3 Months!

As of this past Thursday, I have officially been in Japan for three months! That's CRAZY! Sometimes it feels like I have been here forever and I wish it would go faster, but now it doesn't feel like it has been three months at all. I guess to me three months means a little bit more than it would to anyone else.

As an exchange student, all the books and past exchange students promise that the first three months are the worst and everything gets better after you get through those. That's good news! My first three months weren't too bad at all. I made tons of friends, experienced a lot of new things, and learned more that I ever thought possible to learn in such a short amount of time. However, I'll be honest with you. There were a lot of nights (and I'm sure there will still more) where I would just feel so overwhelmed from all the new things and stress that I would cry myself to sleep. And there were plenty of times when I would think about how much easier life would be if I were still in Ironwood. But then I just have to think about how lucky I am to have this experience and I know I wouldn't trade it for anything.

In the last three months I have come to appreciate my life in Ironwood a lot more. I really, really miss waking up at 6:30 for school. And just driving for 3 minutes to get there. I miss understanding my teachers in school and feeling smart for it. I miss central heating. I miss Ironwood. I never ever thought I would be able to say that three months ago. Ironwood is a nice place. It's small and boring, but even Yokohama sometimes gets boring. Mostly because everything it is so stinking expensive to do anything here. I miss seeing my friends that I have grown up with, but I am happy to have made so many new friends here. But most of all, I miss my family. I love you lots!

But, the good things that have happened far outweigh the hard parts. So, good things that have happened: I have become much more independent. I have met lots of really good people here and made tons of friends both in school and outside of it. I have learned a lot about Japanese culture. I got really good at using chopsticks. I learned how to use trains. I have learned more budgeting skills. AND, the best one of all.... I have learned lots of Japanese!

Before I left, my goal was to be "conversational" in Japanese by three months. Who even knows what conversational means? It's a pretty vague word. Well, I am proud to say that I consider myself conversational. I have been working really hard on only speaking Japanese, especially at school. My school friends have been awesome at helping me, too. Some of them can speak pretty good English, so they use that skill to help me learn Japanese. I can now have conversations with all the girls in my class. Even the ones who don't speak English! Well, most of them anyway. For some reason, I just cannot understand some of the girls' Japanese. But, if I have someone who is willing to slow down their talking a little and bear with me as I try to think of words, we can talk! With a little bit of help from our dictionaries, but still. I feel so good about myself after I get done talking with someone in just Japanese.

Actually, I felt pretty good about my Japanese all week. After school I would come home and talk with my host mom, too. But then I went to Iliana's house on Friday after school. I listened to her talk with her host mom, and my little bubble of confidence popped. I really think I need to hang out with exchange students less often. Iliana is my best friend here, but whenever I hang out with other exchange students I feel less smart. I never ever try Japanese with them, and I compare my abilities to theirs. I know that's not good to do, but I just can't help it! Maybe my Japanese isn't as good as theirs, but that doesn't matter. I am doing the best I can, and that is going to be enough.

So, three months! Yay! It's crazy to think that I only have 8 months left. It's going to go by really fast.

This is pretty off topic, but I'm sure you were all dying to know how my party I mentioned on the last post went. It was really good! I had 8 of my friends over and we did karoke at my apartment's karoke room. Everyone brought snacks to share so we had a ridiculous amount of junk food. And they made me take all the extras after. I gave it to my host mom. I ate way too much junk food, but it was a lot of fun. The only thing was that it was really hard to find English songs that they know well enough to sing with me. I didn't want to sing them alone, because that's no fun. But it was fun to listen to them sing their songs in Japanese!

I am pretty sure we are either singing "Hey Jude" or "The Yellow Submarine"

Sushi, Ice Skating, and other news

Sushi!

Last Saturday was my monthly Rotary meeting with all the other exchange students. We all gave our speeches and got to visit for a while. My speech went well. It was really long though and I still feel stupid reading it. I can't even read japanese words written out in with english letters! I read it like a third grader. haha. But next month, I am going to do it in Hiragana! I am going to practice on my speed first. Yay for flashcards!

Anyway, after that meeting all the students went bowling, but my club took me to sushi. Bowling would have been fun, but the Sushi was so good! They took me to a really traditional sushi bar. And really expensive one too. I am sure I ate at least 150 USD worth of food. And I ate a lot of it! The chef just keeps putting it on your plate, one or two at a time, and the rotarians kept ordering more and more for me. The best ones were the california rolls, the tamago (sweet egg), and the ebi (Shrimp). The tuna was pretty good, too. The only one I didn't really like was the sea urchin. It was just a little too slimy for me. They all had a good time seeing what I was willing to try. I tried anything they offered! Some of the other ones I had (that I remember what they were) were mackerel, squid, and two different kinds of tuna. The less expensive tuna one, from the side of the fish, and the more expensive tuna one, from the belly of the fish. That is pretty much the most expensive fish you can buy. It was pretty good though. In addition to all that sushi, I had some sort of baked sea shell. Well it was the muscle, baked in its shell. It was really good! And my host dad said it costs about 50 USD per shell. Yikes! Pictures of all this will be coming eventually.

Ice Skating

Monday was a holiday, so Sunday night I had a sleepover with Iliana! It was really fun. We made tacos for my host family for dinner, and then we had fun making our own breakfast in the morning. Monday, we met up with a few of the other exchange students and went ice skating! It was so fun! It was the first time for a few of the students, so that's always fun to watch. But there were tons of people! Like everywhere we go here. After that we went to TGI Friday for dinner. I probably would have just picked McDonald's because I have coupons, but they wanted Fridays. It was good, but too expensive. I have to stop eating out with them when they choose the restaurant. Come to think of it, I should just stop eating out. I am gaining weight and I don't like it!

In other news, my host dad got a new job! That's really good for him and the family, but that is also really good for me. I like my host dad just fine, but he always speaks to me in English, and that's not good. But now, he is going to be gone a lot for his job, so I won't talk to him as much, which means I won't use English as much, which means I'll use Japanese more and hopefully start learning faster! Also, his new job has him flying overseas every once in a while, so he will be gone for those trips too. I guess that is sad for my host mom and my little brothers though. I will have to try to be a better helper for my host mom.

I guess that's about it for now. This weekend is my school festival, so that should be fun. After it is over, I am planning on having a party in one of the party rooms you can rent out at my apartment complex. It's really cheap, too! I am planning on paying for the room myself, and then having everyone who comes bring something to share. Hopefully it works out okay.

Nagasaki

On October 16th I left for my school trip to Nagasaki. It was so much fun! Nagasaki was beautiful and I had a really good time with all the girls in my class. I got to know a few more of them in the evenings when we had free time at the hotels. So, my trip was 5 days, and we had a really busy schedule. It was really good because I got to see so much of the city, but I was so tired! We did a lot of walking. And Nagasaki has hills. Lots of them. Anyway, this is what my schedule looked like:

Thursday, Oct. 16:
7:00- meet at Hanadea Airport
8:30- Boarding for the 90 min flight to Fukuoka
10:15- Arrive in Fukuoka Airport
11:00- Bus
11:30- Dazaifu Temangu (Temple)
1:45- Bus
2:30- Yoshinogari Site
4:00- Bus
5:30- Hotel
6:30- Dinner
Free Time
11:00- Curfew

Friday, Oct. 17:
6:30- Wake up
7:00- Breakfast
9:10- Bus
9:20- Huis Ten Bosch
1:30- Bus
2:30- Endo Shukasu Museum
3:00- Bus
3:20- De Rotz Memorial Hall
5:00- Bus
6:00- Hotel
7:00- Dinner
Free Time
11:00- Curfew

Saturday, Oct. 18:
6:30- Wake up
7:00- Breakfast
8:30- Walk to Streetcar Station
8:40- Streetcar to 26 Martyrs of Japan site
8:50- 26 Martyrs of Japan
9:50- Free Time to explore Nagasaki in our small groups! No Teachers! Our group went to the Kofukuji Temple; Ryoma's Boots, museum, and statue (Ryoma Sakamoto was a famous Samurai); Megane Bashi, the famous ice cream stand that sells rose-shaped ice cream cones; Lunch; Dejima; Chinatown; and the oldest Christian church in Japan.
5:00- Hotel
6:00- Dinner
8:00- Speech from Atomic Bomb Survivor
11:00- Curfew

Sunday, Oct. 19:
6:30- Wake up
7:00- Breakfast
8:15- Bus
8:40- Nyokodo
9:50- Peace Park
11:10- Bus
11:30- Lunch at a Chinese restaurant
12:50- Glover Gardens
2:15- Bus
4:15- Walk to Hotel through a hot spring park. It looked a lot like Yellowstone.
5:00- Hotel
7:00- Dinner
Free Time
11:30- Curfew

Monday, Oct. 20:
6:30- Wake up
7:00- Breakfast
8:10- Bus
8:45- Mt. Unzen Disaster Memorial Hall
9:50- Bus
10:00- Ferry Boat ride
10:15- Port
10:50- Bus
12:30- Lunch (obento box)
1:50- Bus
2:50- Fukuoka Airport
3:45- Board flight for Hanadea Airport
5:20- Arrival in Hanadea Airport and go home.

Somewhere in there we had mass two times, but the schedule is in Japanese and I can't read it. Besides where it says bus. So, I filled in the rest using my pictures and many pamphlets that I acquired during the trip. Now, rather than talking about every single thing, which would take forever, I'm just going to write about some of the best parts. You can get a pretty good idea of what everything else is by looking at my pictures and the captions, which I spent a really long time writing. For every single one of the 304 pictures. If you need the link to those, just send me an email and I'll send it to you.

Probably my favorite place was Huis Ten Bosch. It is a huge amusement park that is like the Netherlands. People even live there! It is twice the size of Disneyland. It was really fun. But it wasn't an amusement park like with roller coasters and stuff. It looks like I went to Europe!


The Yoshinogari Site was really interesting. It is thought to be the capitol of Japan about 6000 years ago! That was right when they started growing rice. It was fun to wander around and go in the different building and see what Japan looked like 6000 years ago. And we got to wear those sweet hats!


I am really glad I got to go to Peace Park. The museum was really sad. There were some pretty graphic pictures and stories. It really was a horrible thing that happened and I hope it never happens again. I learned a lot about it that we didn't go over in our U.S. History class last year in school.


Aso san, the active volcano, was pretty cool, too.


The best day was Saturday because we got to go off on our own. It was really fun to go with no teacher and with only 7 other people rather than 77. We had tons of fun, but we walked so much! I don't have a clue how far. A few miles at least.

Megane Bashi (Spectacles Bridge- because when it reflects in the water it looks like a pair of spectacles)


Ryoma and myself


My friends and I on the bus from the airport back in Yokohama.

Everything I have done in the last 2 weeks...

I have been here for almost 7 weeks now and the time has gone so fast. I was talking to Iliana about that tonight. It is so hard to explain. Every day feels so long. By the time I go to bed, I can barely remember what I did that morning. Even thinking back to things I've done like 2 weeks ago feels like months ago, but at the same time, I can't believe how fast the time is going. It's almost sad to think about it. Before we know it it will be Christmas and then New Year's and then everthing is going to go so fast and we'll be going home. I don't want it to go so fast. I can barely believe that I am even really here. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm in Japan. I am so used to hearing Japanese now (and not understanding it) that I don't even notice it.

Okay, well Dad sent me an email asking me to give you guys some more specific details about my school and stuff so here it goes.

I am in Class 2A as school. The 2 is for the year in highschool, and the A is for my class. There are 3 years of highschool in Japan so it is really the equivilant of being a junior in the states. There are two classes in every level in my school. Class A and Class B. In my class there are 40 girls. So there are about 80 in my grade. All 40 of us are together for most of the classes in our homeroom, but sometimes we split up and go to other classrooms. My Physics class, for instance, has 5 people. Including me.

So they have just started their 2nd semester of school and the school year ends in March. At that time I don't really know what I will do. I really want to stay with my class that I am in now and all my friends. However, that would put me in their 3rd year classes, which are all about doing well on their big test. The college entrance exam that they have one shot at. Well, techinically two, but that's only if they fail it completely I think. This test bascially defines the rest of their lives. If they do well, they go to a good university and get a good job, blah blah blah. If they don't do well, they don't get into a good university and they never ever will. I think the school board is thinking about keeping me at a level 2 because the girls in level 3 have to study so much more. I don't want to have to make all new friends for the last 3 months of exchange. Plus, I want to be on this classes team for sports day next spring! :D

My school has 6 periods and a lunch hour. Which is a whole 50 mintues! They couldn't believe we only have 22 minutes to eat lunch in America. I get to school at about 8:00 and homeroom is from 8:15 to 8:30. Then 1st period starts at 8:30. Each period is 50 minutes, then we have a 10 minute break before the next one. It is way easier than the class periods at school in the states! I ususally get hungry after 2nd period, but then I have to wait two more hours before lunch. Which is from 12:20 to 1:10, when our 5th period starts. At 3:15 we have homeroom again. Then we clean. I sweep the homeroom with about 5 other people so it's not bad at all. At about 3:30 we are done with that and we get to go home. Well, I get to go to volleyball. Which starts at 4:00.

Volleyball practices are pretty easy here. We just do drills. And not really hard ones, either. Practices are way more intense in America. But I think that that is just my school here. My school is very academically stressed and has a pretty weak sports program. Practice ends at about 5:15 and then there is this ridiculous rush to the locker room where everyone changes faster than I have ever seen girls change in my life! Then we all go home. I asked my friend about the whole rush at the end of practice and I guess all the student have to be out of the building by 5:30 or else they stop club activites for a week. And there is a school guard, so it's not like my school in the states where you can just leave whenever you feel like it. The school guard is very nice though. He always seems really happy to be there doing his job.

My school is a Catholic school so we have prayers 3 times a day, but we have only had mass once since I have come. And that is just fine with me.

So, that's about if for my school life. I've made lots friends and school has been getting better. I can kinda follow along in English class. Even some of the Japanese! Which is actually really exciting, because I have something to pay attention to. But the teacher for that class talks too fast. I can barley understand his english. So I only sometimes understand what is going on. School is still really exhausting and boring for the most part, but it is okay. It will be lots better when I can actually try to listen to the lesson and understand it.

Outside of school I have been so busy! Since I have last written, this has been my schedule of non-school related events:

Thursday Oct. 2: Iliana's Birtday Party! I left school (no volleyball on Thursday's), went home and changed really fast, and then turned around and went back to Yokohama station to get to El Torrito restaurant by 6:00. The dinner was really good and so much fun!

Friday, Oct. 3: I left school early to go to a Rotary lunch, where I had to give a speech that no body bothered to tell me about ahead of time, so my host dad wrote me one really fast, which I just read. I got my allowance there, though. Then I met Iliana and we hung out for the rest of the day. Okay, so we went to my house and wrote our speeches for Saturday, but we had fun doing it.

Saturday, Oct. 4: In the morning I went to Toru's (5 year old brother) sport day, which is like the biggest day of the year for grade schoolers. It was cute, and we had a really good picnic lunch. Then I went to my Rotary Orientation Meeting. It is the monthly meeting for exchange students. We all had to give our speeches and then the rotarians took us to Landmark Tower. Landmark Tower is the tallest building in Japan. I took the world's second fastest elevator to the very top, where you can look out and see the whole city! Well, okay. You can't see the whole thing. It's too big. But you could see a lot! Then all of the students went to Karoke! It was really fun.

Sunday, Oct. 5: A rotarian bought my family and I tickets to the premire of a movie about a Japanese lady who learns the secrets of cooking great Chinese food. Or something like that. I only followed the basic plot. It was in Japanese. The we went to a really fancy Chinese dinner, where they served some of the same things from the movie. It was a 9 course meal. I ate so much food! I did get to try quite a few new things. Including jellyfish and sharkfin. They were actually pretty good. It was a very fancy dinner. I wanted to take pictures, but I didn't because it was so formal. I wish I had.

Wednesday, Oct. 8: This day was not a good day in school. Or volleyball. BUT, I got home and saw a package sitting in my room! I decided to eat dinner before I opened it. After dinner I went into my room to open it alone. I opened the box and it was filled to the top with random candies. Mostly candy corn and pop rocks. I was so happy! Then, I found deoderant! That's actually exciting when you can't find it in any stores here. THEN, I found the little box. I opened it, screamed, then shut it really fast! Then I opened it again. haha. Inside was an iPod Touch! I love you Daddy! I was so happy I wanted to cry! And THEN, I turned the iPod on and it was already filled with my music from home, pictures, movie, and applications! Including a really awesome Japanese dictionary program. The timing for this package could not have been better. Thanks Dad!

Friday, Oct. 10: I got to skip volleyball to go to a dinner with some rotarians. I went straight home after school and changed out of my school uniform, and then left right away. I met my host dad at Yokohama Station and from there we went to the restaurant the dinner was at. I don't know what it was called, but it was really good Japanese food. There was my rotary club's president, secretary, treasurer and the next president there with my host dad and me. For dinner we had a big bowl of broth in the middle of the table on a hotplate. We cooked our own vegetables and meat and then Udon noodles in it. It was really really good. The meat, well beef, was cut really thin and rolled up. You put it in the boiling broth and unroll it. It cooks in like 20 seconds. Then you put it into one of the sauces. There was a vinegar sauce and a sesamie sauce. The beef was Kobe beef. And it was really really good. Then the president of my rotary club got me a cake. It was really good. He also bought a whole cake of it for me to take home to share with my host family. That was very nice of him.

Saturday, Oct. 11: Today I went to Tokyo! There was a really big group of exchange students and some of Iliana's school friends, who were nice enough to be our guides for the day. We went to Asakusa, where there is a really big shrine. Maybe it was a temple. Anyway, that turned out to be a really good place to get traditional japanese thing. Also known as Christmas presents. I'm definitely going to have to go back there in early December... Then we went to Tokyo Tower! Which was kind of cool. It was a little cloudy so I decided to save my 850 yen and not go to the top. I'll go up there another day when I'll actually be able to see something. Tokyo is really close. It only takes me about an hour to get there. And I live at the southern part of my city. (Tokyo is north of me) It was a really fun day.

Sunday, Oct. 12: I went to a big festival that was near and "worked" at my rotary club's booth. They were selling random donated food items to raise money to build wells in Sri Lanka. I helped sell stuff for about an hour, but people can tell I don't speak Japanese, so I only actually sold one box of Mr. Donuts donuts. Which were very popluar. One of the rotarians in my club owns all the of the Mr. Donuts shops in this and one other prefecture! And all the McDonald's and the Baskin Robins and the Ootoya (casual japanese restaurant chain) in this area, but that's beside the point. For the other 3 hours I was there, I just talked with all the rotarians. it's good to make friends with them. We did end up raising enough money to make 6 to 7 wells, so that's good! Then we went to a dinner party. Then home.

Monday, Oct. 13: No school! It's sport's day. Which, apparently, is a national holiday worthy of missing school for here. I love Japan. We get days off of school to celebrate the elderly people and sports! I was invited to lunch at Ootoya by the rotarian (Sammy) who own them. My family and I went there together. It was pretty good food. Then I went to Yokohama to meet up with some other exchange students. Sammy gave me a ride there in his brand new mercedes benz. It was pretty sweet. haha. Once I met up with my friends, after getting slightly lost in Yokohama Station, which is gigantic, we went to Karoke.

Tuesday, Oct. 14: Yay! This is today! I just had school and volleyball. It went all right. I was pretty tired though. Tomorrow I won't have volleyball because Thursday I leave for my school trip! The 2nd year high school class takes a trip every year. This year we are going to Nagasaki! I leave Thursday morning... really... really early. I have to be at the airport at 6:45. The airport will take like an hour to get to. Maybe more. But it's okay. We fly to Nagasaki (about 2 hours, I think) and then we are staying there until next Monday. We fly back in at like 5:30 Monday night. I am really excited for it. Because my school is Catholic, we are going to a lot of old christian sites. And we are also going to go to the a-bomb memorial. I'm not sure exactly what is going on with it. Okay, I have no clue what is going on. I just know I have to go to the airport with the stuff they told me to pack. The itinerary is in Japanese. I'll write about it after I get back. I will also post all my pictures at that time... here or on Michael's website.

I hope you had fun reading all that. I'm going to sleep now. :D

Sea Paradise

Saki, Risako, Nozomi, Haruna, Abbey, Rina, and Nana


Today, I went to Sea Paradise with some of my friends from school. It is an amusement park/aquarium. It was a lot of fun. We spent the morning going on the various rides like the one big roller coaster and the big droppy tower thing. It was 107 meters high (351 ft.) and it was really fun! We also went on the spinny ride and the big boat that swung back and forth and some octopus ride that is mostly for little kids. It was still fun. One thing about the rides here is that they are made for Japanese size people. I barley fit! On the roller coaster, my knees were up against the seat in front of me and the harness thing was just a little too small. It worked just fine, but I was a little too tall for it to come down really comfortably. I couldn't sit up totally straight in it.





We went to the food court for lunch. I got Udon. It was really good. I wish food courts in America had that good of food. Then we went to the aquarium and saw all the different animals. I think my classmates set a record of how many times they can say the word "Kawaii" in one day. For those of you who don't know, kawaii means cute. Usually for the small fuzzy animal type of cute, but they call me kawaii when I try to speak Japanese and when they saw me this morning. (I was wearing something other than my school uniform for the first time in front of them. They also commented on how long my legs are. I guess they do look longer in jeans than in the skirt.) I'll take it as a compliment. The aquarium is really big and really nice. We even got to go to a show! We saw the dolphins and seals and walrus do tricks and stuff. It was really cool.

Another thing we did was pirikura. They are Japanese photobooths where you take the
pictures and then you get to decorate them on the computers. It prints out little stickers of the pictures and you can get them sent to your phone, too. It was really fun.





Today was a really fun day. I also have tomorrow off of school, so that's nice! I had school on Saturday for an open campus thing. We only had 2 hours of school, but it was so parents could come in and see how the classes are run here. It's a private school so they have to compete a little to get students. It was really short and we get the whole day off tomorrow, so I guess that's a pretty good deal. Okay, this was a lot of blogging tonight and I am all done! I'll be adding my pictures to these entries in the next couple of days.

Karoke!

This past Tuesday (September 23) I didn't have school! It's the fall equinox, which just happens to be a national holiday here. It was really nice to have an extra day off. So... I went to Karoke! My apartment complex has a karoke room that you can rent out for only 500 yen (about 5 USD) for 3 hours. That's so cheap! My host dad and little host brothers and Iliana and I all went together. Karoke is a little different here than in the states. You don't do it with a huge group of strangers. Just with a small group of your friends or family. The rooms here can fit about 8 people. And it really isn't as embarrassing as you would think.

My little host brothers got to sing all their pokemon songs and the "ponya" song. I guess Ponya is an anime movie that came out recently here and it's unbelievably popular. Everyone from my host brothers to my friends at school sing the Ponya song. Iliana and I got to choose from the foreign songs. There were a lot of them, actually. My first ever karoke song was "Umbrella" and I sang it with Iliana. haha. My host dad had never heard of it (see Daddy, your not the only one!) but now my little host brothers go around the house singing, "ella, ella, ella, ay, ay...". I also sang some oldies like Dancing Queen with my host dad. It was a lot of fun. I'm sure I'll be doing that again with other rotary kids and friends from school.

School this week went okay. I started Volleyball. Most of the other girls are a lot better than me, but that's okay. I'll get better with a little more practice. After school from 4 to 6 is practice. After volleyball, I go home. I get home at about 7:30 and then eat dinner alone. I wish I could eat dinner with my host family, but I think it is important to get involved with a club here. Then I hang out with my host family for a little bit and go to bed. I am so exhausted on nights with volleyball. I will just have to get used to it.

Volleyball is really the only new thing going on with school. I am back to my regular schedule now. Everything seems to be going pretty well. I've made a lot of friends and am starting, just a little tiny bit, to get a hold on the language. My English-speaking friends at school decided to stop speaking English to me. It's actually really good. They all slow down their Japanese and then explain the words that I don't know. Which is about half of them. And the other half is mostly made up of words like wa and desu. (Wa is a subject marker used in pretty much every sentence and desu is like the verb for "is, am, are" and is also used in almost every sentence.) But this Wednesday was the first day that I actually felt optimistic about Japanese. Maybe I really can learn it!

Yacht Party!

I have once again failed to update my blog in more than a week, so now I have a few different posts to put up tonight and tomorrow. I just get so busy during the week with school and now volleyball. Anyway, more about that later. This post is about my yacht party which was last Saturday. September 20th, which happened to be the my one month mark. Yay for surviving my first month of exchange!

Saturday morning, I met up with some of the kids from Rotary. There was me, Iliana (Mexico), Felipe (Equador), Shintarou (Japanese- went to Mexico last year), and Vincent (Ohio, USA), who had us all over. We went to one of his host parent's apartments first where we used the hot tub in the basement and then the pool on the roof. It was a little cold. I really didn't want to get in, but Shintarou didn't really give me any choice in the matter... thanks a lot.

Felipe, Iliana, Shintarou, Vincent, and me on the roof.



After we were done there, we went and bought our lunches at a convenience store and then brought them to the yacht at the Zushi Marina. We watched the get it all ready and then we took off! It was really fun. I even got to drive it! The boat wasn't too big, but it was really nice. The place we went sailing is on the southern side of the little peninsula I am on. The ocean that I usually see is Tokyo Bay, but this was actually the Pacific Ocean. We stopped the boat after a while and all of us jumped into the ocean off the end. It was really fun.





Driving the yacht!


Me and Iliana


Vincent, Me, Iliana, and Shintarou



We returned to the dock and then went to Vincent's host parent's other apartment. Yes, they have two apartments. And a yacht. And a house. All within a couple hours of the rest. At the apartment we showered and then we all went to Kamikura Station. We had dinner at a nice and cheap Italian restaurant. We had Italian because it won over McDonald's when we flipped a coin. Then, we went and got ice cream and went home. It was a really fun day.

Me, Shintarou, Iliana, and Felipe after getting ice cream.