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!