Omochisuki!

Last Saturday (December 6th) I went to an Omochisuki! Omochisuki is a mochi making ceremony. I was invited by Iliana, who was invited by her 3rd host family. It was at a templ, so they did some temple ceremony before we started the actual omochisuki. That was interesting.



Mochi is like sticky rice balls. To make it, you take the cooked rice and squish it and beat it with big wooden hammers. They add water a little at a time so the rice doesn`t stick to the bowl and hammer.



When you hit the rice you have to yell "Yosho!" I had a good time with that. When Iliana and I had both had our turn her 3rd host father was like, Abbey did it better than you. haha. She did a good job too...



Them we rolled the rice into little balls and ate it! Mine had anko (sweet bean paste) on it. It was yummy!

After that we left for Asakusa to do Christmas shopping. Asakusa is a place in Tokyo with a big temple. It is a popular place for tourists so there are lots of little shops. I am happy to say that I was very successful with my shopping. ;)

Disney Sea

Last Sunday (October 30), I went to Tokyo Disney Resort's Disney Sea! Shiratori-san (one of the rotarians in my club) took Iliana and I there with his wife and son. It was very very nice of him to do that for us. I had an awesome time!



They seemed to know the park pretty well. Their son, who is 10, had been there like 5 times! They had planned out our whole day really well. They really knew how to use the fast-pass system there. We were always moving from one ride or attraction to the next. We didn't have to wait very long at all for most of the rides, which was great! I think we did all the fun, adult rides, along with some of the kiddie rides. We even got to see a few of the shows. I absolutely love Disney, so I thought the shows were good, but Iliana didn't seem to enjoy them quite as much... The best show was "Big Band Beat". It is a broadway type show with jazz and tap-dancing and Mickey Mouse. It was all Christmas songs, and it was all in English. That was fun for me. The crowd didn't quite get it when they announced things like, "give it up for the SAXOPHONES!"



My favorite rides were the Tower of Terror and Indiana Jones. It was a long day and I was exhausted by the end, but it was really really fun. I even got to meet Goofey!



And thanks to the Shiratori's I didn't even spend any money! They were nice enough to pay for our tickets, lunch, dinner, chocolate popcorn, and the picture of us in the Tower of Terror. Yay for rotarians!



I love Disney Sea!

Kamakura

On November 23 I went to an exchange student program in Kamakura, which is just south of me. I still don't know exactly what it was. Some sort of high school volunteer program for Japanese high school students. Most of them spoke English pretty well because they either did an exchange of some sort or they lived overseas when they were younger.



Anyway, I went down with my host family in the morning. We went to the big temple for Toru's special day. There is a holiday that is something about 3,5,7. Girls that are three and seven, and boys that are five. Toru is five so he got all dressed up in a fancy kimono and we went to the temple with the family and grandparents. We also had family pictures done. Which I was in. :D After Toru's thing, I left to meet up with the group for this program.



We got to talk and get to know each other for a while while we had lunch. Then we had a nice tour of Kamakura. We went to three temples and the Daibutsu (Big Buddha). It was really fun. And I met lots of new people, including other Japanese high school students. Yay!



The next day was a holiday, so some of us met at Yokohama Station. It turned out that none of the other girls could make it, which was not what I was planning on when I threw the idea out there. There was the german guy, myself, and two of the Japanese guys that we met the day before. One of them invited two of his friends along, so that was fun. Not that they said a single word to me after we were introduced. We went to a game center (arcade), where I got to lose to everyone else at Mario cart racing, but dominate at air hockey. Then we went to Karaoke, which was a blast!