Horseback Riding

Today I had nothing planned and I was ready to enjoy a day off. My alarm didn't go off and I ended up sleeping in until almost 10:30 (oops) which felt wonderful. I have been so busy every day that I was just drained. It was good to sleep as long as I wanted. Then I got to skype with Dad, Christy, AnnaMarie, and Katie. That was fun.

During lunch my host mom said that once I was ready we could go. Go where? Horseback riding! :D Last time we went down to Yokosuka to go it was rainy so we couldn't ride. Today was good weather and we didn't have plans so we went again.

This girl gave me a lesson on how to ride.

It was really fun and I think I did pretty well. I rode for about 30 minutes and managed to get up to a fast trot. The horse's name was Cody, in case you were wondering.

My and Cody. I look pretty good, huh?

Then we played a nice game of baseball with the family. It was me and my host mom against my host dad and brother. The boys dominated, but I tried my hardest. :P Maybe a little too hard, actually. Manato is really quite good at baseball so I kind of forgot he was only 7... not that he wasn't way better than me anyway. I can just run faster. I feel a bit bad for it now. He still got home like 5 times though.

After that we went to sushi, which was really good. Yokosuka is right next to the open sea so the sushi there is a lot better than the sushi in Tokyo. That's what my host parents say anyway.

It was a fun day. However, I didn't get around to some of the stuff on my "to do" list that I had been planning on doing on my day off. One of those things is updating my blog. Hopefully I will get my Hokkaido and Disneyland posts up soon. They will show up beneath this one.... sorry.

3 weeks from today. :D

I Love Disneyland!

Last Wednesday (July 8th) I got to skip school to go to Disneyland again. I love Disneyland. :) I went with my host mom, Manato, and Vincent. Vincent was not in the original plan, but he called me Monday night telling me that his family had given him money to go to Disneyland and begging me to go with him (paying for myself) that Saturday. He didn't want to go alone. I didn't want to go twice in one week or on a Saturday. I asked my host mom if he could tag along and she agreed.

It was a really good day to go though. Due to the fact that it was a Wednesday afternoon and the weather wasn't too great it wasn't very crowded at all! It was a bit rainy throughout the morning, but since it was still warm I didn't bother bringing my umbrella along. The lines were so short it was great! For the majority of the rides our wait was like 5 minutes. Right in the morning we had to wait maybe 20 to 30 minutes for the more popular ones, but that wasn't as bad as the 70 to 90 minute waits they have on weekends.

We even rode our favorite rides twice and did the rather obscure ones, like paddling your own canoe, that I didn't know were there. The shows were awesome! They are better than the rides in my opinion. We saw a nice dancing show with all the Disney princesses and Mickey Mouse. There is a summer splash show they do now where they spray tons of water out into the crowd in front of Cinderella's castle. That was really cool, but I didn't know they were going to spray us. I got very wet on a rather rainy day. It would probably be more fun on a hot day. At the very end of they day, before the Great Electrical Parade, we saw a show that they just started that day. It was awesome! It was about Monsters Inc. The music was really fun and the effects were amazing. They had fire and a green laser and disco balls and a projector projecting stuff onto the whole castle. And They shot water out at the crowd again. It was SO COOL!

For dinner we went to a Polynesian restaurant there and had a 3-course dinner with a show. It was pretty cool. My host mom reserved that for us which was so nice of her! We also got to eat the yummy popcorn from Disney. Probably my favorite was the caramel, but we also tried honey and sea salt. I wanted to try the curry flavor... I think it would be good.

At night we saw the Great Electrical Parade (for my 3rd time-it never gets old, but that song sure does). It was pretty much the highlight of my day. I am pretty sure I had more fun with it than most of the little kids. I waved at all my favorite characters and some waved back! :D Wendy (from Peter Pan) waved to me and blew me a kiss. And, the best moment of my day at Disneyland... Prince Charming looked at me!!! I mean Cinderella's Prince Charming made eye contact with me and smiled at me. It still makes me happy to think about it.

Anyway. Disneyland was a lot of fun. I am glad I got to go again and I think we picked the perfect day to go.

(Pictures will come another day. Time for me to get some sleep.)

Hokkaido

On the first weekend of July (July 3 to 5) my wonderful host family took me to Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan). It was so fun! Hokkaido was perfect. I was kind of hoping I would get the chance to go to Okinawa this year, but I think Hokkaido was better. We had beautiful weather, delicious food, and a fun adgenda. The weather was very similar to Ironwood, actually. Maybe that's why I liked it so much there. It was cool enough in the mornings and evenings to wear a sweatshirt and warm in the daytime. Without the humidity.

On Friday the 3rd, I got done with school early, went to the gym, and came home and packed for Hokkaido. We left for the airport by 4. We flew into a city called Chitosei and took the a train to Sapporo. I think Sapporo is the prettiest city I have ever been in. It's very clean and the air is fresh and everything is built in a nice grid system so you can see down one street forever. It was so much different than Tokyo! We ate the freshest sushi I have ever eaten for dinner. The tuna, which is my favorite kind of sushi, was so good! The raw sea urchin was still disgusting. My host dad was like, "but this is Hokkaido's! It is really good. Totally differnt than Tokyo's. Try it." (Then again, my host dad also said that you are supposed to eat the raw shrimp's brain as you pull off the head. He then proceeded to suck it out of the head. That's just sick.) I just cannot handle that mushy, squisy, slimy texture. I have now tried sea urchin sushi 4 times. I think I am allowed to say I don't like it. :) We also saw the famous Tokeidai before heading to our hotel. Dinner lasted until almost 10:30. It was a late night. The hotel was really nice, including it's onsen.

Saturday morning we got up and had the continental breakfast at the hotel. I got to eat a real american breakfast (almost) and it was awesome. :) (My host mom's breakfasts are also really good, it was just the first time I got to eat cereal in a while.) Then we were off to the train station. We rode the Zoo train to Asahiyama!

Asahiyama Zoo is the most famous zoo in Japan. We had a fun day there. I didn't really take pictures as animals pretty much look the same no matter what zoo you see them at. By about 3:30 we had seen most of the animals and were ready to go to our hotel in Asahikawa. We napped for a bit and then went out for dinner. We had jingisukan, which is mutton barbecue. I think it was the first time I had never had mutton before, but it was really good.

Back at our hotel we all played games, including UNO together for a while. It was really fun and it really felt like a family. Those kind of moments have been pretty rare in the last 10 months or so. It was nice.

On Sunday we rented a car and took a little road trip. The scenery was so beautiful! My host mom got really excited when we saw some cows in a field on the side of the road. I laughed at her. I guess I haven't seen cows in Tokyo either...

We stopped at a little shop on the side of the road to get melon (Cantelope) and ice cream (both famous for being good in Hokkaido), which were dang good. Melon flavored ice cream. Y-U-M. We also stopped to see a "recycled house" which is the old set for my host dad's favorite drama. It was pretty interesting.

Lunch was at a cheeze factory. They had pizza made fresh in a big stone oven. It was probably the best pizza I have had in Japan. Then we went to the Flowerland. Hokkaido is also famous for it's lavender fields. We ate ice cream there, too. Lavender flavor. What does lavender taste like, you ask? It's not as good as melon.

Then we went to the airport and flew home. Back at Hanedea Airport we got ramen and udon for dinner and then came home. It was such a nice trip. I had a lot of fun and I am so grateful that my host family brought me there. I am such a lucky exchange student. :D

(I will get pictures up on here later, too. A lot of them are on my host family's camera.)