24

New Soul- Yael Naim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7pvy37XaRw

Photograph- Nickelback (The first few lines are accurate on how I love looking back on pictures and laughing at all of my interesting experiences)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0DU4DoPP4

Waving Flag- David Bisbal and Knaan (This song goes with my section on my school sports festival)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXUr4rh2LRE

It has been a week and a half since I last posted anything about my life here! I would apologize but I know that I have a perfectly good reason for not blogging in so long, I have been living life. In the past few weeks I have experience so many new and wonderful things with almost no free time (definitely not enough time to share them via this blog). I think the lack of time in order to recuperate is also to blame for my recurring illnesses. It has been nothing too terrible, just a pesky cold that I can't seem to get rid of for more than a couple of days. To be honest, my cold was the only downside to the past few weeks and it was such a minor part in the large scheme of everything that has happened. Now that I am able to relax a little more I should be feeling better in no time and I can take this opportunity to try describe my most recent adventures here in Japan.

I do need to quickly apologize, though, for the decreasing quality of my blogs. I am hoping that my poor English writing abilities are due to the lack of English I am using here (meaning I am trying to use more and more Japanese and less English) and not just pure laziness. Either way, I am going to try a little harder to write my blogs closer to the writing standards of what I came to Japan with.

Like I said above, it has been awhile since I've blogged and lot has happened. I am going to try to do my best to cover the events that have taken place without boring you with too many details- aka a lot of pictures!

I am going to first start by going all the way back to the day I went to the zoo with Mai. After the zoo and a nice curry lunch, Mai and I were able to walk around the mall for awhile. During this time we decided to take some pictures of people wearing modern Japanese styled clothes. To try to explain Japanese fashion, I'd like think back to one of the first times I Skyped my family back home. My mom had asked if I fit in as far as clothes go or if I would need to buy some new "Japanese styled" clothes. Japanese and American articles of clothing are pretty much the same, we just combine then into different styled outfits. So, to answer her question- yes my clothes are fine, I just need to wear them in different combinations than I would back home.

The next big event was my school's Sports Festival. We essential took the entire school day, Tuesday September 25, to do a giant track meet. The day started off with an opening ceremony and our warm-ups (...). Then every student had to participate in at least two events and some of the teachers even participated. I ran the 200m and did a frisbee throwing relay- for the 200m I got 4th place and my team lost the frisbee relay but I amazed everyone by throwing flick rather than a "normal" frisbee throw. All in all my events were fun and I was done by mid day, meaning that for the rest of the festival I had free time to watch the other events, eat food, socialize with friends, and take pictures. We finished off the day with a closing ceremony.

The teams for the sports festival were the three grades (red is  二年生, my second grade team)

Tug-O-War

Kibasen (the point is to smack pop the balloons that are on top of the other teams heads).

Relay

Tamaire (you have a set amount of time to try and get as many balls in the basket)

Taifunome (the eye of typhoon- run with a giant pole, figure eight around 3 flags, and run back to pass it on to the next group to do)

The score (二年生/my team is winning)

Closing ceremony

Awards

My grade won the overall competition, meaning we won the most events.

 These are just some pictures with friends throughout the sports festival:

I am holding the flag my grade won for winning the overall sports festival competition my friend is holding our grades red team flag.

After an entire day in the hot sun for the sports festival the temperature finally decided to start to drop and it has gradually gotten a little cooler here (70s-80s). With more reasonable temperatures and school returning to its normal routine I found it more and more difficult to sit inside a library during my free periods. So, I went exploring and found a new spot to sit and study my Japanese:

The cooler weather also meant that I got to move into my "new/permanent/Japanese style/tatami mat" room.

Bye bye western style guest room...

Hello Japanese style room!

My next big event was scheduled to be a trip to a small village in the mountains, called Yoshino, with Mai... This just goes to show that as an exchange student you never actually know what you will be doing when you wake up in the morning and start your day. My host parents and I drove an hour to meet Mai at her host family's house and arrive to find out that our trip to Yoshino has been canceled due to a typhoon that would be hitting Japan some time that weekend. Instead, I was invited to go to a movie with Mai then spend the night at her house. The theater we went to was on the fourth floor of a little mall and had two screens total. In Japan, once in the theater, you don't get to choose where you sit but you buy a ticket for a specific assigned seat. The snack choices were definitely different (there is a picture below) and I was very excited to enjoy the movie with my box of Pocky Sticks and Melon Soda. We went to a ninja movie, Rurouri Kenshin, that Mai had been dying to see. I was just fine with this movie selection because it was an action movie and even though the dialogue was Japanese the action meant the plot was fairly simple and easy to follow. Overall, I give my first Japanese movie experience two thumbs up.

Mall on the left and theater on the right.

Snack options

The ninja movie we went to

Pocky Sticks!

Once back at Mai's house we ate dinner, watched the movie "Howl's Moving Castle" in Japanese (with English subtitles), then went to bed around midnight!- Mai and I were both extremely tired from our busy day at the mall and all of the Japanese we had been listening to. Watching Howl was a bit difficult that late at night but we had to finish the movie!

The room I stayed in.

View from my window.

View from my window.

The next day Mai was invited to come back to my house with me for a party Okaasan was hosting at our house with her best friends from high school. We ate a lot of really good food, they gave Mai and me presents, and then we were excused to go eat snacks in my room. 

Okaasan and her friends were all in the table tennis club in high school.

The very generous gift they gave me- two Japanese comic books and a famous Japanese character action figure.

I will definitely be bringing some of these snacks home! So good!

The typhoon had finally hit during the party but it was not very bad in my area. All the typhoon was, was a lot of rain.

The next week during school was average but afterwards I stayed to watch some of the sports practices (my wadaiko club is Wed.-Fri.).

Mark- my Japanese language and culture teacher

The track coach asked me to join the track team even though: 1. I don't like to run around in circles on the track field 2. I would only be to participate on Mondays and Tuesdays.  He had heard the other girls saying that I am really fast at running short distances and that I can throw shot put over 8m (I threw it 8m 27cm in gym class). I will have to see if I actually have enough time and energy to join.

Soccer!

One day after dinner that week Okaasan, Shiho, and I sat for at least two hours creating kanji names for some of my friends and family. *Interesting tid-bit is that in the middle of having fun coming up with names we had to catch and dispose of a poisonous bug that had some how gotten into the house (Shiho says she has never seen one in the house before! SCARY!).

That week I also had wadaiko club (Japanese drums) and the girls on the team (in my grade) invited me to go to a sushi restaurant with them after one of our practices.

The three girls on the far left (mostly wearing black) are 一年生 (first graders) and the four of us on the right are 二年生 (second graders).

Inarizushi

Tempura

Salmon eggs

Then on Saturday I got to meet my host cousins: Shun (20yrs old), Yuri (18yrs old, who I have already met once and will be spending the night at our house soon), and Shinji (15yrs old). Ojiisan (host grandpa) took me, my host parents, and host cousins all to Nara! Nara is now one of my favorite places in the world. Nara was the first capital of Japan, before Kyoto or Tokyo. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains and the mix of modern city and historical temples/shrines was amazing to see. We visited Daigokuden, Toshodaiji, Kohfukuji, and Todaiji. It was a great day filled with a lot of sight seeing, picture taking, deer feeding, and getting to know my cousins (who I get a long with extremely well and am glad I got to meet them). After Nara we went back to Namba for a Japanese style dinner then said our goodbyes.

On the other side of the mountain is Nara- we drove 5km through the mountain to get there.

Standing at the gate to Daigokuden (what used to be the emperors home) with Shun.

Daigokuden

Toshodaiji with the cousins

Toshodaiji

Kohfukuji

Kohfukuji and Sarusawanoike with Yuri.

Lunch (I had steak)

Okaasan is hiding deer treats... I think they know!

Feeding the deer!

Otousan looking at the deer in the distance.

Okaasan and I are showing the deer that we don't have any treats.

Yuri feeding the deer.

Shinji feeding the deer.

Lucky! We saw a traditional style Japanese wedding.

Got my fortune! Shun and I both got the number 24, which is the luckiest! I was told to keep it in my wallet for good luck.

Getting to try some really famous and expensive sumi (calligraphy).

Todaiji (houses the Big Buddha).

Yuri preparing a prayer- the smoke is to help with knowledge/intelligence. 

Todaiji with the cousins and Ojiisan.

Water to clean your hands and drink before meeting the big Buddha.

Daibutsu (Big Buddha)

The lotus petal Buddha sits on.

Lotus is a very religious symbol.

You rub the part of that statue that you feel pain on yourself. I dislocated my left knee last spring and it still hurts at times so by rubbing the left knee of the statue it is supposed to make my pain go away.

Me, Shun, Sentokun (mascot of Nara's anniversary of being an important historical city), Yuri, and Shinji.

Dinner.

Tempura

Syabusyabu

Namba- I am posing like the Glico man

Yesterday, I woke up bright and early to go to a school festival at a Jr. High School near my house to watch my wadaiko team perform (I am not nearly good enough to perform yet, which is fine because I know it will take time to build up some skill). I was also able to help make some bread with one of Okaasan's friends (in return we got to eat some of the bread for free once it was finished baking) and wear a yukata (summer kimono).

Kneading the dough.

Finished product.

They are very good! Our teacher is a math teacher at our school, who has played for many years. His wife performed with them yesterday which is also very neat because she is a professional wadaiko player!

If I look like I am in a little bit of pain its because I am. The lady helping me put the yukata on was very nice but also very good at make sure the yukata belt was nice and tight.

Some Jr. High boys that dressed up too.

Last night Shiho and I were invited to go with our neighbors (they have four young boys between the ages 3yrs old-14yrs old) to the Danjiri Festival. All I can say is that it was amazing! It is a festival to pray for a good harvest of rice. They pull big, lantern covered, wood floats through the narrow streets of the city, drink, yell, and spin the floats as a little performance. I got to help pull the float and even wear a happi (traditional robe that normally only people who are actually part of the festival get to wear... but I am lucky and have connections!). After walking through the streets we got to take pictures on the float and eat some snacks.

Wearing a happi and helping pull the float!

This is normally my bus stop/train station. The floats were all fantastic looking!

Our float

I hope this helps show just how narrow some of the streets are here and how big the float is.

Shiho and I were worn out by the time we got home after midnight last night but it was so much fun! We sat and retold our even to Otousan and Okaasan while we ate some more snacks.

Then this morning I got myself out of bed at 8am and spent a couple of wonderful hours at my Uncle's wedding via skype. It is amazing what technology can help us accomplish. I am in Japan and yet was able to take part in the celebration in Minnesota. I was very happy to be able to see so much of my family and even "dance" to a couple of songs. A great big thanks to all of my family for making my day!

With that, I have made it to the present! Hopefully my two week sum-up isn't too long and hectic. It has taken me a couple of hours to create this so please forgive me this one last time if there are a substantial amount of errors in my grammar or spelling.

Sayonara from Osaka, Japan.