Weather

Sunday 31th May 1:58pm (3:58pm NZ)

Yesterday was brilliant! The plan was to go to Kappabashi, Asakusa, Harajuku, a 100 yen shop and Ghibli Museum but it was too much in one day so we only managed to see Kappabashi, Asakusa and a bit of Harajuku.

Kappabashi was where all the plastic foods were at. There were just countless stores which specialised in making plastic foods. Twas unbelievable! I've uploaded pictures so you can see for yourself... how real they looked! I couldn't tell the difference from real food and fake food there! Everyone except for me (typical) was hungry after seeing all the delicious plastic foods so we went to a restaurant called Jonathan's where I had rice with bamboo shoots, miso soup and the most delicious but gigantic Strawberry Sundae. Ms Sakurai paid for it all which was so extremely nice of her! We didn't expect that at all! After lunch she also bought us red bean cakes, ice cream at Asakusa and the biggest crepes I've ever seen at Harajuku! Mine was filled with cream, chocolate and strawberries.

We were so full we decided to walk to Asakusa. It was a HUUUUGE market. So many things there and not too expensive either. I bought some nice gifts there and after we took the train from Asakusa to Harajuku. Unfortunately it was already 3pm and we were going home at 6pm so we only had 3 hours in Harajuku.

We managed to go to the end of the biggest shopping district in Harajuku but it wasn't enough time to look through all the shops decently. I've asked my host family to take me back there after exams are finished. Not only is it unbelievably cheap there but the clothes are all so funky! It's prolly the best place to shop, has absolutely every type of clothing and accessories you can think of. Most of the clothes there are 500-2000 yen ($8.20 NZ - $32.70 NZ) . In Shibuya you'd spend about 10,000 yen ($163.50 NZ) and that'd get you about 2 or 3 clothing items at the most. In Harajuku, 10,000 yen could yet you mountains of stuff! I'm dying to go back! And you can see all sorts of people in crazy clothing there!

The weather here's getting pretty... wet... I asked my host family about climate here and this is apparently what it's like.

In Winter, Tokyo isn't really that cold (though their Summer is so hot, to these people, they think its freezing). The normal temperature in Tokyo Winter is 10°C. Warm right? I KNOW! You'd wish NZ was that warm in Winter sometimes. Ms Sakurai also said that in some places in Winter, it still stays warm. Tokyo hardly gets any snow during Winter but out of the city and in some other cities, they get plenty of snow. She didn't give me a figure but if the Japanese think it's warm, NZders must think it's hot or at the least, muggy. Hokkaido (up north) however, is usually quite cold all year around.

Spring or Autumn would be the best times to Visit Japan I think since it's just right.

It's basically Summer now since tomorrow is June. Unbelievably hot. You don't have to move, just stand and you'll sweat like a pig here (30°C). However June is the rainy season here. It apparently rains just about everyday. Yesterday it rained for a little but today it's bucketing down. Or, not even bucketing down. It's been raining so hard for the last 2 hours that it looks like someone is tipping a huge tub of water onto us and either the tub is VERY deep or there's just endless water coming from it. Reminds me of the other day when Zoe and I tried using only 1 umbrella to get to handbell. We thought it'd be okay, turns out, we still ended up soaked after. Luckily, there's usually barely any wind here when it rains. 'cept when there are typoons but Zoe and I aren't here for the Typoon season (THANK GOODNESS).

What I find surprising though is how the buildings support all this rain. I can't comprehend the logic behind their building structure. You'd think for a country that has a rainy season, they'd build their rooftops slanted and add more gutters to the streets to avoid rooftops caving in and flooding. Instead, most building rooftops are flat, buildings are square or rectangular and there's a gutter every few hundred metres down the road. When there is a gutter to be seen, there are about 3 in one place but wouldn't it be better to have less gutters in one place but seen more often? The sides of the street look like a river when it's raining because of that.

Well I'm off to tidy my luggage and then get to homework. Take a look at the pictures and I'll post again soon I hope.

Currently Thursday 28th of May, 5:32pm (7:32pm NZ)

(I'll give you some more factual details in this blog since ma said my other blog posts are boring TT__TT Cheers ma)

Exam Season next week! While everyone else are in exams Zoe and I get to go to Kabuki and the Ghibli Museum.

Kabuki is the opposite of Takarazuka. Theatre performances/musicals. However in Takarazuka, all the cast are female and in Kabuki, the entire cast are male. It's like a girls only or boys only school reciting a play except more professional of course. Ms Sakurai said there will be Chinese and English translations being played in earphones at Kabuki so Zoe and I will be able to understand.

Ms Sakurai is also going to take us to the Ghibli Museum and maybe Asakusa and Tokyo Tower. Ghibli Museum is a museum dedicated to the Japanese Animation production company, Studio Ghibli. They've produced some very famous movies such as Spirited Away, Laputa, Grave of the Fireflies, Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Tales from Earthsea. Despite being animations, the storylines in these movies are usually unique and fantastic, so we're looking forward to that. Asakusa is apparently a superb place but I'm not sure exactly what's there so I'll give details about that later. Tokyo Tower reminds me of a red and white version of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, I'm curious as to how high it is.

It seems the Japanese exchange rate is quite direct depending on where you go. At the moment the Japanese Yen's gone up (Woop woop! It should go up more, cause then I'd get more money if I change my NZ currency =] ) It's at about 60.04 at the moment so for every $100 NZ Dollar I'd get 6003.83 Japanese Yen. Big numbers, I know. It sounds like a lot but basically, it gets you what $100 NZ Dollars would get you, perhaps a bit more depending on what you buy. For clothes, I'd say it's about the same. You can get ridiculously cheap clothing, say for 500-1500 yen but they're usually the clothes that aren't very good or are nothing special. There are shops with good clothing only for 1500-2500 yen though but it's quite rare and when you compare the clothes to the more expensive shops, they really are, nothing special.

Here it have 100 Yen shops which would be the equivalent to our $2 shops in NZ 'cept you can get really good stuff from these 100 yen shops (Unlike the $2 shop). They sell nearly everything in those shops and a lot of it is actually decent quality and useful, not cheap rubbish. If you want an exact figure, 100 yen is around $1.70 NZ dollar so I it's cheaper than the $2 shops if you think about quality as well.

When you look at most things here, the cost here seems cheaper than NZ but if you shop at a popular place, things aren't really all that cheap. You can get accessories for say 300-500 yen which is very cheap or you can get basically the same thing for 1000-2000 yen, and you could get some nice clothes for about that price or about 1000 or 2000 more yen. I've noticed in shops when I buy something, there are a lot of people buying pants or a top for 10,000 yen or more ($165.20 NZ Dollars). I think it's because realistically, even though we'd say that's far too overpriced for just some pants or just a top, it's not really too bad in Japan considering the tax rate is only 5.5%. Most clothing items in shops are 4000 or above so it's not hard to spend over 10,000 yen a day here.

Food here is really quite cheap, especially in supermarkets and convenience stores. You can get a lot of delicious food items for only 100-700 yen. ($1.70-$11.60 NZ Dollar). Restaurants are around the same price but if you go to restaurants in department stores or foreign restaurants, they're quite expensive. Around 1000-2000 yen for one dish ($16.51 - $33 NZ Dollars). Department stores are abnormally expensive in general (Like Ballentynes in NZ, good example).

For a visitor, you need to be pretty careful in Japan because when you look at something you think, "Oh that's not too bad, it's only 700 yen" but there are A LOT of things here and eventually it all adds up when you thought it was just ONLY 700 yen and another 300 yen, plus another 500 yen.

Here's a basic look into how much living costs here.

Japanese food = Reasonably cheap

100-1000 yen for normal foods ($1.70 - $33 NZ Dollars)

(Oh their apples here are huge, and only 100 each! That's only $1.70 NZ for this apple the size of a normal sized fist {Not Asian fist, European fist! Excuse the funny description}).

Other than that, fruit here ain't all that cheap.

Drinks, ice creams, small snacks are usually 100-300 yen ($1.70 - $5 NZ).

Some stores selling desserts and drinks only sell them for 500-1500 yen ($8.20-$24.70 NZ). Pretty expensive.

Starbucks is like that, because it's a foreign cafe.

Vending machines (That are everywhere, literally) are usually 100-170 yen ($1.70 - $11.50 NZ), sometimes a tad more for the contents. You can get everything in them too. Cigarettes, alcohol, underwear (why you'd want to get underwear in front of hundreds of people walking past you on the street... I don't know) and other stuff! The displays, even... move sometimes and you can get hot drinks in cans from those vending machines, not to mention jelly and yoghurt!

Average clothes = 500-2000 yen ($8.20 - $33 NZ)

Decent/good clothes = 1500-2800 yen ($24.70 - $46.20 NZ)

The best clothes = 3000/8000 yen and over ($49.50/$131.90 and above)

Shoes = 3000 ($49.50 NZ) and over. Most shoes here are 5000 ( $82.50 NZ) and over, not cheap.

Other small necessities like skin care lotion, make-up are around 600-1500 yen ($9.90 - $24.80 NZ) usually.

CD's and DVD's are around 1000-2000 yen ($16.50 - $33 NZ)

Doesn't sound like a very cheap place to live does it? But considering their tax and public service, it's not too bad. They have pretty good public service here, clerks are always pleasant to you and you even get free tissues and other handouts on the street.

That's about all now. I'll write more next time, I was expecting this post to be short =S

I. Hate. Being. This. Tired.

It doesn't seem to matter how much sleep I get anymore. I'm always tired. I feel like I haven't slept for a month. I've even tried sleeping really early this week. I've been getting 7 hours sleep during the week and last night I went to sleep at 11pm and got up at 9am today. I'M STILL TIRED.

Not much is happening these days since exams are in another weeks time. It's just been busy, busy, busy so far. Zoe and I have both been dropping asleep in our spare time. It's a bit odd really because in New Zealand, I sleep at about the same time and I'm not THIS tired. Sleeping till 12pm on weekends doesn't even matter. I feel like I could sleep for a day or two straight. But we're still loving being in Tokyo, despite being International Zombies.

There've been a few funny things so far. The other day, Zoe and I finished Japanese class and rushed out to get changed for P.E since it's a huge deal to be late for class here. We got to class a tad late and were confused since everyone's faces seemed to have changed from the previous week and they all had the new P.E uniforms, not the old ones. They were also looking at us like it was the first time they'd seen us, which was unusual. When we got to the P.E grounds, we yelled out, "Okurete sumimasen" (Excuse us for being late) and the teacher gave a us a puzzled look, like either we were trying to pull a strange joke or were just being plain ditzy. He came over and said "Uhh... P.E is 4th Period, it's 3rd Period now, you're about an hour early" Oh how ditzy we were. We walked back in fits of laughter to grab our bags and head towards our study period.

We also saw an oversized wasp in the library which Zoe bravely scooped up with a book and threw it outside while I jumped around a library table screaming in whispers "What is that! What is that! What in the world is that! It's huge, what is THAT?!" I'm not kidding when I say it was huge. It was at least 5cm long and I'm guessing about 2-2.5cm wide. HUGE.

It's also been abnormally windy this week, reminds me of our horrible gusty winds in NZ. I'm still amazed at how most of the girls' don't seem to have any trouble in the wind while Zoe and I are holding our skirts down because our long skirts are somehow flying up more than the short as skirts everyone else wears! Wind defying skirts! I want one!

I was also rather angry the other day when I studied till 2am for a Japanese test the next day and we didn't have one. Then the day after that, the teacher forgot and the day after, there wasn't a Japanese class! All that effort! I seem to be getting worse at English and making odd mistakes in Japanese. Zoe's made some funny mistakes too. The other day I said "I might not be able to read all this kanji I've written here because I've written them so carefully and smally" -Smally. EH?! What is that? I also spelt Tenisu (Tennis) as Ninisu and Computer as Conpoota. Zoe wrote Banana as banabana. I wonder what banabanas taste like.

I made another silly mistake in Japanese when answer the questions "Do you like smart people or good looking people" (Don't even ask me why that was in the textbook. In Japanese smart is Atama ga ii (literally "head is good") and I omitted the ga ii. Thus ending up with "I like people with heads more than good looking people" Well I do well hope that the people I meet have heads, it'd be a bit hard to like them if they didn't since they wouldn't be speaking.

Today (Saturday 23rd May), Zoe and I's host sisters were studying for the upcoming exams so we went to have a browse around Kichijoji and Shibuya on our own. It was a great deal of fun and we were surprised at how well we managed to handle ourselves without anyone speaking and translating the Japanese for us. We went to Iinokashira Koen Zoo in Kichijoji first. We managed to stumble across it after just walking down a miscellaneous road and heading down a slope into some gigantic park which was lovely. After walking across a bridge (and taking notice of the oversized carp while crossing) we noticed a sign saying "Zoo" so we decided it might be fun to browse through the Zoo. Unfortunately we couldn't read the sign so we just got to asking. It seemed almost natural and easy to just say "We're International Students and cannot read the sign. We're currently 15 and in our first year of Senior High so much would tickets be?" Although we weren't quite sure what the ladies said to us after getting our tickets, we managed with "Hai, arigatoo gozaimasu" (Yes, thank you very much). We repeated that a great deal before actually entering the Zoo. Pretend you understand and it's all good ^_,^ The Zoo was well interesting, birds on all kinds in the most incredible cages! They were in cages but it almost seemed luxurious. They all had their own pond and trees of all kinds with nests, on the ground or in trees or even little huts to sleep in. The front part of the cage had no covering so rain would be able to pass through the cage roof but the back half of the cage had a plastic covering in case the birds wanted to keep dry.

There was also an Aquarium in the Zoo (More like a plant Aquarium really). We saw some funny creatures there, like frogs who clung to walls. Yes they just sat there, sticking to the walls of their glass box looking like the happiest creatures in the world. It looked like someone had gone along, grabbed them and super glued them to the walls. There was also a ENORMOUS toad sitting in the middle of the room. I'm guessing something so big would case a considerable explosion when jumping into the water it had in the box. While going through the Aquarium, Zoe found a lady with a bag which said something rather funny so we asked if she could take a picture of the bag. It ended up rather difficult to explain to her we wanted to take a picture of her bag, not the fish. We received some good ol' odd stares afterwards.

We headed off to Shibuya after the Zoo and went around Shibuya 109-2. We even looked at the mens' clothing! Which rewarded us AGAIN with some odd stares and strange looks, all good, we just pretended to be extremely manly (Which was probably worse than being "normal" ahem). On the 7th floor though, the shop attendant starting saying something to me which ended in me embarrassing myself. I didn't understand what he asked me so I apologised and told him I'm only an International Student so I don't understand Japanese very well but we were just browsing around the mens' wear but in the process, after reporting the fact I was an international student, I added "ka" on the end of my sentence which made it into "Am I an International Student?" Must've sounded incredibly idiotic but it was funny in the end.

The mens' clothing shops have very girly music playing in them and we found some interesting and funny stuff. Like shirts, undergarments and hates with "Daisy" written on them. DAISY! Zoe was nearly tempted to buy the hat saying "DAISY" for her brother for his birthday.

We've noticed some very funny translations and names of things in Japan. I saw an advertisement in a train today saying "Urinetown" - The Musical. I burst out laughing and asked Miyuki why it was called "Urinetown" and she didn't know what was wrong with it. She told me there's a train in Japan called "Urine". We also stumbled upon a T-shirt today while shopping and it read "It just love". We also got handed an English Menu at a Cheese Cake and drinks cafe and it said one of the cheese cakes comes with "Affixing Cream". Say what? Still on the hunt for some more funny translations.

Oh and the Swine Flu! It's so serious here! Nearly everyone wears masks now and schools all over the country are closing and ordering the students and teachers to stay home, literally, "Stay home and DO NOT GO OUT" unless to supermarkets and places you need to go to. At the moment Tokyo is okay but it'll prolly cross over to Tokyo too which would be inconvenient for Zoe and I and a waste of time for something not as serious as people made it/are making it.

I think that's all for now. Waiting for Exams to finish before anything really exciting happens now.

Jia ne!

Melting, melting, melting

On Tuesday 5th May, I went with Miyuki and Hikaru to the famous Japanese shopping area, Shibuya. Kinda unfortunate that it was raining but it was still superb. First off we went to take more Purikura (sticker photos). Yeah, people are pretty obsessed with those in Japan. Did you know they even have Purikura DS? Yep, you can buy a DS which is able to take photo booth photos and allows you to decorate them like an actual Purikura machine then send it to your phone etc. There was even an entire shop filled with Purikura machines, I'm estimating there was around 20 or something of them in the same room, and whaddayaknow, the room was full with people and their mirrors, waiting in line.

That's something else I've noticed about people in Japan. They're very careful and care about the way they look. Everyone carries mirrors, lip treatment, bandages etc (Well at least the girls carry around lip treatment and bandages). However the guys do carry around mirrors too. You see a lot of guys looking at themselves in their mirrors and fixing they're hair.

We had a fun time walking around Shibuya and had lunch at First Kitchen after Purikura. It was sort of like McDonald's but seemed to have better food which were less oily and a better selection. There were pastas and more and I even had BBQ flavoured fries and a really nice chocolate drink with great cream and ice cream inside (Though I do admit I kind of regret ordering it because it was overly sweet).

After that we went to 109 (Ichi maru kyuu [<-- q] ) which was... HUGE!! Eight floors full of clothing! Really nice clothing too. It really reminded me of China which made me a tad homesick but I had great fun trying to weave past people and look at all the clothes. In the end, I came out of 109 with new boots, a nice top and funky pants from Album (http://www.shibuya109.jp/shops/index.html). I'm still waiting to go to Harajuku to buy more clothes.

We took off to 109-2 after 109 but by that time it was around 6pm so soon after we headed back home. Pretty mad rain by then.

Next day, Miyuki and I took too to Kichijoji and met up with some friends there, Saori, Akagu, Mayu and Aya. Again we went for Purikura (really obsessed with it these days I guess). We all bought matching Rirakkuma (A cute bear character) keychains and watched the most amazing magic show. I'm still wondering how that guy did it! He placed a small empty contained on my hand and after tapping the top of the container while it was still in my hand, five 100 yen coins appeared. When I examined the container, there was really nothing there and the bottom was too small to even hide the coins not to mention he put the container over the 100 yen coins while they were still in my hand and they suddenly changed to 1 yen coins. Unless he managed to turn my hand into a robot, I still don't see how that was possible.

We went off to lunch after that at Sweets Paradise, a buffet. They had the best spaghetti there! I had 4 platefuls of different flavoured spaghetti and 3 plates of dessert filled with all types of cakes and mochi (Sweet rice treat) and jelly plus melon juice! Was completely stuffed afterwards. We could barely move after all having downed so much food so we went to the Kichijoji station shopping centre and walked around for a bit there and they discovered bluetooth... Yes, that's right, Japan has probably some of the most amazing technology I've ever set my eyes on but hardly anyone seems to know what bluetooth is. Japanese phones all infrared and not many have bluetooth. It's a little odd to have phones which enable you to watch TV on them yet have something as undeveloped as infra sending (Since the two devices need to be touching to sending, a pain).

We stood around in the station for quite a long time after. Actually, I'm such a freak I remember the times exactly. It was 3:00pm when we got out of the shopping centre and into the Kichijoji station centre, then we talked until 4:24pm before all departing to our separate gates and heading back some.

Then the next day... SCHOOL. But it wasn't too bad because we really only just had a normal day on Thursday. Friday the 8th of May was barely school because it was Health Check and sports test day. I was slightly dreading it I suppose since you all know I'm probably the most uncoordinated person you've ever met and some people from my class had said that we get timed to run 1000m. Basically as soon as they said that, my brain rebooted because I was too shocked for a second. Turns out, we didn't do anything hard at all.

Every homeroom had a different time for their health check and sports test and my homeroom was at 9:10am so we got the benefit of getting up a little later, and also leaving school early. The health check was pretty strange though. There was an ear check first and didn't understand the lady conducting the test at first until halfway when I realized she meant for me to press the button when I hear a noise through the headphones. From her actions, I thought she was telling me to hold the button down the entire time and when she told me to let go, I just left it until she asked me if I could hear any of the sounds. It made me look rather retarded and deaf. After that, the others went for heart and x-ray checks but I didn't need to do any of those. Then there was the mouth, teeth, tongue, neck and nose check... Not sure what's up with some of those random checks but it sure was a tad odd.

Then it was the sports test. All we had to do was do as many sit ups as possible in 30 seconds, jump as far as you can and move rapidly from side to side in 30 seconds and count how many times you moved. We finished at 11:50am and were free to go home. It was quite funny when Miyuki kept saying she was sore from all the exercise. I guess if it wasn't for my constant exercise I would have been complaining like a grandma too since Japan seems pretty stressful on your body with the long hours and lack of sleep but somehow I've managed to keep up with 60-80 press ups a day and 200 sit ups a day. Mainly because I'm not moving a lot here and I'm eating too much even when I'm rarely hungry here. It's far too hot to really eat here but the food's just too good!

Saturday we had to go to school at normal time to watch a 2 hour play which was interesting. I didn't really understand it but everyone had to write something about it so I just described what I thought happened. My Bible teacher wrote a response to what I wrote and turns out, the story was talking about morals and family. After that, Miyuki, Hikaru and I went to an International Gathering in the blistering heat. Maybe blistering is an understatement. It was probably hot enough to cook eggs on my head.

There were numerous different activities at the International Gathering, some rather pointless to tell the truth but it was all a laugh in the end. There was a drill where 4 people could go up into a truck where they had a dining room environment set up and the truck would begin shaking madly while you had to all squeeze under the table. It couldn't have shook us any harder if it tried, I hit my head countless times on the table. Which push the thought, "If I'm going to get 10 boo boos on my head while trying to hide from an Earthquake, I wonder if it's really worth it" into my head. There was also a fire drill and a rubbish drill. Yes, you did just read that, a rubbish drill. We practiced throwing rubbish bags into a truck. A really fun drill was the rope tying one since many people got stuck trying to tie knots in the rope. Two girls actually managed to tie their hands together. We were typing escape/emergency ropes and then learning the fast way to undo it all. Sushi making was after that and that's when I was paired up with a Chinese lady and made some new Chinese friends who I now constantly email. I seems they all thought I was 20 which was a laugh. It was bit regretful to have the event finish since we all had to part ways again even though it was a relief as it was ridiculously hot and many people were quite horribly sunburnt. We're going to go to the next one on 20th of June, 8 days before I depart Japan.

It's been crazily hot here during this week. Last 3 days has been 25°C - 30°C. I'm melting, really melting.

I didn't have music last period Tuesday because the class which I have music with were away on a trip. It was nice to have another free period. The American exchange student currently at the school is in the same music class so we went to the library instead and talked heaps which was fun. I think the poor thing's a big homesick though, she's been here since last September and still has a while to go yet. It was nice to have a proper conversation in English since I've been mostly speaking Japanese with broken English at school.

Chemistry lessons seem to be getting more hilarious day by day as my Japanese improves. At first, I knew the Chemistry teacher had a great sense of humour because all the students love having him as a teacher and being able to joke and talk with him in class. Albeit that's all I knew in the beginning because I couldn't understand him but now when he asks me questions, I can understand him a bit and am able to reply. For some reason he was talking about toilet button shapes one day and asked me what toilet flush buttons in NZ were like so I drew some pictures for him which was a crack up. Then when were walking past him after school this week Miyuki and Yuka told me to say "Oshiawaseni" (May you be happy) to him, which was when I made the silly mistake of saying "Oshiawase" meaning happiness. He gave me a blank stare and repeated what I had until I realized I'd skipped out the important ending "ni".

The next day he told the whole class about it which embarrassing but amusing. Today was another funny lesson as he did some experiment and passed around a bottom of acid with a pill inside. After it got to me he asked if he could have it back and the students refused to let me give it back to him so we ended up passing the deadly bottle around the class until he finally managed to squeeze past the bags on the ground and get to the bottle. At some point after that I yelled out "Teacher, please drink that" in Japanese. Of course he refused and instead asked me out of CaCl and HCl, what my favourite compound was. I chose HCl and everyone wowed and laughed for some reason. I found out later it was because the teacher said I pronounced my L in a cool way. There is no L sound in the Japanese language so everyone usually says eru. He also made me choose a number, my favourite number and what luck that it turned out to be 12. It ended up being changed to 10 because 12HCl was slightly ridiculous and hard for working calculating the weight of the molecules (At least that's what I think he was doing, he was saying the words, mol and grams a lot.

There are some things I'm missing I guess. I miss being in a house where I can walk around and do whatever without someone asking "What's wrong?" and I miss being able to not eat if I'm not hungry. I don't want to offend my host family so I eat everything they give me but it's too hot to be eating anything or very much sometimes and they don't eat a whole lot of fruit because Japanese eat a little bit of everything. I also miss drinking water. Since I came to Japan, I've had about 4 glasses of water. My family don't seem to be big on water so they drink green tea or hot tea or just cold tea of some kind all the time. I like rarely having wind here in Japan but I'm starting to think I'd prefer NZ's usual cool/cold weather to Japan's warm and muggy weather. I do miss school in NZ and being able to just say something floating around in my head sometimes. I'm also missing friends and my parents. I miss doing the housework for some reason. I nearly feel bad that all I'm able to do is the vacuum here. Yes, I'm crazy, don't remind me.

Zoe and I have picked up on some strange and interesting aspects of Japan. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE carries mirrors. You even see guys walking along the street and indoors and they suddenly stop and take out a mirror and look at themselves, check their hair etc. Girls are constantly reapplying their make-up everywhere. When we were at First Kitchen in Shibuya, when I turned around to survey the restaurant, all the girls there had a mirror in their hand and where reapplying make-up.

The Japanese also seem to take a strong liking to uniforms. The school I'm at has no uniform rule (except they have to wear a skirt) but everyone wears Japanese uniform style clothing because it's fashionable. Interesting how when there's no uniform, the girls want one and when Zoe and I think back to our school Mufti-days, we realized wearing uniform styled clothing would never happen in NZ if we were given the choice of what to wear.

And shoes... When we go into school, we have to change out of our normal shoes and into special school shoes called wabaki. I'm still trying to figure out if we change into the Wabaki's to keep the school grounds clean or to keep our normal shoes clean because we're allowed to go outside in our Wabaki as long as we keep within the school gate. Changing rooms in shops and sometimes in restaurants you have to take off your shoes too.

Did I mention also that the price tags in supermarkets are electronic? YES! THEY'RE DIGITAL. Have a look in my pictures to find what I mean but I was surprised when I walked into the supermarket and saw digital instead of paper price tags!!

Ah well, I'll go for now and try to update my blog more often. It feels like time in Japan is going really slowly or standing still but when I think about it, we've already been here for one month. I seem to be losing my sense of time here as well as rest. I'm off to catch up on sleep now, finally Saturday tomorrow!

Laters!

Atami

Whew! I'm loving Golden Week! Holidays are brilliant.

Currently Sunday 3rd of April 9:36pm. We just arrived back from a sight seeing area called Atami. We went around 10am in Saturday and took about 5 different trains to get there. (I'm uploading pictures now so check after reading this blog). On one of the trains, it took 2 hours so Miyuki and I slept a good deal of the way. Apart from the last 40 minutes when Miyuki put her head on my shoulder and used it as a pillow I slept pretty well. After that, I didn't want to wake her.

We first went to an art museum and looked at a lot of historical Japanese paintings, items and kimonos. After, we drove up a ridiculously steep and curvy mountain road nearly crashing into 3 cars because you couldn't see around the bends. We finally got to the top where we took a nice walk through a lot of flowers and then watcheds turtles and carp in a pond with the Koi Nobori (Japanese carp decoration put up for a celebration on the 5th of May - Boys Day) floating magistically above. Also fed some rabits, adorable!

Afterwards, we drove a bit more to our resort way up the mountains with a fantastic view. I was feeling rather car sick by the end of the ride though and wobbled my way up to the resort entrance. Inside we changed out of our shoes at the genkan (Entrance where you take off shoes) and we had slippers waiting for us. There was even a nice locker for all of us to put our ourside shoes in! Our room was on the second floor and my host parents had one room to themselves and Miyuki, Hikaru and I shared another Tatami room. It was so comfortable and nice! We were so tired and hot (as it was 24 degrees that day) we went straight to the baths. I wasn't really used to the idea of all going into the same bathroom at once and showering beside each other then getting into the hot spring together with no swimming costumes. So I waited for everyone else to finish and then went in by myself (Male and female are separated!! Just incase you thought they weren't). What was slightly disturbing was there was a bit window looking out to the garden where there was a walkway. Lack of privacy much?

Dinner was incredible. Every table had a set selection of food on it and after we sat down, more food kept coming! There were 11 dishes for everone (not sharing, just 11 dishes for each person) and Miyuki had 4 extra bowls of rice while I had 2. Whew, we were stuffed by the end. I have never eaten so much raw fish or fish in general! Some of the food was pretty odd looking but it all tasted great! After dinner, we went down to the Karaoke room since it was free and started flicking through the books. I sang 3 songs, Real Emotion and 1000 Words by Koda Kumi along with My Medicine by Nakashima Mika and Miyuki and Hikaru had a go at Chocolate Disco and Hey! Say! Jump! Hikaru also sang some Hamasaki Ayumi and Koda Kumi and someone else I think. She has an awesome voice! 

We were in the Karaoke room for about 2-3 hours I think and after we packed up, an old man came in. Hikaru and Miyuki helped him figure out how to use the machine and when we were leaving he pointed to his drink and said to Hikaru, "Don't forget your drink! Take it with you!" and Hikaru picked up the drink and was like "Oh yeah yeah finished with that and took the bottle and looked dumbstruck. It was tomato juice. Then the old man was like "OHHH!! That's mine sorry!" It was hilarious (Well at the time) I hit my head on the wall outside the Karaoke room and fell over laughing too hard. There was also one stage where I went back to our room to fetch my Ipod and use the loo and forgot I was wearing the toilet slippers (Japanese don't walk around the Tatami flooring with any shoes or slippers on and the toilet has it's own pair of slippers). When I stepped out of my room and was locking the door a man down in the next room gave me a really odd look. I figured I just had silly hair or something and walked back to the karaoke room. It wasn't until I sat back down that I pointed to my slippers in shock and embarrassment. Miyuki was like "EWWWW GROSS" and Hikaru just kept laughing at me. I quickly ran back to change.

We slept at around 11pm and Hikaru and I both woke at 6:44am. I was a little tired but I couldn't sleep more because it was far too hot. I got myself ready and packed up my things while Hikaru went down to the baths and Miyuki who loves sleeping was still curled up in her Futon (Traditional Japanese bed. Just a mattress on the floor with blanket over it and then a thick as duvet, even in 24 degress Celsius! I woke Miyuki at 7:30am and we headed down to breakfast at 8am. We got back to our room at around 8:40am and packed up our things and the Futons then I did some eye make up for Miyuki which looked stunning on her! She had the longest natural lashes I've ever seen an Asian have TT__TT We took some pictures on the balcony after which was odd because Miyuki and Hikaru kept saying "Do a cool pose!" and I didn't konw what to do.

We signed out at around 9:50am and started driving to the Zoo. Miyuki, Hikaru and I got extremely bored so we all fell asleep and 2 hours later we were STILL on the road. So we changed plans and went to a Cat Museum instead, which was extremely cute and interesting! They had skeletons on Zaber Fangs and all the cats (Tigers, Lions, Panthers, Leopards etc) were real ones that were stuffed. They were adorable! But my host family all said I was a bit strange thinking lions and tigers were cute. We had lunch at a famous Sushi bar which was once again delicious! After, we went back to the station where we had a look around all the shops and my host family bought a lot of food. We also went to a nice dessert restaurant there.

We headed back to the station at around 5pm and got on the train a bit after. Switched about 3-4 trains before we got on the one we had to sit on for 2 hours. There was lots of nice food on it though. Better than airplane service! We were well tired when we go to Shinjuku and got on another train to Asagaya. Had dinner around 10:30pm. And now I should be going to bed! I think We're going to Yokohama, Tokyo Tower and Shibuya sometime this week! Exciting!