Last Day of School

On my last day of school (Wednesday, July 15th) I got to school early. At 8:05 I had to give a little speech to all the teachers in the teachers' lounge. I had prepared really well by jotting some ideas down on my palm that morning before I left the house. It wasn't supposed to be very long anyway. In the middle of that I started crying... and I knew today was going to be a long day.



I ran upstairs to my classroom and quickly changed into my sport's uniform before my class started at 8:15. It wasn't just a normal day of school. No, I had to have my last day be even more hectic by throwing in a sport's day. Kyugitaikai-- ball-sport's festival. A school-wide competition of volleyball, badminton, basketball, and Japanese-style dodge ball.



I was on the volleyball team. My games were right away in the morning. I had a fun time playing even though we lost both of them. They were pretty close though, if that makes a difference. Luckily, the other High School 3rd Grade volleyball team got second overall, so we still got points. Then it was my duty to cheer for my classmates as they did their sports. Which I did.



After lunch, my very last obento (-.-), I went to find my teacher about getting my scrapbooky album that I was making for the school done. I still needed to print and insert a few pictures. I was almost done getting that taken care of when my teacher decided that I need to get back to class (cheering for classmates). GAhhhhh!



As I was cheering (not very enthusiastically because of my rather stressful last day worries) I somehow got roped into playing in the last game of dodge ball. Now, for those of you who have never played Japanese dodge ball, it is a bit different than the dodge ball you know. You have to worry about a basketball(ish ball) slamming into your face and getting trampled by your teammates all at the same time. The rules are pretty hard to explain, but you have people from the other team around the whole perimeter of your side and only one (hard, painful) ball being whipped back and forth between them as they try to get you stuck in a corner so they can hit you. I wasn't very good at it.



After dodge ball was over we had the closing ceremony. Our class had won the festival! :) Everyone insisted that I go up and accept the trophy for the class. It was the first time that I have ever accepted something like that for a big group; it was nice. Then our class did our closing prayer for the day. The girl who said it thanked that I could have been in their class for the year. Well, I think that was where she was going with it before she started crying. Then (surprise!) I started crying too. It was really sweet of her.



But that was too early for tears. Next we had a Senior 3 girls vs. teachers dodge ball game. It was a lot of fun, actually. After that was over we all got juice or tea to drink as we quickly changed back into our uniforms. As I was running around like crazy trying to make sure my speech and stuff was ready all the other girls besides 2 of my friends, who were taking their sweet time with me, disappeared.



I walked into the auditorium where my speech was going to be to see all the girls applauding as I walked in. There were a few girls from the orchestra playing the graduation music in the corner. I took my seat and then the principle called my name just like they do at graduation and gave me my diploma. I started crying again. My classmates wanted me to graduate with them, but since I will be gone, I graduated early.



I gave my little speech and then they gave me gifts. They must have put so much work into all of this, because it was amazing. I got pictures and albums and, my personal favorite, a Japanese flag that all of my friends signed. That will be going up in my room as soon as I get home. They also made a video of all the teachers being interviewed about me.



After that was all over I took pictures with people. Then I finished my album for the school. Finally, I gave the teachers and principal one final thank-you and left St. Joseph's High School.



My friends waited for me as I did this whole process and we went home together. In the bus we all started crying like crazy. I cried pretty much all the way home, saying goodbyes to people as they got off the train at stops before mine.



It was a tough day because I think it was the first time that I really realized that this year is ending. School was an important part of my year. Of course it was. I made so many friends and learned a lot there. There was also a lot of school-related stress. Having school be done was a mixture of emotions. I am so relieved to be done. I can start focusing on really getting ready to go home. At the same time, however, it was the first big "sayonara" I had to make. I am glad that I got to go to the school I did go to. It was way more strict than what I am used to, but I had a good experience there.

You know you are tall when...

...You can change the light in your bathroom without using a stool. Or even standing on your tip toes. :D

Today was my last day of school. I will probably blog about it tomorrow before I leave for the Mt. Fuji Trip! But we will see.

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.)

One Month and Counting...

Today is July 1st. I go home in exactly one month. My last day of school is in exactly 2 weeks. I don't really believe it

Over the last few weeks I have had mixed feelings about leaving, which I wrote a bit about in the post below this. Usually, depending on the day, either excitement or sadness is more dominant.

Today, with exactly 31 days left I feel excited. I am so excited to see my family! I want to see my friends again. I'm excited for camping and learning how to drive again and the fresh air of the UP. :-) Of course I still feel sad about leaving so soon, but I am more excited.

My schedule for the next month is packed, but it is really good. I feel like I have everything I want to do before leaving scheduled. I don't think there will be anything I feel like I have left undone at the end. I think I will be ready to leave. Still sad, but ready.

Now for a quick update on what I have been up to lately. For Father's Day, the whole family went to the movies. We saw Rookies, which had pretty typical Japanese drama-type acting in it. But it was fun.

Last Friday (the 26th) I skipped school because there was just a Catholic mass at a church pretty far away. I went shopping with my host mom, which was nice. We got stuff for climbing Mt. Fuji. My rotary club insists that tennis shoes are not good enough and gave my family money to buy me proper hiking boots. Either I am way underestimating this 6 hour hike or Japanese people just like to exaggerate it. I will give the shoes to Rotary. Maybe an exchange student next year can use them. That evening I went to a Rotary dinner with my family. That was my last meeting before my farewell party at the end of this month. I received my very last Rotary allowance.

Last Saturday I went to see Manato at his school for the open house day, went to the gym for Zumba, and then went with my host mom to a friend's house where we made Japanese pizzas for lunch, a Hello Kitty shaped cake, and big sushi rolls for dinner.

Japanese pizza. Probably my favoite was the tako-yaki one. Tako i s octopus.

Hello Kitty!

These rolls were so pretty! I can make them when I get home. Look, flowers!!! Mine are on the left.

On Sunday I went to church and then went down to Yokosuka with my host family. The plan was to go horseback riding, but it was too rainy so we ended up getting lunch, shopping, and then going to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Yokohama. My host parents got me a cute shirt too! (It was a buy-two-for-a-lower-price kind of deal and they were already buying one so I pretty much had to pick one out.) Ruan, from Brazil, also came along for dinner because he had called me asking to hang out and everyone else was busy so my host mom invited him to join us.

This is my host dad's horse. I forgot the horse's name though...

Me, Ruan, and Manato

On Monday after school I went to the grocery store with Manato and we made chocolate-chip cookies together.

Yesterday (Tuesday) school got out after lunch like Tuesdays usually do and I came home and changed my clothes. Then I went to Yokohama to meet my Calligraphy teacher, Morita-sensei and calligraphy classmates. The class is only me and two other girls so Morita-sensei took us out for Okonomi-yaki. It was so nice of her! We all had a really good time and we even took purikura. I am pretty sure that was a first for my teacher.

Arisa, Mika, Abbey, and Morita-sensei

Arisa, Sensei, Abbey, Mika (I decorated this picture!)

Today I just had school and then went to the gym. Phew, all caught up! :-)

Rotary Graduation

This post was written a few days after the graduation meeting. I am finally getting it up now.



On June 20th I had my Rotary Graduation. It was also my last district level rotary meeting. Except for the Mt. Fuji trip, which isn't really a meething. There is one last orientation meeting on July 3rd, but I will be in Hokkaido with my host family.

Tateno family. Papa, Me, Okasan, and Manato

The graduation felt like such a formal ending, but I still have over a month left. It was still nice though. All the inbounds gave our last speeches (except ones for school and rotary club meetings) Then we recieved these nice honorary diplomas. They played a slideshow of all the pictures the rotarians took of us through the year. That was really fun. It seems like so long ago that we were at those Japanese lessons and not understanding a word people said to us. Our teachers from that first week also came. It must have been pretty cool for them to see how much we have learned since then.

The incredibly akward moment when the Japanese person goes to shake the foreigners hand and the foreigner bows. Hand meets face.

All of my host families came too. It was really nice to see them all again.

Nakano Family. Mie, Masato, Me, Wataru, Toru.

Wataru, Toru, and Me.

Umezaki Family. Papa, Abbey, Mama, and my rotary president, Mr. Inukai.

After the meeting there was a little party with food and very few chairs so you had to go socialize with other people. It was a nice opportunity to talk to people and lots of pictures.

I love Katja!

Yay America!! Vincent, Maki-chan, Ota-kun, Abbey. (Inbounds from America and Outbounds to America)

Before the meeting my host mom brought me to the salon to get my hair cut a little bit and curled. I felt so pretty. (>.<) I just love getting dressed up. After the meeting was over the exchange students went to take purikura with our Rotary blazers. It was fun. Then we wandered around Yokohama and Sakuragichou for a while before heading home.

Katja, Sylvana (from Germany--not rotary), Vincent, Korn, Ruan, I can't tell who is hiding in the back, and Abbey!

The 20th was also the 10 month mark for me being in Japan. I am still so amazed at how many awesome opportunities I have had and how much I have learned. I have done more than I thought possible to do in 10 months. Going on an exchange has been an experience of a lifetime and I wouldn't give up this experience for anything. There isn't even a way to put it into words; it is just something you have to experience to understand

I am excited to see what the rest of my time in Japan has in store for me, but I am sad to see it come to an end. I am happy to be going home, but I don't want to leave. I want to see my friends and family in America, but I don't want to say goodbye to my families and friends here. Sometimes it is hard for me to know how I feel about it all. I try to think of it as two separate things: leaving Japan, and returning to America. Sometimes I just think of it as inevitable that will happen no matter how I feel, so I might as well not think about it at all. It really is a bitter-sweet ending. But the end isn't here yet. I still have over a month left!

Well, I have some pictures to add to this, but blogger won't upload them for me at the moment. I will try again tomorrow if I have time.

Too busy to blog -- Sorry!

Sometimes in school (my only time in which I don't have much else to do) I write out blog posts and then just type them in later. Those are usually the posts that come up really late, which happens to be most of them lately. I wrote this one in school around the 15th of June, so it was a while back. Again, sorry. I am trying really hard to get my blog caught up, but keeping it up to date is a challenge lately.

This past weekend (June 13-14) was really busy, but it was a fun busy. Both Saturday and Sunday were full of activities, and a lot of them were with my host family. I really enjoy spending time with my host family so it was nice.

On Saturday I officially started at the Gym that my rotarian has a connection at. (Kato-san owns one of the gyms, which is a chain of them, but he knows the people who own the other ones around the area. This gym's owner is letting me come here. ) It is conveniently located about 2 minutes from my train station, which is awesome. I even have an appointment set up to get a personalized training program made for me! And I get to go for free! I wish I could have started this earlier.

Once all the talking was over I got to actually use the gym. I ran for a bit to warm up (the machines are so nice! They all have T.V.s and headphones attached so you can watch whatever you want as you exercise. Fancy!) and then I took the Zumba class. It was SO fun. Seriously,, I didn't think it was possible to make such a tough workout so fun. I loved it! It's a pretty popular workout craze in Japan right now. It is based on Latin-style dancing and a single 50 minute class burns about 850 calories. Anyway, I plan to take it again.

After I showered and such I met my host family at the station. We all went to lunch and then to my Rotary Orientation meeting together. I gave my speech that I didn't bother to write beforehand. I really don't think that I will ever have a problem with speaking in public in English ever again. It will be so much easier than Japanese.

After that I went to Cosmo World, an amusement park in Minatomirai, with my host family. It was really fun even thought the roller coasters aren't really built for someone my height. They were a bit tight on the shoulders and my legs are too long. After we rode all the rides we wanted and gave my host parents a chance to make fun of Manato and I going through a fun house (There are cameras so people can watch outside as you run into mirrors and go in circles. I didn't know.) we went to Okonomiyaki for dinner.






Abbey and Manato on the water log ride. Which we rode 3 times.

Wheeee!! My host dad forgot to take the picture when we were actually on the ride...
Sunday morning I got up early and my host dad drove me to church. The ward I go to now is an English ward. It was really nice to be able to fully understand all the lessons and be able to give input of my own. My entire brain switched over to English though. When my host mom picked me up I got into the car and she asked how it went. I started blabbing away in English until I saw her face. She just stared, looking slightly shocked, and said "nani?" (What?). I could have sworn she actually said what in English... After a slightly confused moment I realized that I was not speaking Japanese and started laughing.

My languages get all mixed up now. Sometimes when I skype with people at home all the words I think are in Japanese and I have to make a mental effort to change them to English before I speak. I even talk to myself in Japanese sometimes now, which is just ridiculous. I think in Japanese a lot without realizing it. I usually realize it when I start counting something and I get to 11 in Japanese. It's faster to say the English numbers from there and it bothers me that I am counting so slowly so I switch to English. I don't really have too many dreams in Japanese though. Come to think of it, I don't have too many dreams anyway and when I do they usually are set in America or at least not Japan. I have crazy dreams....

Anyway, getting back on topic... After church I went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant with my host family and then went home to change my clothes. The neighbor family (The Ando family) and us went to Round One. Round One is a game/amusement center similar to Chuck E. Cheeze, but more for young adults than little kids. We had a fun time there and even took purikura. The moms didn't join us for that. I love purikura...

Misuzu, me, Kakeru-kun, and Manato
Once we got home Misuzu and I changed into Yukatas (a summer time kimono) and everyone went to an omatsuri. Omatsuri is a Japanese festival. Around the temple the streets were just packed with games and food stands. Lots of yummy things like tako-yaki, okonomi-yaki, yaki-soba, buttery steamed potatoes, and Japanese candies. It was really fun despite the rain. It was fun to wear a yukata to it too. An old man, whose stand we bought from soup from, was impressed to hear that I like Japanese food so much and asked if I also like sweet foods like crepes. I said yes and he walked away. He came back a few minutes later with a crepe for me. My host dad was like, not tell him you really love yaki-soba. ;)

Ando-san helping me tie my obi.

Me and Misuzu

Me, the Ando family and Manato. Kakeru-kun is 8 and Misuzu is 12.
The festival was fun, the food was great, and I failed at all the little games I played but it's okay. They let me pick a prize anyway.

Misuzu, Manato, Abbey, and Kakeru-kun trying to catch fish with paper-covered hoops. I lost but we still got to take about 9 sick fish home. One is still alive...

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.

Tateno Family

On the morning of the 24th (Sunday) I said my goodbyes and thank-yous to the Umezaki family and moved to my third and final host family.

I am really glad that I got to live at the Umezakis' house. They were an excellent host family. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with Mr. Umezaki or Rika (29-year-old host sister) as they both have full-time jobs, but I got really close with my host mom. She was awesome! I always had good food and obentos. I got to help with dinners at night and after dinner she gave me Japanese lessons. They were all very generous and let me make whatever plans I wanted to on my own. I will never forget them.

My host father, host mother, me, Rika, and the dog (Nene).

I had not really met my third host family before that morning. I had talked with my host father for about 10 minutes at a rotary lunch two weeks earlier, but that was it. I was a bit nervous about switching.

The Tateno family pulled into the driveway at about 9:30 and I finally got to meet them .They are a young couple (early 40's) with one 7-year-old boy named Manato. We (both host families and myself) all talked for a while, loaded my luggage into the car, and said good-bye.

Hey, they got smaller since I last changed families...

My new house is in Tokyo, which is a kind of exciting. (Plus, we don't have to sort our garbage in Tokyo!!!) I technically live outside of my Rotary District now. My house is in a really nice neighborhood-- an actual neighborhood! I even met all my neighbors! My host family introduced me to all of them my first day there, probably so they didn't get worried when they see a random foreigner trying to get into the house. The house is small, but clean and it really feels like a home. There is not much privacy (seeing how I don't really have a room) but I don't mind at all. I feel the most at home in this family I think.

My house!

The living room and play/study room. I close those sliding doors (to the left) and set out my futon when it is time for bed.

From the other direction.

My host parents are both awesome. This is the first time they have hosted a students so I htink they feel like they don't quite know what to do, but they are doing a great job. My host father is a public tax accountant (or something along those lines), but he still spends a good amount of time at home with the family. My host mom is a nurse. She works at a small hospital so she gets Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays off and gets the afternoon off two other days a week.

I absolutely love my little host brother. I think we are going to be good buddies. He was a bit shy while we were talking at the Umezaki's house but as soon as we got into the car he warmed right up. He talks with me all the time and offers explanations for things I don't understand. For example, I didn't quite understand what my host mom was saying to me so he steps in front of her and explained it all in really simple Japanese. He also explained stuff around the house to me. In the shower room, "this handle is for the temperature. When you turn it toward this little red mark it makes the water hot..." We also play games on my iPod together. It was really cute when he told me that this is the first time he has ever had a big sister.

Manato and Abbey.

That Sunday, after stopping at the house for a little bit, we all went to a barbecue for lunch. It was my host father's high school friend and their families I think. It seems like they are pretty good friends and see each other a lot. The kids all knew each other really well, too. It was fun and the food was awesome. We had good bacon, beef, corn-on-the cob, onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes cooked in tinfoil (the onions were so good!) over the coals, soup, watermelon.... It was like a 4th of July picnic without the fireworks! Then they brought out the squid (not bad) and turban shells (not my favorite) and I was reminded that this is a Japanese barbecue.

My host dad in the blue shirt, me in the back, and other people.

The little girl that is Manato's age. I braided her hair so we would match. She was so happy. :)

From there we returned home and then left a few hours later for the rotary family dinner party. I got to see all three fo my host families together! It was really nice. I was asked to five a little speech with about 30 seconds notice so I thanked my host families and rotarians.

My three host families together (well, parts of each, anyway). Papa Umezaki, Mama Umezaki, Mie Nakano, Masato Nakano, Toru Nakano, Wataru Nakano, Me, Manato Tateno, and Papa Tateno.
Manato losing rock, paper, scissors to the kid he tied with in BINGO.

On Monday I had no school because of my taiikusai on Saturday. The rest of the family, however, had work or school so I left in the morning when my host dad did. I went to see Angels and Demons with my friend Austin. I was the first one to get home, but Manato came home about half and hour later. We ate snacks that my host mom left out for us and then watched the Tokyo Giants baseball game together. After a while my host mom came home and we had dinner. I got to Skype with AnnaMarie a bit in Japanese before bed, too. I think Manato had fun with that. He thought it was quite amusing that Kaite calls me "Abbey-dabby" and I wouldn't be too surprised if he started calling me that.

I am really glad that I am fitting into my new family and their routine okay. I am excited to get to know them better. They really are so fun! The other day I almost started crying because I only get to live with them for 2 months then I have to go back home. They are so generous. They bought me two tickets for Tokyo Disneyland or Sea, tickets to a water park for me and some friends, AND they are taking me on a trip to Hokkaido!! I am so excited! :D

Taiikusai (Sport's Festival)!!

I completely underestimated the taiikusai. It is way more important to the girls than I though it was and it was way more fun than I had anticipated.

Maybe the reason that I wasn't really looking forward to it during the week leading up to it was how busy I was. My taiikusai was Saturday (the 23rd) and on Sunday morning I was changing host families. Both of these events required a lot of preparation. As you can imagine, things got pretty crazy for a while. Every day for about two weeks I had to get up early to practice our mukade (literally means centipede) race and relay before school started. On top of that I had some very late nights trying to get all my laundry done, things packed, and information deleted off my family's computer. That led to lots of blog updates and attempting to update pictures to Michael's website because I had to delete them all. Phew!! I also had to have all my preparations done on Friday because I was busy with my taiikusai all day on Saturday.

I had a blast with the taiikusai! I didn't totally fail at the radio exercises (see older post) like I thought I would. I dominated the 400m dash. My team, that practiced so hard for it, won the mukade. We won the tug-of-war. Our relay got 5th of 6, which is quite an emotional story. We won the kaso (skit-like performance) in which Perry was a hit! AND to top it all off, my class won overall!

Waiting for their race at the gate that leads onto the grounds.

The track is just over 100m, so my 400m was three and a half laps. I ran it in about 1 minute and 23 seconds (haha! My coach would KILL me if I ran that time in a track meet) and the other girls were about a half a lap back. It was fun. I could hear everyone cheering for me. It's like I am famous here. A lot of the parents were even yelling my name...

Getting ready to line up for the race.

My next event was the mukade. All of our hard work paid off as the last two legs our our team (it's a relay) managed to overtake the other team. There were lots of screams, jumping up and down, and then tears. Then I started laughing... partly because I was happy but more because it was fun to see my friends so happy about it.

Mukade. Yeah, it was intense.

Celebrating after winning the Mukade.

The tug-of-war was intense. There must have been at least 50 girls on each side. I the second one from the front on our side. We lost our first one, but won the rest. The team that beat us got disqualified for something... so we ended up taking first over all.

Mano-san and I showing off our red ribbons during our lunch break. (red mean 1st place in Japan)

The final relay was the most emotional race I have ever been in. Our original relay team had two girls from the basketball club on it, and those two are fast. However, the basketball team qualified for a game that day so we ran with a different team. The relay was going to be tough competition to start with and now that two of our fastest girls were gone, there wasn't really much hope. There had been hope that the basketball girls would get back before the relay started, but as it got closer to race time they didn't show up. The rest of the relay team was crying before the race even started. The overall points were close, but they didn't have them up anymore so there was a bit of pressure on the team. We ran hard and tried our best. I actually think that that is the fastest I have ever run a 100m. It felt fast at least. At the end, it wasn't enough. We got 5th place. And then the girls really cried. I almost cried! We thought we had let our entire class down. Everyone was thrilled when they announced the final point totals and we had won first place. And, you guessed it, there were more tears of happiness.

Our Kaso also got first place. We had awesome costumes and the whole idea of it was really good, I thought. The other classes' were good too though. When I made my exit as Commodore Perry the crowd started clapping and I hear several "oh, Perry!"s. I couldn't help but smile. It was really fun, actually.

Me as Perry, Risako (left) and Shibu-chan (right) as my henchmen.

After the taiikusai I ran home, took a quick shower, and left for Yokohama station for our after party. We went to Shakey's Pizza, an "American" pizza and pasta buffet place. It was so good and I ate a ton! It was really really fun to see all the girls outside of school and uniform. Everyone took tons of pictures.

Shakey's pizza. And this wasn't even half of the girls.

I got home at 10:30 (the only time I was past curfew at this house... On the lastnight) but my host mom didn't care at all. I called her from the station to tell her ahead of time. Then I stayed up for a few more hours writing letters for my host family and getting stuff ready for the morning.

My only taiikusai experience I will ever have was a really good one.