Friday, April 23, 2010

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.

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