Wicked!

Today was a pretty busy day. In school I had calligraphy for the first two hours. I finished the project we had been working on, so that's fun. It's the kanji (Chinese character) for dream. Today I made the stamp for it out of a plastic eraser and stamped it.

夢 (Yume- dream)

My stamp. It says my name.

After calligraphy everyone ate lunch and then we went to Shimbashi, Tokyo for the musical Wicked! It was amazing. I knew we were going to be going to it so I made a point of listening to all the songs on YouTube and looking up the plot summary. Between knowing the story ahead of time and actually understanding some of it I had no problem keeping up with it in Japanese. I even bought myself the CD of this cast singing it. I just think it will be fun to have the songs in Japanese.

I got home from the musical around 5:30, ate my after school snack that was waiting for me on the table, changed my clothes, and left for Young Women's. I have missed having those activities. Today was the first time I ever went in Japan. We went to one of the leaders' house and had dinner. It was so good! And her kitchen was so American! It had a real oven. Not a microwave that gets really hot; a real oven. The girls and leaders here are all so sweet. I am really glad to have met them even though it just adds more people to my list of good-byes in a few weeks.

Kamakura-bori and Ajisai

Last week my school had exams. They were from Monday to Thursday. I don't take the exams because of how difficult (impossible) it is for me to read Japanese to even understand the questions, much less know the answer to them. My teachers were very kind and planned some activities for me.

Monday I spent two hours in school researching and filling out worksheets (in Japanese) about Kamakura-bori and a temple in Kamakura, which used to be the capital of Japan and is just a bit south of Yokohama. On Tuesday Uchida-Sensei took me on a field trip there.

We got to Kamakura by about 10:00 in the morning and did a 2 hour Kamakura-bori class. Kamakura-bori is the style of wood working that was started in Kamakura. We carved these plates. Real Kamakura-bori has a pretty red stain and lacquer on it too, but we didn't have that much time. It was really difficult, but we had fun. The teacher was really nice and very talented.


Working hard.

My fingers hurt by the end of the lesson. That wood is a bit hard...

Uchida-sensei and I with our finished plates. I would like to stain mine when I get home.

After our class was over we went and found a bench on the side of the road where we ate our obentos (packed lunches). It was a bit strange to eat there as people walked past and staring at me. I would have preferred a park or something...

Next we went to see ajisai flowers (Hydrangea). Taking special trips somewhere to look at flowers is a very Japanese thing to do and there were a lot of people. The flowers really were quite pretty though. The colors are all different depending on what is in the soil. It must be pretty sensitive to the type of soil because the color of the flower would change from plant to plant even though they were right next to each other.

Ajisai

Uchida-sensei and I had a fun day and I really appreciate her doing that for me. It was much better than sitting in school alone all day. We even got purple sweet potato flavored ice cream! I love that stuff! But that's a secret. I'm pretty sure it is against school rules to buy ice cream while wearing school uniform.

I love Murasaki-imo ice cream!

Me at one of the temple gardens in Kamakura. I don't remember which one it was anymore.

After we said goodbye at the train station closest to school at 3:30 I went to visit "Mama" Umezaki, my second host mother. I am really glad that I got to visit with her for a few hours. It was so nice to talk to her. When I came in and called "tadaima!" (I'm home!) she ran over and gave me a hug and was almost crying. That house is really close to my school so I will have to go visit again sometime soon.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday working on a scrapbooky album of my exchange for the school. It is homework from one of my teachers. On both days I got out before lunch so I got to go out and get lunch with my host mom, who also had the afternoons off work. After lunch on Wednesday I met a friend in Kawasaki and went shopping. Thursday I went to a sport's club with my host mom and dad. One of my rotarians, Mr. Kato, owns the gym so I met him and talked about using the gym. As it turns out, the gym is a chain of gyms and there is one at my station in Tokyo! Perfect! Exam week was fun. I am lucky that my school and teachers are so willing to plan things like this for me.

Kabuki

On the 7th (Sunday) my rotary district brought all of the exchange students to a Kabuki play. Kabuki is the traditional Japanese theatre. I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be really boring. This Kabuki, however, was really good. The story was pretty easy to follow without understanding all the words and lyrics. They also had an explanation of Kabuki for beginners and children so I got to understand a bit more about it before the actual play started. I enjoyed it.

After the Kabuki we had a little good-bye party for Felipe who went back to Ecuador on Thursday. Having Iliana and Felipe leave really made me realize how fast my year is coming to an end. I only have about 6 weeks left.