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Another week gone... Dude, this whole thing is going by insanely and altogether too fast. I have about 97 days left in Kumamoto and I'm absolutely certain that I will 100% not be ready to go home come February 3rd. I didn't realize what this experience would actually be like until now; it's been 100x better than anything I imagined. Sometime after I began applying to AFS, I started reading this one person's blog about their adventure in Japan. Everything they did sounded so cool; they lived in a big city, did exciting things everday (it seemed) and I remember wanting my experience to be similar. WHY DID I EVER WISH THAT? Anyone reading this that wants to come to Japan on a homestay should never hope that their experience is anything like anyone else's. This is YOUR experience, and yours only. It's unique, and beautiful and wonderful and only you can say you've experienced exactly what you have. Anyone even considering doing something like this should by all means do it. Do it while you can. It's something that you can't even realize how much it'll change you as a person, and I mean that in a totally positive way.
Okay, now that I'm done giving my study abroad advertising... on to the post!
This week there wasn't too much worth mentioning. I have 部活 (bukatsu - club/sports activities) everyday after school and it has convinced me that I'm never going home because it'll kill me before I do. These people are たいへん (taihen - hard workers).
On Friday I didn't go to school. Yes, rebel right here. I'm totally about to start randomly skipping class. Yeah, that totally sounds like me... And what was I doing on my rebel-day-off? Volunteering to help some Thai foreign high schoolers around Kumamoto-shi. Quite the bad ass, if I do say so myself. There were two others from my school (a friend of mine and a first-year boy who I didn't know) and a few from two other schools. All of the high school volunteers were put into a group, but the groups didn't stay separate for very long, and eventually everyone just joined groups and went as one. We started the tour at 熊本城 and after showing the foreigners around a bit, we all piled into a bus that took us to 熊本大学.
We ate lunch in the school cafeteria (which had absolutely anything you would want to eat), and were then shown to a really nice, carpeted room that had a bunch of tables with 書道 utensils at each chair. A professor from the university spent a good hour and a half teaching us all techniques on how to draw pandas, flowers, bamboo, a shrimp and an eggplant. After we were adequate at it (and I say adequate because no one got anywhere near to where anyone else in his class would've been), we were all given a fan that we could decorate however we wanted. Since I absolutely sucked at everything he taught us besides the bamboo, I decided I would just do a bunch of that...
Yay for bamboo! I never had time to do the other side, so I'm considering sneaking it into my weekly 書道 class at school to finish it. With my amazing smuggling skills, that should be no problem. (That was meant to be very sarcastic)
After that, everyone went out to a commons area-type room to be put to shame by the teacher and his students. Seriously, the man painted a giant Kumamoto castle with rolling mountains in the background like it was no big deal.
The thing that made everything hilarious, however, were the GIANT brushed attached to poles that he used to paint with. Quite amusing and fascinating at the same time. It was really cool to see the whole thing come together though; at first I couldn't really see where he was going with the whole thing and then BAM, all of a sudden there was a castle and mountains. There was a giant bucket of water that this one girl would dip a giant brush into and use to wet the entire paper as the people painting progressed. The water gave the ink the water-color-y, abstract-y look that you might be able to tell from the picture. Then, all of the students were asked to write their name and draw a few flowers at the bottom. It turned out to be a pretty nice collaboration. :)
That was the basic gist of my day on Friday. Volunteering went until 5ish and by the time it was over I was pretty exhausted.
THEN on Saturday morning, I headed over to another university to watch my classmates participate in an English debate against a few other Kumamoto schools. If any of you guys ever read this and can understand it, YOU DID SO AWESOME AND I'M SO PROUD OF YOU ALL. I honestly have no idea how they debated in English. That's like me trying to debate in Japanese... Even though we didn't win anything, I was beyond impressed and entertained by the whole thing. There were various debates, and the whole event ended up going from 9 am to 4 pm. Props to y'all, I could never have done it.
And now we arrive to today. Today, my dear friends (and some strangers), my wonderful, wonderful, WONDERFUL host family took me to 阿蘇山 (Aso san - Aso mountain) to go to a spa there. Honestly, though, I would've been perfectly fine just going for a drive in the mountains. I've decided that driving in the mountains with my iPod is one of my favorite things to do in Japan.
And after today, I can say that I've been to the clouds and back. Legitimately in the clouds. Because that's how high we were.
At one point, we stopped the car to look into this crater and as I took more and more pictures I got more and more frustrated that the pictures didn't look as breath taking as the real thing.
That, in the bottom right-hand corner is a road, just to give a little perspective. The fog hanging around is cloud.
There was almost no blue around us because all we saw was cloud. Crazy stuff!
We stopped at this really quaint, adorable restaurant for lunch, and I ended up ordering a hamburger and a slice of apple pie. Allow me:
The hamburger plate was GINORMOUS. Just as a side note, I've noticed that a lot of times, a hamburger in Japan means only the actual hamburger; no bun. I'm totally fine with that, I just though it was worth mentioning. The hamburger plate was rice with a hamburger patty on top, and an egg topping it all off. Yeah, can't even see the rice in the picture, but it's there.
So after becoming fat, we were off to the spa! The spa we went to was located in this huge mini-town full of souvenir shops.
The spa was very... interesting. Don't get me wrong, I definitely liked it, but it was different from what I imagined. Basically, they give you a shirt and a pair of pants that you wear (no underwear -- and yes, they clean everything after each use). After you've changed you head into this giant room with a whole bunch of mini hut-like structures all around the room. There's an area to sleep/rest, to drink some water or tea, and a spot to sit around. The huts all had wooden doors that opened into a room that was very warm, and scented with some kind of herb. My host siblings didn't really like the smells, but I actually found it very relaxing. Inside the huts, there are pillows lined up around the edge where you lay down and just relax. Definitely not what I expected, but enjoyable nonetheless. There was one Icy Cold Room that, as the name suggests, was really cold and was really nice after sitting in a hot room for a few minutes. We spent a good hour and a half in the spa, and when we finished, we went back to some of the little shops to look around and see what there was.
We got home at around 6:30 and here I am now a few hours later. All in all, a pretty great weekend. AND I just found out on Saturday that the ice arena here opened today so HURRAH I'M GOING FIGURE SKATING NEXT WEEKEND. Which is also kind of terrifying since I haven't skated since August... We'll see how that goes and I'll definitely be giving an update on that. :)
FKLJDKLSKMDDVKJGNK kbaiii.
-Ellie
So this weekend AFS had a little excursion planned for the three other exchange students and myself. No biggie, just going to 長崎 (Naga-saki). You know, the usual. とても楽しかった！ It was fun just hanging out with the people I went with.
I left on Saturday morning. Our AFS chapter president came and picked us all up: that kid that lives near me (and since he mentioned to me that I never say his name on here, I'll refer to him by his name from now on), Andres, then me, then Anna (the other girl in my chapter from Germany, and the other boy Julian who's also from Germany. Fun stuff. We rode in the car for a good four hours, which was filled with struggling to get a toy open, food, and lots of making fun of Andres. But what else is new? :P
When we got to Nagasaki, we went straight to the Atomic Bomb Museum, no kidding around, we went straight there after eating lunch. As it probably sounds to most people, it was super interesting and at the same time kind of eery. Pretty much anything on exhibit there was from the rubble found after the explosion. Think about it... you're going through multiple rooms filled with the remains of a horrific part of history that real people lived through.
That was the first room that we walked into. I'm not going to post all of the pictures I took but this was one of the rooms that was probably the creepiest. It was also a very difficult room. Like, it just didn't want to cooperate with my trying to take a picture of it. It was dark for maybe a minute, then it would light up for maybe 5 seconds, and then go dark again. HDGHSIUENVFJUHSEURTH. Curses! So, yeah. I got this one and then gave up.
After the museum, the six of us (two adults and the exchange kids) went to two different parks, the second one being the more amusing of the two, in my opinion. The first one was the Peace Park, and it was basically a fountain, and a path lined with statues that led to this giant plaza thing-y with a GIANT statue in the middle.
The picture doesn't do it justice, because it looked so much bigger in person. It's called.... the Peace Statue! Wonder where that came from. The park apparently commemorates those who died from the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. So there you have it.
The second park we went to was the Glover Garden, complete with a mansion and giant garden. Massive. Like, you can't even see the whole thing from one spot. The thing even had a giant pond with a bunch of koi fish. And these aren't the tiny ones you normally see in a Japanese steakhouse in the states. They were literally 1-2 feet long and probably weighed a good 25 pounds.
SO MANY KOI FISH.
After the Glover Garden, we stopped to grab some ice cream. I got this castela flavored stuff since apparently castela is a really popular bread in Nagasaki. It's Portuguese, and just like regular bread, it was introduced to the Japanese by the Portuguese and therefore has a Latin-sound to it. Yay history!
After eating our ice cream, we headed off to the hotel to check in and set our stuff down. Then it was off to dinner. We ended up in Chinatown (kind of funny, for some reason. Chinatown in Japan...?) and as such we ate at a Chnese restaurant. We ordered some noodles and this mound of meat, vegetables, crunchy stuff, and sauce. Wow I'm descriptive. The point is that it was all surprisingly delicious, considering the presentation of them.
Once we finished eating, we walked around Chinatown for a bit before heading back to the hotel. For some reason we all got our own room. I wasn't complaining, it just seemed like sharing rooms would've been more cost-effective. Why am I criticizing the room choice? No idea, because it was actually really nice having a room to myself.
When we got back from dinner our chaperons went to bed and of course the four of us stayed up for a good two hours and were ridiculous together. A lot of embarrassing dancing that will never be spoken of to anyone happened.
The next day we ate breakfast at 7:30 and were out of the hotel by 9. Our first stop was to see the Cosmos flowers.I've never seen so many of the same flower in such large quantities.
And there was more than that my friends, my camera just couldn't fit them all. THIS is why haiku was born here, people. Because it's so easy to find something to write about!
Our second and final stop before heading back to Kumamoto was an outdoor museum-y thing. Either my English is getting really bad or I just suck at describing these things. It was a whole bunch of houses that had been buried by a volcano that erupted a while back. At first I thought the houses had been incorporated into the ground or something and then I realized they were just buried. O_O
Once I was done being stupefied by the fact that these houses had actually been buried under ground, we drove off to get something to eat and catch out ferry back to Kumamoto. The ferry was something I was quite pleased about, as I've liked them since the first time I rode one. I saw jellyfish again, but the ones I saw this time were unfortunate looking as opposed to mysterious and pretty like the ones I saw the last time I rode a ferry.
The trip didn't have any epic ending but it didn't really need it. Everyone (or just me....) was too tired to talk much on the way home. And alright, maybe I was the only one that slept practically the whole way....
All in all, a fantastic weekend, and thanks to the three other 留学生 (and AFS) for making it that much more fun. :)
I'm going to close this post by mentioning something hilarious that happened to me today. I'm sitting at my desk at lunch, and one of my favorite teachers walks in with a book. This woman is kind of on the crazy side, and that's probably why I like her so much, and she's always got something very odd to say. Today, she held up this book and asked me if it was famous in America and if I knew it. The book was called What's Your Poo Telling You? If I haven't said it before and meant it I'll say it again and mean it this time: I died. The funniest part was that she was dead serious. She teaches English, so I'm pretty sure she knew what the title said, and for some reason she was totally serious about her question. So if anyone reading this has ever heard of this book... that's a little weird, and please let me know.
On that smelly note, I'll end this post abruptly with my name. Shocker, I know.
-Ellie
RANDOM POST TIIIIIIIIIIIME! I've been wanting to do a post like this for a while and today seemed like an alright day to do it since nothing exciting has happened since I last posted. Except for joining the track & field club, but that's for another day.
Today I want to talk about some things that I've noticed about Japan that are different from Chicago. OF COURSE some things that are said or done in Chicago are different from other parts of the world; even within the U.S., so this is just my Chicagoan observation at work here.
#1 Convenience stores.
They're EVERYWHERE. And they're 20x nicer than American ones. I'll elaborate on 7-elevens because that's usually where I go. They have entire aisle dedicated to Shonen Sundays, any other manga magazine you can imagine, and any other magazine in general you could possibly want. Quick side note: While manga in America can cost over $10 per volume, here they usually cost about 340 yen or so (that's about $3.50). WHAT IS THIS INSANITY? Side note end. The next aisle has stationary and a little bit of candy. The aisle after that is candy bliss. My mother is reading this right now rolling her eyes because she thinks I've been buying loads of it (I tend to eat a lot of candy at home...). Well guess what? ..... She's right. I can't help myself. Every single candy in a 7-eleven here is new and interesting to me so of course I have to buy it. :S Anyway, after that aisle there's the bread, refrigerated goods, and microwaveable/convenient products. This includes instant ramen! Funnily enough, I see the Cup Noodles brand here a lot. 7-elevens also have a vast array of refrigerated obentos, ice cream, and hot food. Yesterday, my host mom bought our entire meal at 7-eleven, and although I wan't fond of much of it, it was all very decent quality food. So yes, コンビニ (konbini) in Japan are much better than American ones. Point for Japan.
#2 The Moped thing-ys!
It may very well just be where I am, but the people around here love their mopeds. Actually, they may be something totally different, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are. I don't see that many legitimate motorcycles, but I've defnitely seen some. You have to be 18 here to get your license for a car, but I believe you can drive a moped at 16, so that might be part of the reason why. It's funny to see a man in a business suit or a woman all done up riding around town on a moped though, gotta say. When I first got here I was surprised that they would cut in front of all the cars in any given lane at a stop light. This seems kind of dangerous to me, but if we don't have an accident every day I guess it's alright.
#3 Boys
First off, they're usually pretty shy (at least when it comes to girls). I think most of the guys in my class were either terrified of me the first few weeks, or did not wish for my presence. I'm thinking it was the first one, but if you're in 2 の E, lemme know. :P ALSO. Boys here tend to be a little more feminine than the boys I'm used to back at home. No, they don't run around proclaiming their love for hello kitty, but most tend to be more open with their emotions than American boys. There is a boy in my class who acts very masculine; sags his jeans (most Japanese boys don't do that), is cocky, and has a very boyish aura about it. The only odd thing is that he has a pink pen, pink pencil case, pink folders, and (this one really puzzled me) a pink phone. And I'm not talking light pink, I'm talking shiny, hot pink. O_O But, you know, whatever floats your boat. It's also very okay here for guys to hug, and I've even seen a boy sit on another's lap. Ah, culture.
#4 TV Shows
Go youtube a Japanese program. Not anime, one with real people. They're hilariously and awkwardly random. I've seen average women dressed in kimonos wrestling (don't get any ideas), snails being stuck on people's faces, and oh so much more. And the subtitles, oh god! It's like CNN on steroids. Almost every single thing said has subtitles in varying colors, sizes, and fonts. Sometimes, the hosts of the show will appear in a little circle in the corner of the screen as you're watching a video being replayed. It's very strange, and yet I've somehow grown to view this kind of TV as normal. It really is entertaining, though, I recommend watching it, even if you can't understand (that'd probably make it even funnier to watch).
#5 English
This one's short and to the point: Most Japanese do not speak good English. They're totally good sports about it and try really hard if they see you can't speak Japanese, but many of them (at least here in Kumamoto) do not speak very much.
#6 Bread
Whether you love white, sliced Japanese bread, hate it, or are somewhere in between (I LOVE it), it's obvious that the Japanese love their bread. And not just sliced bread; they like filled bread, savory bread, bread with all kinds of spreads, melon bread, and the list goes on. Usually the filled ones have some sort of cream or jam. They're all delicious, so it doesn't really matter. If you're ever in Japan, stop by a convenience store and look at the bread, pick anything, buy it, and eat it. You will like it.
#7 Cars
If you ever come here, you'll know what I mean. While Honda, Nissan, Toyota, etc. are Japanese brands of cars, they're VERY different from American models. I have not seen a single Toyota Rav4 (sorry mom) or Nissan Altima. The cars here tend to be extremely boxy (think a Cube), and the closest thing to 'sleek' I've seen is a Toyota Prius. So... yes. Not too interesting here. Most cars look pretty much the same.
#8 The streets
If you get into the suburbs, you'll see that the streets here can get SUPER narrow. To the point where I've thought multiple times I was going to die because the driver would crash into a wall. And at intersections you can't see around corners so they all have those convex mirrors so you can see around them. Scary stuff right there. I didn't notice them at first so I thought the driver had to make a complete guess on when to go.
#9 .....
Some things they don't have here: STICK DEODORANT!!! How I will miss you so when mine is all gone. They use some spray deodorant that I don't think works as well, so I'm very sad to say that once my deodorant runs out, I will very likely be a sweaty blob living in Japan. Please, if you have any kindness in your heart, think of my poor, poor underarms. .... Or don't. Yeah, just don't. Think of ME!
They also don't have cereal. Or at least the vast array that they have in America. I haven't specifically looked for any, but the other exchange kid here says they don't even have Cheerios here. Yes. Shock and disbelief. The king of all cereals is dead in Japan.
There's also not that much peanut butter here. I've seen a teeny little Skippy jar a few times and that's it. They have ピナッツクリーム (pinattsu kuriimu - peanut cream), which doesn't taste much like peanut butter at all and can never replace peanut butter's deliciousness. The peanut cream taste very artificial and way too sweet to be peanut butter, but my host family really likes it. >___>
Alright well that's enough text for me today. I'm kind of bothered by the fact that I ended at 9, but I ran out of steam.
Hopefully you enjoyed my random post. I'm off to bed now, so goodnight/goodmorning/good day! (Wherever you are)
-Ellie
I've been so bad about this the past few weeks! It's already been a week since I last updated and it only feels like a few days. Time here is absolutely flying by. And not like a plane, like a rocket or something. I've already been gone from home for 53 days. FIFTY THREE DAYS. That's five tens and a three. I've never been away from home for this long and I had no idea how okay it would be. Not that I don't miss my family and friends, I do! But there's just been so much to do and take in here that I've had almost no time to think about home. It only just struck me the other day that it's been almost two months since I was in my own house.
I'll get to the good stuff now (good...? Interesting...?). I left off after the ぶんかさい (Bunka Sai) my school had last week. Not sure if I mentioned it, but after the festival my entire class went to a restaurant to celebrate the fact that we were DONE and to say good bye to a boy that was moving. It was very emotional for everyone because of how tight-knit they are. Not sure if I've mentioned this either, but my class is so attached because they've been together for almost two years now and they're together for most of everyday. It's pretty much a second family for everyone so having someone move away is like having that family ripped apart. I wasn't really sure how to react since I'd only been here a little over a month so I wasn't that close to him, but it was still sad to see everyone else so upset. Anyway, I'd post pictures but they're all embarrassments to the people in them. :P
So anyway the next two days were days off from school to recuperate from the festival. On the 8th, my family took me to a park where we played badminton and threw a Frisbee around for a bit. I think I had a breakthrough that day with my two youngest host siblings, because after playing badminton with them, we ended up interacting (I won't say talking because most of our conversations are pretty one-sided; I kind of just laugh apreciatively and nod a lot) for the rest of the day.
After playing at the park for a bit, we all headed off to...... get ready for it.....
ONSEN! Ahhhhhh so exciting! And the perfect way to unwind after the play and everything. This onsen was a lot bigger and more modern looking that the 道後 (dogo) onsen in 四国 (shikoku). Nevertheless, it was just as enjoyable. This one had an outdoor onsen as well, which was probably my favorite part of the whole place. Obviously there were hedges all around, but it was really nice to have a combination of cool air and hot water. I stayed out there for most of the time we were there.
After the onsen we went home to pick up おじいちゃん (ojiichan) and おばあちゃん (obaachan), and then headed off to eat sushi. Oh my gosh, best day ever. Ordering sushi and having it brought to your table in Japan isn't as common as it is in America, and most people prefer going to the conveyor-belt ones anyway because they're loads cheaper. It's interesting how the kids here are totally unphased by the moving sushi but then there's me totally freaking out about how awesome it is.
That pretty much sums up its amazingness in one picture. This sushi restaurant was different from the one I went to the first day I was here in a totally awesome way. The first one I went to, you ordered the sushi and it came out for you to find and pick up off the belt. This one, however was (I think) all-you-can-eat and you just took whatever you wanted off the belt. ZOMYGOODNESSS HEAVEN ON EARTH. When my host mom told me I could take any I think a teeny part of me died of happiness. They had the weirdest sushi, too. Some were sashimi, and they had squid or some fish with cheese broiled on top. I had corn sushi (yes, I was interested as well). I like corn and I figured it couldn't taste that bad. I was correct! It was, in fact, delicious. The other cool part about this one is that there was a little shoot that you slipped your dishes into as you finished your sushi. The kids WERE NOT floored by this. What has the world come to?
The day after that wondrous one my host parents took me to eat ramen. I fangirled a little bit when I walked in because of how legit it looked. And the RAMEN. If you're ever in Japan, find somewhere that sells ramen and eat it. It's the best thing you will ever eat.
It came with gyouza and rice, but I thought the ramen was the part y'all should be focused on. That's pork, I believe seaweed and green onions. Tasty stuff right there. I burned my tongue pretty badly but it was totally worth it.
This weekend was much less eventful. Yesterday my host mom and two youngest siblings walked to a corn maze (yes, I live enough in the country that I am within walking distance of miles of corn). We ended up giving up on trying to find the exit and worked backwards.
Today, at 8:30 am (why, God, why?) my host parents and siblings and I all went to a museum in downtown Kumamoto where we got to see a presentation in the planetarium on stars. It was so awesome; we were in this huge room with a rounded ceiling where the stars got projected. I know there's a name for it I just can't think of it. I'm happy to say I got the gist of what was being said for the part of the presentation I was awake for.....
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I fell asleep. It was the morning, I was in a dark room in a super comfy chair under the "stars" and I couldn't help it. Sue me. It was wonderful. :)
That's pretty much it for the highlights of my week. Next weekend I'm headed off to Nagasaki for some AFS thing, so tune in for that next week! (I sound like those promos at the end of a tv show telling everyone to watch next week's episode. Blogger, what have you done to me?!)
-Ellie
For this post, I'm gonna focus on the last three days, because that's when all of the interesting stuff's been happening. Also, just as a forewarning, this post will not have very many pictures, if any. I haven't had time to take pictures because I've been so busy, so you'll have to listen to my ramblings this time around.
This week was the week before our school's ぶんかさい (bunka sai), or culture festival. They're a really big deal here so the world pretty much stopped for it. On Friday, the school had a huge gathering to celebrate the high school's 30-year-anniversary. The entire day was set aside for all of the students to sit in the gym for the day and listen to various speeches and presentations. Fun stuff. We (the students) have been practicing a Beethoven song for the past month so that we could sing it at this thing in front of the school board.
Anyway, the day of this anniversary, everyone had to wear their entire winter uniform (jacket too). If it hadn't recently started getting cooler out I would have protested, but it wasn't too bad. Which reminds me, you haven't seen the winter uniform.
Very awkward pose and face, but it's 11 at night, I've been awake for 19 hours, and I'm not putting that uniform back on. I actually prefer it over the summer one; I think it looks better. Definitely hotter though...
Everyone already knew where to sit from our 2-hour practice the day before. Once we were all seated, the school board's members arrived and started to sit down. When they first started walking in and we all started clapping I was like, "cool, normal. Clapping." But after a good minute of straight clapping it just started sounding awkward to me. I'm assuming we clapped for so long to show our respect. That went on for a good two minutes, after which we bowed and sat down. Thus followed a slew of short speeches, introductions, and lots of Japanese that I couldn't understand. Seeing as the whole first half took 3 hours, I spent a lot of the time sleeping. Surpringly enough, it was okay to sleep sitting up. Not too sure why; I would've thought it'd be considered rude but I wasn't complaining. That day I became a master at sleeping in the most uncomfortable positions ever. Sleeping while sitting in a metal chair is anything but a comfy bed. You either rest your head on your chest (PLUS I was afraid that if I slouched I'd get yelled at, so I had to slep sitting up straight), or somehow rest it to the side. The latter was painful for me so I stuck with resting my head on my chest. After about a half hour of sleeping, I would wake up, listen for about five minutes, get bored, and go back to sleep. Longest 6 hours of my life. e____e Makes for a good story, though, so looking back I don't mind.
Saturday was so busy I can't even. Since Saturday was the day before the festival, I literally spent the entire day at school preparing. From 8:30 in the morning to 10 o'clock at night, we were there practicing and setting up. These kids are ridiculously motivated, it's incredible. No one complains, no one gets annoyed. Everyone ENJOYS it. It's really nice, actually. And it made staying there so late much easier.
We didn't get much relief that night, however. Since our play was at about 9 the next morning, we had to get to school 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING to get ready. Dead. For real, I was dead this morning. I woke up at 4:25 and somehow made it out the door by 4:40. I'm still exhausted. The play went exceptionally well. Pretty much everyone cried. Everyone was really stressed about the whole thing and I think it built up so much anticipation that when it was all finally over, the figurative rubber band snapped and all of these emotions came pouring out.
After the play everyone was allowed to watch the other performances and walk around the school to see what each class had done for the festival. Basically all of the classes are open to the public (whoever comes to the festival) and most (if not all) serve food and have desks set up as tables. It's all very organized and you can tell every class put a lot into decorating and preparing everything. And the food's delicious, which is always a plus.
I met three ALTs (assistant language teachers) that were at the festival because they knew the kids at school and felt like paying a visit. One from Chicago (HOLLA), South Africa (awesome accent), and Canadia. All three were super nice, and, as it usually is when I can find someone who speaks decent English, it was nice to talk to them. People who understood sarcasm FKSENHLKFMEAOFJ so exciting! There were many laughs and even though they were all at least six years older than me (DUDE six years older than me is 23!) they were really nice.
After the festival the entire class went out to eat to celebrate the performance, but mostly to say good bye to one of the boys in our class because he's moving away on Wednesday. Considering that these people have been together for a year and a half (their classes didn't change this year), this was a huge deal for everyone, and if most people cried after the play, EVERYONE cried about this. Including a lot of the boys. Tonight was the first time any of the boys in the class and I actually exchanged words (very few, but they meant a lot to me, as cheesy as it sounds). Huzzah! A breakthrough!
And now that this is done, I'm going to sweet, sweet sleep. Going on 19 hours awake and I'm so. Tired. Sorry for the boring post, hopefully I'll get a chance to take more pictures soon. All of the pictures I took today were public embarrassments to the people in them (all very ridiculous poses and face; good blackmail ;P).
-Ellie
P.S. OH! Carlos, if you're reading this, I finally ate Melon Bread!
There it is, in all of it's glory. It tastes nothing like a melon, but it does taste like delicious sugary bread deliciousness. Delicious. That's some tasty 食べ物. (Food)
You can tell I really took the time to think of a creative title. The sweat, the tears...
It's been a week since I last posted so I'm sorry I didn't get around to it sooner! Usually by the time I go to my room for bed I'm too dead tired to write. But since it's been exactly a week I knew I had to update today because a week overdue would be unacceptable.
Here goes.
Last week I had just gotten back from a wonderful trip to 四国 (shikoku), and this weekend I had a 3-day break! Only I'm not sure that today would count as the holiday that it was supposed to since I spent about 4 and a half hours at school. 2 and a half day break maybe? Anywho, I'll start on Saturday because that was when the interesting stuff started. Saturday I went to downtown Kumamoto City with the other study abroad kid in my town. It started off pretty slowly (it probably didn't help that we picked the day before a typhoon was supposed to hit us AGAIN. What is it with the typhoons here?) but by the end of the day I felt very accomplished... which is always a good feeling I guess.
We started off in the main square that had a roof on it (a lot of markets/shopping centers around here have those), and somehow we ended up meandering off the main road and ended up in a street with a bunch of much more quaint-looking, smaller and less busy shops. We found a store that had everything priced at 409 yen, final price. EVERYTHING. Which, if you've ever been to Japan, you know that's pretty good. I found a shirt with a raccoon on it and for some odd reason the weirdo within me just had to have it. It's pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.
After our detour to the bargain store we went back to the main street to find FOOD because I was hungry, and I know myself well enough to know how cranky and whiney I can be when that happens. And even though it would've been loads of fun to subject my friend to that, I wanted food. So after some indecisiveness, we settled on this random burger place we found and I got some salsa burger they had. It was TEENY. Granted, I was comparing it to an American restaurant's burger, but it literally took me four minutes to eat, and afterwards I was STILL hungry. We had walked by a donut shop earlier so I demanded that we go buy some donuts, especially since the kid I was with had said how delicious their donuts were. I have a pretty picky donut taste bud (those don't exist, but humor me.) so I didn't have high hopes for this so-called Mister Donut. Let me tell y'all: BEST. DONUTS. EVER. They had some honey glazed donut thing and I think my mouth almost exploded it was that delicious. It was even better that they were having a 50% off sale, so I bought three and my hunger was finally satiated.
We also went to Tsutaya which is basically a giant book/manga/videogame/arcade store thing-y. I FINALLY bought my beloved manga and of course since I was with a dude we had to visit the videogames. After which I was dragged to the arcade (I don't usually do arcades) and ended up enjoying the whole thing quite a bit. We took purikura! Which, anyone that knows Japan is aware of how freaking popular that is. EVERYONE has taken purikura here. What is purikura, you ask? It's basically a photobooth on steroids, if you will. Same concept, with a whole bunch of amazingness added in. You take your pictures in one of these:
You probably can't even tell that that giant black thing with the Via Doro thing is a photobooth. They're massive. And there's so many to pick from. We picked a random one and since he actually knew what to do I was asking every 5 seconds "what's this?" "what does this do?" etc.
That's the inside of the first room (yes, there's multiple rooms). It's SO bright. Like, blinding. There's the camera and the computer screen. That's where you can pick how big you want your eyes to look (yeah), and how much you want it to lighten you. We picked big eyes and the normal brightness. After a very awkward few first shots we succeeded in getting some decent ones. After we took the pictures came the fun part (which I was totally unaware of).
It's insane! There's a touch screen and you can 'decorate' your pictures. This is what we ended up with. Note how much like dolls we look:
Yup. That's basically purikura. Quite the experience, and I definitely recommend it. I will certainly be doing it again, this time with some experience under my belt. Yes, I would say you need experience to be a good purikura taker. These are amateur shots, wait til I do it right.
Enough of the purikura, you say? I can't say there's much else for Saturday. We rode the bus home that night and the man sitting next to us attempted to have a conversation with me in Japanese. I understood about 50% of what he was saying and had a very brief, but very fulfilling conversation about what I was doing in Japan. Hooray!
Sunday was some Welcome Party for the AFSers in the Kumamoto chapter. It was a surprisingly good time. I ended up seeing the German boy I came here with so it was nice to see a familiar face. We were the only two semester students, and the year ones came later for a lunch. There was the boy from up there ^^, and another German (a girl) who have both been here since March.
I had to present my country to everyone (WHAT?), much to my surprise. In fact I had no idea I'd have to until the boy before me was presenting his. It wasn't a total disaster, but I wouldn't exactly call it a total success either. I have so much Japanese to learn it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
Today was a pretty relaxed day... aside from practice. Sigh.
I had odango today! Finally! I'd been waiting to try it!
There it is, in all of its delicious glory. For some reason I was under the impression that it was savory. It's actually soft, sweet spheres (I will not use the word balls in this sentence...) on a skewer. And actually, I think it's the sauce on them that's so sweet. In any case, I grew to like them after the first two; they totally weren't what I was expecting so I was a little weirded out at first.
And then we had Japanese curry for dinner! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh favorite food!
It's seriously one of the greatest-tasting things on the planet. I'm totes stealing my host mom's recipe and taking it home with me.
Yup, that's my uber interesting weekend for you all. Tomorrow if the weather's good we're going to 月見 (moon-viewing) which I'm really excited about so I'm praying for clear skies tomorrow night!
Hope you enjoyed this post; probably considerably less interesting than last weekend (kind of hard to follow that), but I think you have to experience everything firsthand to really enjoy these things. What does that mean? COME TO JAPAN!
I'm awkward and don't know how to end this post, so bye!
-Ellie
