Gakkou

Ok, so this is the first time I've been able to blog this week... On Tuesday was my first day at school. I pretty much sat around in the teacher's room a majority of the time until I had to do an introduction speech to all the teachers. Of course, I completely raced through it out of nerves but eh. Both my homeroom teachers are amazingly nice and they showed me my homeroom, etc while we waited for the dreaded whole school speech. While I waited, the nice American English teacher from Boston talked to me and gave me a cookie..so nice. After waiting around for about 2 hours, I was called to the P.E. building. I waited outside until they flung the doors open and I walked in. About 430 faces looked up and stared at me with their mouths open as I took the longest walk of my life up to the front of the ranks of students. There, I was given a defective microphone and commenced my speech... Again too fast, by the way. At the end I had to take that long walk again to the back of the row that was my class. Just then, there was a break in the assembly and I was completely surrounded by about 20 girls all speaking in broken English. I remembered what the English teacher had told me earlier about boys being super shy in Japan so I wasn't surprised when only one boy waved at me from across the gym.
The next day, like the first day, was another half day. We pretty much hung out in the gym for a long time while they painstakingly checked every single students' uniform. My skirt was too short and my nails were too long...ugh. Anyways, I suddenly hear noise behind me and turn around to see a group of boys choking over my name (it's hard to say in Japanese because of the 'r' and 'l'). This is where I met Kazuya. Kazuya is really short. "Do...you..like..Japan?" for the rest of this week I would be called over with "KYARORIN" and asked really random questions like, do I like breakfast? or Do I have a boyfriend? Come to think of it, I don't even think this kid is in my class....
Anyways, he was calling me over and I turned to my friends and said, "Waa kowai" which means "Ahh scary" in Japanese. He was immediately told that I had called him scary and hasn't talked to me since soooo... yeah.. I guess I'm going to have to patch it up on Monday. Today was the first full day and I spent most of it sitting in the library since everyone else was taking a test. The librarian is so nice and she asked me if I was cold about 20 times. Afterwards, we all went to the gym to have a physical exam which pretty much consisted of getting our weight, height, and upper body length measured and then we had a vision test in the classroom. Apparently my results for everything were pretty good so yay.
This was soo long but so much has happened in the past week!

School... TOMORROW

Alright, so tomorrow I'm starting school. I'm actually really scared. I have to go to the beginning of the year assembly and introduce myself in front of the entire school. My bike is all ready... and so is my uniform (bleh). I'll upload pictures of me wearing the uniform soon... though it is sort of embarrassing.... For a little while I have to ride the really old bike to school but my host parents said that they are going to get me a newer one! Tomorrow, I have to wake up at 7:15 and walk out the door at 7:40 to get to school by 8:00 and go to the principle's office (kochou sensei). A girl who lives nearby and is the daughter of my host mom's friend is showing me the way on bike.

Around the House

Ok, so I finally got permission to upload pictures of around the house! Most of the rooms have tatami matts, so I have to be careful of what I set down, since anything damp could produce mold... yum. Above is a picture of my room! On my bed I have a futon which is like the softest comforter EVER! As you can see, a lot of my walls are made of paper sliding doors.

The toilet here is also very different. A lot of public restrooms have both Japanese style toilets and Western style toilets (I'll take a picture of a Japanese one later). Anyways, in my host family's house, the toilet is Japanese style but with a western style toilet placed over it. Therefore, there is no flush, so you have to take water from the bucket at the side and pour it down the hole. I'm pretty sure the water is being reused from last night's bath.

This is the room with the bath in it. The rooms for the toilet and the bath are on seperate sides of the house. Before you get into the bath, you sit on the stool and shower and then get into the bath and soak for maybe 15-20 minutes.

This is the back garden that you can see from the window.

Gaijin!

Ok, so to those of you who don't know, gaijin means foreigner in Japanese. Last week my host mom brought me with to my host brother's soccer championships. I got a lot of little boys whispering "GAIJIN!" behind their hands. It was sooo strange because they all just openly stared and as they walked they would turn their heads so they were still staring as they passed. Later, there were some high school students closer to my age keeping score. One saw me and started staring and then poked his friend with his pencil and they both just stared until I ran away. Anyways, if you are going to Japan in the future, don't be creeped out if everyone stares because as my host mom said Japan is "nihon jin dake">> Just Japanese people.

Cherry Blossoms!!!

Well, I've been at my host family's house for about a week now. I still need to get permission to upload pictures of our house, so in the meantime I'll upload the pictures from when my host mom brought me to a nearby park. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom so it was very beautiful.

Ahh I'm so sad there was a little festival with lots of food stands up in the park but i felt weird taking pictures so I didn't

Back on the bus and plane

After the hostel we were all put back on a bus where they gave us some bread and sent us to the airport. Driving through Osaka was really interesting.. It's a really cool city. After getting off the bus we stood outside a long time getting all the luggage together. Then, we all sat around on the roof of the airport which was sort of like a little park. They had a furniture store in the airport, for some reason. Finally, the AFS staff left us and we went through security. No one got stopped for anything major. The celings were soooo low, Probably only about 7 feet high. We were half way to our gates when we realised that we had left one of the girls so we had to run back. Finally, we got on a bus and went to our plane...which was tiny. At the end of the flight I couldn't even hear from the pressure.

To Osaka we go

It's been a little bit since I updated. After the hotel in Tokyo, they split everyone up and loaded us all on buses. My orientation was in Osaka.. When I heard it was going to be a 10 hour bus ride I almost died. However, it ended up being a really beautiful drive. Also (could be a good thing or a bad thing) I ended up with about 5 or 6 other Americans in the back if the bus. I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked... Or really any at all but it ended up being amazingly fun. All I really have in fact is a super blurry picture but I'll just upload it anyways.
After we got to Osaka, it dawned on me that we weren't staying in a hotel but a youth hostel with a sento, or public bath. Not to complain or anything, but the hostel was cold and the bath was terrifying. It was really hard for everyone, including myself, to just strip naked but the water was nice, and we got through it. In the end, I ended up making some great friends. The people staying in my room with me were great even though I was the only native english speaker.



Over the two day orientation we played many games and had many discussions on safety in Japan. Everyone couldn't wait to leave and meet their host families