Jidensha....*shiver*

Everyday I go to and from school by jidensha (or, bicycle). On an average day in Japan you will see at least 100 different bicycles. At certain points in the day these bicycles stretch as far as they eye can see! Everyone rides bicycles to school or work everyday, rain or shine, pants or skirt. This requires much more skill than you would think. First day I rode a bike in Japan was probably the scariest experience ever. It is hard to describe how scary riding bikes in Japan is but these people must have it down to an art form in order to not have many major accidents every day! Streets in Japan are very narrow so as a pro Japanese bicycler you must become very good at judging exactly how big your bike is and squeezing it into the narrowest places possible. This is usually right in between a moving car and a gutter. Mornings and evenings everyone is going to or returning from work so this makes life even more difficult for now you have to add weaving in and out of business men and school girls to your repertoire of skills! As if that is not enough, rainy days make this REALLY interesting. You think riding a bike one-handed is a fun little skill to have at home. Well, try riding carrying and umbrella in one hand and attempting to deftly make minute turns in order to avoid major accidents (you can never turn too hard or you will run into something, or someone).
School girls in Japan have to be particularly skilled for everyday they add a skirt to this fiasco. I guess that wind must be the biggest pervert of them all because it loves to blow right up your skirt and attempt to flash everyone around.

Granted, riding bicycles is great exercise. Yes, when I return to America I plan on buying a beach cruiser and riding to school every day. However, if any of you ever plan on making a trip to Japan. Please, please! hone your bike riding skills because trust me, they aren't as good as you think. Believe me, it will save you AND some poor pedestrian a lot of terror.

Deja Vu!

Yesterday the International Exchange Club from Mishima put on a welcome party for me after school. It was so fun! The ESS club joined us. Don't ask me what ESS stands for. I think it is "English Speaking....something" all I know is that it is the club for girls who want to practice English.
What was interesting about this party is the food though! It was Takoyaki! It felt like my first day all over again but with different people! The Takoyaki was as delicious as ever and talking to the British teacher's assistant was really fun. It is always fun to talk to Katie because we can compare 3 cultures at once! America vs the UK vs Japan.

Girl's Camp

I'm sorry these posts are out of order. I just decided to write another post to make up for the multiple days on which I did not post anything.

Girl's Camp in Japan was very different from America but super fun! The leader of my group, Naomi, speaks English so she acted as my translator the whole time which gave me a well needed break from the constant headaches and lack of understanding which I have gotten used to. It was very refreshing.

Everyday (except for one of the dinners)each group of young women would make their own meals. In fact, Dinner on our first day there was a cooking contest (we won 2nd place!) It was really interesting to make Japanese meals over a fire. Because I can't cook worth crap I immediately volunteered to make the fire. I have had lots of practice building fires so I quickly had one burning but it seems you don't build fires often in Japan because no one else had it so easy. I ended up helping all the groups build their fires as well. It was nice to know something no one else did for once. :P I have gotten so used to being the stupid one.

Our hike the on the 2nd day was killer! The mountain is VERY steep so going up was difficult progress but the countryside is absolutely gorgeous! The colors are so vibrant here and there is just so much green!

Overall Girl's Camp was a very refreshing thing. All my stress from the first week in a foreign country was alleviated and I am now ready to start again!

a summary of the pictures:
first is Naomi
second is me and my group "Sasami-sama" (which is the first sound of all our names spelled into a word. Sasami meaning: chicken meat)
third is everyone from the Takatsuki ward (this was a stake camp)
and all the rest are various pictures I took on the hike

Shinto Shrine

Yesterday was Children's Day but I didn't go to any Matsuri because I did not get home from Girl's Camp until about 1:30 and then I promptly fell asleep. I did, however, go for a walk with my host mother to see a Shinto Shrine. It was very beautiful and quite interesting! I understood only little bits and pieces of Shizumi's explanation so I don't trust myself to explain the pictures to you so I am sorry. I hope the pictures are good enough!

Kobe

Today the International Exchange club from Mishima went to Kobe. Since Airi is part of that club I tagged along. It was very interesting. Kobe is the city where many of the immigrants moved to so a large majority of it is ethnic (mostly Chinese I believe)
We all met at the subway station and shortly thereafter I got to ride a subway for the first time ever!! To be honest, I didn't like it. It made me slightly carsick...or well...trainsick :P

When we got there though it was worth it. First we came across an ongoing Matsuri. This was a flower festival and an entire street was blocked off so that hundreds of people could make huge pictures in the street with flower petals! The pictures were very ornate and really cool!

We also visited the historical house of some historical figure. I couldn't tell you whom this figure is though because everything was in Japanese so I didn't understand a word of it. sorry. Use your imagination.


The Islamic Mosque which we also visited was quite beautiful and one of the teachers bought a box of dates from the Islamic grocery store across the street. I was the only one who knew what they were (thanks mom) so I felt pretty smart. ;)

Then we went to some sort of emmigration center. This was very interesting! The presentation given to us by a nice old man I didn't understand but the exhibits all had English so by the time we left I had a general idea of everything. I believe this was the place where, many years ago, they trained groups of people to prepare them to emmigrate to another country, mainly Brazil but the emmigrants went many places.

We then continued on to China Town. I'm sure you can figure out what that is. We ate lunch in a delicious Chinese restaurant. And then visited a museum about China. After all this we still had a bit of time left so our advisers told us what time to meet up and we were let loose to go shopping in China Town. I had a great time!

To finish off the day, as me and Airi waited for her mother to come pick us up she took me to the arcade and I experienced the joys of Purikura!!! ooh yes, this is my new favorite Japanese thing. It is is similar to the photo booths at the mall except AWESOME! You get to choose the backround design and after the pictures are taken you go to another booth and you draw on your photos and label them! It is way fun! The sheet which you get at the end has all your pictures on it in sticker form so you have your own face-sticker! I love it! I mean, what could be better than my face on a sticker?!

how fascinating can a gaijin be?

People here are so funny. I guess it isn't rude to openly stare in this country because I get that a lot. The girls are all so entertaining though. Everyday I am approached by a new group of girls wanting to know all about me. Today as I was walking down the hall a girl I have never seen before ran to catch up with me then handed me a little Japanese candy saying "a present for you". It was so cute! I actually held a pretty decent conversation with another group of girls. I didn't stumble over my words and we were able to communicate without any hitches. I was quite proud of myself. I also showed my pictures of Utah to the International Exchange club. They were very impressed and kept saying that they want to go there.


On a completely different note, here is a handy tip for the Japanese students back home:
Some of my most commonly used words are these. Chigau and Onaji (different and same) I have found these words to be the easiest way to explain why I do or do not know how to do something. "Amerika wa chigau" (America is different) is my favorite phrase. and "Amerika/watashi no gakkou wa onaji" (america/my school is the same) is a phrase that saves alot of useless instruction for whomever you may be talking to. So there ya go, Vocab lesson of the day!

food

All my meals in this house look like they came from a gourmet 5 star restaurant! The Japanese tradition of sitting down to eat together for every meal is so nice. We eat breakfast and dinner as a family and if there is no school then we eat lunch together as well.
Meals are perfectly balanced and the proportions are perfect. There is no "left-over day" because Shizumi makes just enough for one day. Here are pictures of my meals from the last 2 days.

1st picture: Tuesday's Dinner
2nd picture: Wednesday's breakfast
3rd Picture: Wendesday bento
4th picture: wednesday dinner (gyouza)

The last few pictures are actually of me making Gyouza for the first time though. Shizumi taught me how!