Saturday, July 3, 2010

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!