snow from outside. Basically the funniest thing ever! I brought my Nikon camera to school so we took a TON of pictures. My friends took the camera and took pictures of everything that went on. It was so much fun!

Then my classmates made it seem like it was over, but I still knew about the card. And at the end of the day when we were all about to leave, they said Ashleigh, turn around and we’ll blindfold you. When they re-turned me around and un-blindfolded me, they had put the giant card up on the chalkboard. It was absolutely amazing – they all had written notes to me next to their favourite character that they drew. It’s amazing and it’s something I’m going to keep forever!

In the evening, Rotary gave my host sister money for me to have a party and bring my exchange student friends out for dinner. We went to the arcade before hand and played with the “UFO catchers” – the claw machines. Since they’re kind of hard, I took advantage of it being my birthday and asked one of the guys working there for help. I ended up winning a huge hello kitty for only 200 yen, 2 dollars CAD. Pretty good gift to myself I would say! Then we went for dinner – we had Indian curry. It was delish! Then we went to another restaurant and had cake. They sell the cake in separate slices, but the store put it all together and pit candles on it and made me a birthday cake! It was so cute! Definitley had a great day!

But my happiness came to a halt because I had planned to go to the airport the next day and say goodbye to my friend Nick – who was going back to Australia – with all the other exchange students. I had asked my teacher, and she had to ask the principal. Because it was during school time and I wasn’t with an adult, they asked Rotary – and they said no – I couldn’t go. I cried and cried because I never got a proper goodbye with Nick who has been one of my best friends for the past 4 and a half months. I cried, and there was no way I could go because my school said no and my parents also knew I wasn’t allowed to go. But the thing that made it worse, was that every other exchange student got to go – it was just me. So, my plan was so wake up super early and go to school super early and cry to my teacher. She’s a sweetheart and it was a surprise that she told me that I couldn’t go. I toyed with the idea of just skipping school, but I was nervous my teacher would call my parents, who would then tell Rotary, and that would not be good – because they could get so mad about it that they would send me home. So I didn’t want to risk it. So, I set my alarm for 6 o’clock Friday morning. Because I was just so tired, I never even heard the alarm to actually get up. I woke up at 7 and just said to myself no, there’s not enough time now.. So I didn’t go and I just kept sleeping – and had dreams I was at the airport.. But then I woke up at 10 and went into school around 12 o’clock.

I walked into class and my friends asked if I had said goodbye to Nick – because that’s what they thought I was doing. That’s when the tear fell from my eyes because I was so sad that I didn’t get to go. I told all my friends how my school said no and my host family said no because the school said no. By that point I was so sad – and my friends told me to call him at the airport. I called him just in time – he was just going through the security check. I was crying on the phone, and all of my friends understood and they all started to cry because it was so sad. They all knew how hard it was for me not to say goodbye to a good friend. They were all so compassionate. I’ve never met so many compassionate people in my life – they are such amazing friends. Then, I guess two friends went and told my teacher about what happened and how I was still crying my eyes out. And then she called me to the teacher’s room. That’s when she and I sat down in a room while my friend patted my back, and my teacher explained how sorry she was that she had even asked the principal. She told me that she realized she should have just let me go in secret. She told me that that night, she was sleeping and it occurred to her that Australia is so far from Canada – I would have no idea when I would see Nick again. She said how she realized how close the airport is to the school and how I would have been just fine taking a bus and being able to say goodbye to my friend. She saw that I wasn’t there at school today, and said she was happy because she thought I had just went to the airport, and she told no one about the absence. The class told her at the beginning of the day how good of friends I was with Nick – how we always hung out and he was in so much of my purikura. When I showed up and 12 and she heard what happened, that's when we had this talk and I realized how amazing of a person she is. She shed tears as she was telling me how truly sorry she was about me not saying goodbye. That’s when she promised that she would let me go say goodbye to the next friends at the airport, and if there was no one to take me, she would. I was crying so much at this point because I was so thankful for her compassion and I realized how truly cared about I am at this school. I was the saddest I had ever been, and hearing what she said to me, and seeing my friends compassion and how much they comforted me – made my tears of pure heartfelt sadness, turn into tears of joy and happiness and love. This sounds so cheesy, but it’s absolutely true. It was hard not to be able to say goodbye to a close friend, but today I realized how many more friends I have right here, right now. They also explained how he would be my “zutto tomodachi” – meaning friend forever and how I could send him mail or e-mail. The emotional rollercoaster ended when I realized how much these people care about me and the words they said to comfort me. It was truly remarkable.

The day continued to be remarkable because my host dad picked me up from school and we went to the “Kimono Yasan” – meaning Kimono store. I got to try on three kimonos, because tomorrow – I am having a professional photo shoot in the kimono! AMAZING! I am also going to be a model for their kimono store with the pictures! That is absolutely amazing and I am so excited! I will definitely put the pictures up once it happens! Getting a kimono put on me for the first time was amazing, I felt so Japanese. I tried two purple kimonos and a greenish blue one. The light purple one was so pretty, but I ended up choosing the brighter and bolder greenish blue kimono with pink accents. I think it’s more bold, and the picture will look interesting that way. I’m really excited to see how it all turns out, and also, so have a professional photo shoot in Japan! Rotary is such an amazing organization; they put this all together for me to my surprise. Same with the birthday party too. It’s a great organization, being a Rotary exchange student is incredible.

Well, I have more things to say but I don’t want to bore you. I will update after I get to try on the kimono! So exciting!

Questions? Concerns? Let me know :)