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

I'm no good at coming up with titles..

So, I can't remember everything I've done in the past couple weeks. But I can't believe it's dawning on two months being here! Time has gone so fast.
My Japanese is coming along. I'm studying kanjii everyday and I can actually hold up conversations now.
I got my hair permed straight - perhaps to fit in with the Japanese. Or perhaps because now my hair is perfectly straight even in the rain. Which today, it is raning. And we have exams at school for two hours in the morning. of course I don't have to write them but, I'm stuck in the lab chilling on facebook and updating by blog. There's nothing else I can do really.
The last two weeks have been fun though. I'm taking cooking class every Saturday with my highschool. It's fun. We've made a lot of fish and legitimate Japanese food. School is really fun. I don't ever actually do work, but I study Japanese. Speaking of Japanese, I started lessons. They put me in level one but it is WAY too easy. I took a test for level 2 but it was too hard. So I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. Considering I'm able to talk to people in real life, I'm sure I can catch on to level 2. So I might move up a level, but I will let you know.
Last weekend was the Kinshou school festival. My school festival was small and fun, but this one was designed to be a department store! It was so big and so much to buy - lots of Japanese food. After, I went to dinner at the Takematsu's house. Their son Yuki came to Canada two years ago, and their other son is going to USA or Canada next year.
In Japan, girls wear their school uniforms all the time - to look cute.
Because you can't wear makeup or hair extensions at school, they pile on the fake-ness on the weekends. In Japan, its legit to look like you have two black eyes of sparkly eyeshadow and eyeliner.
The culture here is so different. Customer service is outstanding. I mean the way they treated me when I was getting my hair done was incredible! Even when you're just at the grocery store, they're so helpful and polite. North America should definitley take a lesson from that.
Also, highschool students aren't allowed to have jobs here. You're also not allowed to drive a car or motorbike until you're out of highschool - or you will get expelled from school. It legit happened to a kid in my class. Thats why there are so many bucycles in Japan. Plus, its just way easier to get around on a bike. I have a bus pass, so I take the bus. But Busses are so expensive! I'm not complaining, because they're clean and always on time and really good - and you can get anywhere on the bus. But, they are always packed to the brim. Good luck ever getting a seat if yo udon't get on at the first stop.

Anyway,
I don't really have much more to say.
Questions? Concerns? Anything?
Lemme know :)

catch up

There’s been seven new photo albums of Japan of pictures I’ve taken since the last update on this blog, lots has happened!

On September 19^th, I went to the geisha district in Kanazawa with my host otosan(father). He bought me a beautiful pair of chopsticks with kimono fabric in them. The geisha district has a lot of gift stores, tea houses and the houses

surrounding it are very old. Not to mention you can go there to see the geishas.

We also went to the Kanazawa 21^st Century At Museum too – it was interesting. A lot of unique exhibits and stuff, but small and much different compared to the art galleries I’ve seen in Ontario.

On September 20^th, I went to Gakoyama and Takoyama with my host mother, and another exchange sudent and her host family. Her host dad treated us to lots of museums and treats from the area. In gokoyama, the traditional old houses are the kind with the straw roofs and such. It was really quite beautiful, but I can’t even imagine how cold you would be living in it!

For the next two days of Silver weekend (which was a 5 day weekend for holidays in September) I went to Universal Osaka with my host mom and sister.

It was a lot of fun! We took the bullet train there and back, which took about two and a half hours. Universal was really neat, but SO busy. Never go to an amusement park in Japan during national holidays. The thing is that there were so few rides there (one roller coaster, the rest all just shows and indoor 3D rides), plus there were so many people. The lines were long and if you’ve ever been to Universal Orlando – this will be a let down for you. I had a ton of fun and it was amazing to go, but Florida won in the comparison battle, sadly. The funniest thing I found though was that in Florida, the “ET” ride is amazing – you take ET home in the basket of your bicycle and you fly him home, its really cool. In Japan – I waited two hours to watch a clip of

Stephen Spielburg talk about the significance of ET with a deep male Japanese voice-over, walk into a room where ET’s spaceship lets out some smoke, then walk into the final room where ET says “sayonara tomodachi” (meaning goodbye friends) and then get pressured to buy a 1600yen picture of myself with ET.. ahhaahah all we could do was laugh.

But Osaka was SO busy, I didn’t get to spend much time there but we had Okonomiyaki when we were there (people describe it as a Japanese pancake, but its really not. It’s like a meal – in the SHAPE of a pancake). Its one of the famous foods in Osaka, so that was legit. Universal and Osaka was a lot of fun, I’m glad I went J

In Japan, “purikura” is really popular. Its basically an interative photobooth that smooths out the colour so it makes you look way prettier than you actually are. Then you get the copies printed out really small, cut them up, and share them or put them in a book (Japanese girls here have books filled with PAGES and PAGES of these teeny stickers, its crazy!) Btw, I can’t remember if I wrote about this or not on account I can’t check because I don’t have internet at this temporary host house so I’m just writing this on word and will copy it later – not like anyone cares or anything. Okay, Back to the story. Yeah, well as of now I’ve done it times. It’s actually a lot of fun and tacky- but cute J

Hanging out with the other exchange students in Kanazawa has been fun as well. (and will continue to be aswell, I just worded that wrong). The usual activities are karaoke, getting something to eat, purikura, and the occasional jumping photo. The other day Jared, Nick and I took 40 jumping pictures because there is nothing else to do in Kanazawa. T’was fun.

On Wednesday, myself and the other exchange students headed off to Shinminato, Toyama for a Rotary weekend type thing. The first night was a Rotary meeting, with some speeches in Japanese and a lot of food. We were also sent to host families – my family was absolutely aborable and their house was huge! They spoke no English but the girl I was with (sharnelle from Australia) speaks Japanese very very well.. so she spoke.. But I find that living with people who don’t speak any Englsih forces you to learn Japanese faster and better. I kind of wish my host families woud have spoken little English.. but it is what it is.

The second day consisted of a boat ride, and the matsuri festival in Shinminato. We went during the day and watched, then the afternoon - we got to join in and help push the floats! Jared, Michael and I were pushing a float together with a bunch of Japanese guys – but they were being fools and would attempt to repeat everything in broken English even though we could understand the Japanese they were telling us.. It was a lot of fun. We then went and met the mayor of Imizu city, and we got a picture in the Toyama newspaper for it. Then we departed and went back to our host families for dinner. My host mom made wonderful food, the biggest breakfast I’ve had yet in Japan and a big delicious dinner that night! Not to mention a pear for desert. I feel like I have scurvy because of the MAJOR lack of fruits and veggies I’m getting here. Maybe Japanese people are so small because they didn’t get all the vitamins they needed from the fruit when they were still growing ;)

Anyway. We all returned to the festival that night – and there was so much food to buy. I only bought a matcha crepe but it was delicious. There was everything from ‘pancake balls’ – I forget the Japanese name, to ‘octopus’ something – I also forget the Japanese name. The floats were all lit up with lanterns and the festival continued, it was gorgeous!

The final day of our little trip, we got to make pottery. Everyone made plates and cups but I made a teapot and matching teeny cup.

We then went to the shopping centre. Clothes here are amazing, but so expensive! The only thing I ended up buying was lunch and a ‘rilakkuma’ bus pass holder. (rilakkuma is a popular cartoon bear here). On the train ride back, our entertainment came from me finishing the rubick’s cube twice in the time a Japanese boy finished it once when he was showing off to his friends. Go Canadian brains.

When we returned back to Kanazawa station off the train, I was encountered by two guys who had a note from my host mom saying they were in Toyama for the rest of the weekend because my host dads dad (aka my host grandfather) died and they had to stay for the funeral. So now I am at my host uncles house for the rest of the weekend. I have a 22 year old host brother, and a mother and father. My host parents don’t speak English – but I find it good because I have even learned a lot just from one day and night here, though my host brother speaks some Englsih that he learned back in highschool.

Today, instead of karate class, I had cooking class. It was fun – we made sushi and dainfuku – which is a Japanese sweet.

It was difficult though, but delicious in the end. Desserts here are flavoured with matcha or sweet beans usually. Dainfuki is a rice paste covering over sweet beans in ball form. I’m missing the rich, chocolatey desserts back in Canada that we can get! Sweet beans don’t cut it all the time, though matcha ice cream is my favourite thing in the world as of now.

Today my host brother and father took me out all around kanazawa, I saw things I never saw before! It was great. I saw many new foods and places to shop and historical things too. It was a good day.

Okay, after this 1387 word essay you should be all caught up with my life in Japan.

yikes.

Wow I haven't written anying on here in a while.

A lot has happened, but I will just do a quick summary for now.

I went to Osaka with my family a couple weeks ago. We went to Universal Studios Japan - which was SO busy.

I was in Shin-Minato with Rotary for the past three days. We helped push the floats in the Matsuri festival, met the mayor of Imizu, stayed with host families, went to the festival at night time, did pottery. It was a lot of fun.

I feel like I'm not giving you the right idea about any of this stuff because of my lack of detail..

so keep checking back. I promise I will write something a little more detailed about all the events in the past three weeks :)

亜朱里

its been a month!

I can't believe it's been a month! Time has gone by so fast.

School is still fun, but very boring at times. I draw a lot, and its funny because so does everyone else. I do it because I can't understand, but they make bracelets and draw disney characters for eachother all day long!

Im starting to pick up the language much more, and people are noticing. I've got a LONG way to go, but I start lessons in October so that should help.

School on Saturday is so weird for me. I mean, it's friday and Im here, about to go to bed early because I'm exhausted from the first 5 days of school this week.

People here shave their eyebrows, by the way. They're usually just short and spiky and they get them tattooed on or they use make-up. Different..

Another thing is the amount of socks here is cool. There are stores entirely devoted to just socks! You can get socks with anything on them, it's cool!

I had my rotary welcome party on Wednesday. It was cute, I met 3 more of my host families. One wasn't there though. The food was good, I actually love fish. Its hard to make a good impression on the Rotarians though when your Japanese is so bad.. ugh..

This week coming up is holidays, and im going to Osaka UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN with my host family! How cool is that :) I will take many pictures/compare it to Florida.

The food I've had this week has been great. I had Tempura last week, SO GOOD. I tried yakisoba yesterday, yum. Japanese food is great! Even sweet potato ice cream is great :) But fruits and vegetables here are super expensive. I mean 158Y for an apple is crazy.

Anyway questions? Anything? Leave me a comment! I don't know if anyone is really interested in my blog anyway! hahah

亜朱里　<-- my kanjii name!

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.

亜

朱

里

Japanese High School

So I started school on Tuesday, and its been a lot of fun!

On the first day, it was SO hot (its been SO hot every day actually. people bring towels around with them in japan to wipe off their sweat). I had to do a speech in front of all the teachers first thing, and I was so hot. It just wasn't pretty.

When I first walked into my class, there was a nice little sign on my desk, "welcome to yugakkan ashleigh!"

and a plus giraffe and some pens. It was from a couple of really nice girls, Gami and Lisa. From the moment I walked into school that day, EVERYONE stared at me. All day, all I got was people staring at me or people coming up to me saying something in bad English and when I would reply they said "kawaii!" That means cute. The culture in Japan has some obsession with being "kawaii". I was told I was kawaii only about 238 times on my first day, its only because i'm pretty different looking. My hair being the main thing too. People touch my hair all the time..

So my first was was a lot of fun, despite being stared at all day. But walking home? Well, see, in Kanazawa there's barely any foreigners. Seeing a foreign girl in a Japanes

e uniform causes people to turn their heads. Some guy actually stuck his head completely out of his car window to look at me, even after he was way down the street. That's h

ow much I stick out when wearing my uniform.. But I like the uniform, it looks like "sailor moon". If you say that to people here, they say no, because they don't like sailor moon, or something to that effect.

My first 3 days of school were really fun, everyone in my class is very friendly and helpful. Another thing is that EVERYONE wants to take a picture with me! Its the same with the other exchange students too in their schools. I'm starting to learn more Japanese. It's really hard because NO one speaks English. My homeroom teacher does, but no one in my class does! So there's a lot of miscommunication. But it's fun, and I'm starting to get it. For the past two weeks, Japanese basically just sounds like background noise because I can't understand any of it. It's a really hard language, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

But I think I'm starting to get it. I start Japanese lessons in October.

Anyway. Today was my school festival(it happens tomorrow too, despite tom

orrow being Saturday). It was SO hot out, so obviously, everyone had towels to wipe off their ridiculous amounts of sweat. You know what Japanese people are so small? They sweat out half their body weight everyday here because it's so humid.

SO anyway. We spent all of yesterday preparing for the festival. Meaning we sat outside in the 30* heat all day in our uniforms making signs and stuff. But today was fun, but hot.

My class was making waffles. Other classes made floats or yakisoba or hot dogs or pancakes. Today was my day off so I got to have fun while the other half of my class sold the waffles. But the waffles were like, packages and store bought and were flat and round like a pancake. I still refuse to actually call them waffles. But anyway. Japanese people seem to really like haunted houses, so two of the classes made a haunted house. There was also karaoke in the gym and there was "couple feeling" which in the real world basically means speed dating without the speed. So my friends took me there, and dropped me off, despite my "i dont understand what this is" - in japanese of course - I went to the room where I was greeted with a HOORAH! from a group of like 15 cocky japanese guys. So it was just me and a bunch of guys. The first question they asked in their broken English? "whats your type" ahaha, and every answer of mine was responded with a HOORAH from everyone. Quite entertaining to be so popular..

I think I really like Japanese school. It could just be that the people at this particular school are really friendly and nice and helpful. But the school has a lot of school spirit and its really fun to be at. Of course, real lessons haven't started yet, but the few classes we've had, everyone really tries to include me even though I can't fully understand everything. For example, to the right you will see a note from history class. What does it say? No idea! But the teacher told me to "koh pee" it anyway.

Some interesting things I've found out about Japan this week is that 1) there are no garbage cans on the streets. But when there are, there are 4 or so beside eachother, all for different things! I can never tell which is which..

2) Washrooms at my school have no soap nor hand dryers. Odd.

3) Japanese people can not speak English what so ever (its like Canadians speaking Japanese), so I really think more people should come here to teach English.

4) Karaoke is a way of life here. I've done it three times in the past three days. I went once with the other exchange students (again, if you're reading this, hi!) and then I went with my friend Ayumi who came to my district in Canada last year, and then today we had it at the school festival. Crazy!

5) It's SO humid here, you wouldn't even believe.

6) I have school, on Saturday!

Thats it for this week.

Ps. I've been here two weeks as of tomorrow! Its seemed like much longer though..

アシュリ <-- my name in katakana, its written on my uniforms too!