Hello hello! Well, WOW! I’m moving tomorrow to my final family. I still have to pack, I’ll do a little dance when I’m finished because I won’t be packing again until January! Yay. If anyone has seen the movie the Labyrinth, I feel like the old lady who was constantly accumulating random things on her back, chairs, teddy bears, bagpipes. I’m not accumulating anything that exciting but as my host sister said, ‘my things are abundant’. They’re big on fans here in the summer. Just random fans you take outside as to keep from DYING in the humidity. Companies use them for advertising and such. I have one for a new and improved ATM! Woo! I also have two toed socks from the omikoshi, which by the way bruised my toes so they’re now a lovely deep purple (the shoes not the socks), and stufffffff! But anyways, I had a little good bye party today with my host family and friends of their family. Right before that I saw Land of the Dead and my host sister and I were discussing how unappealing spaghetti and hot dogs seemed after seeing it. And then we got to the party and ate… spaghetti and pigs in a blanket! Which were just fine when I wasn’t thinking about man eating zombies. I also went to the aquarium today. I ‘hooked’ up with my new boyfriend (haha I made a funny!). He’s a nice two meters tall! Nothing fishy there (haha another funny!!). Okay, the giant tuna isn’t really my boyfriend, but I just couldn’t help cutting in front of all those little kids to have my picture taken with him! Well, hope to be in touch soon (please let the next house be internetified!) Bye!

Quick Hello!

I’m back from Kyoto! It was so neat I have a total of two pictures to show you! Only because I realized just after arriving that my battery charger was two hours away in Chiba, gah! My day started early at 4:30, this is becoming a pattern. We caught the shinkansen at 7. (spell check wants to turn shinkansen into slinkiness!) I didn’t get a picture of the newer one, the ‘series 700’. All of the shinkansen were covered in big blue words ‘ambitous Japan’, it was cute. It was like taking off on a plane for a really long time except you wake up and think ‘whoo! I’ve got leg space and edible food!’ We checked into our hotel when we arrived and for the first time in 5 months I stepped on, get this, carpet WHILE wearing my shoes!! It was so weird! Other than that it was a normal western style hotel that provided yukatas to sleep in. Our day started right away by going to the kinkakuji, Golden Temple. I think it would be impossible to get lost in Kyoto, everyone kind of blobs in the same directions. Besides, if there are gaijin around, you know you’re near something old or a Starbucks. Anyway, kinkakuji was a pretty neat temple. The original that was built ages ago burned down in 1950 and then they rebuilt it 5 years later. They didn’t actually add the gold until 1987. They also have a ginkakuji, Silver Temple, but it’s kind of sad compared to the Gold one, go figure. The day continued with lot’s more old things and the increasing need for a cane. I still had blisters from the shrine festival. Kyoto is a really pretty place in the summer, everything is really green. But one thing that also comes with summer in Japan are the cicadas! There were places in Kyoto where they had made paths into mini bug graveyards. You’d see a wing here and a head there, very attractive. When the sun finally set we walked over to a river side from where we could see the daimonji. It translates to something like ‘big character’, as in the Chinese kanji characters, not cartoon. Once a year in the summer on five mountains in Kyoto they set fires in the shape of kanji characters. There were people everywhere along the bank. Since it was dark you could see all their cell phones lit up. We crossed the river to a piece of land in the middle. The stepping stones were large and made for crossing, but apparently not for seven year olds and their grandmas. There were at least two wet people watching that night. We ended up sitting next to a group of people from Spain who were talking about going ‘see sighting’, they were practicing their English. On the way back to the hotel I saw this western store from the bus and there was an old Denver Broncos football helmet hanging from one of the clothing racks, random! Well, I’ve once again convinced my host sister that I’m writing my life’s story down and I've put off my hot springs story. What hot springs?? I never went ;P

A whole bunch of umeboshi (up there with japanese pickles) drying inside the temple that is supposed to help you with your studies.

Slinkiness! You can see the A from 'ambitous Japan'.

Just a few hours after we left here there was an earth quake.

Wa Shoi! = what shrine carrying people say!!

IOU one hot springs post because I have something else to write about, yay! Yesterday was a festival in Edogawa (where I live now) that they have only every three years. It’s an ‘omikoshi’ festival. It’s really one of those words that doesn’t have a decent English translation but ‘portable shrine’ seems to work for my dictionary. I would bet some of you have seen one before, it’s the kind of thing they would show on a travel show or something. What it is, is a shrine placed on top of a frame made out of long thick wooden supports. And what do you do with the supports, carry the shrine of course! Every possible part of the wooden beams are placed on top of someone’s shoulder. Anyway, this is all very exciting because I got to take part in the festival and help carry the shrine! We were a little late getting changed into our shrine carrying outfits (seen below) so we didn’t start until 9 am. There were about 6 different shrines that I could see. Our shrine had a decent group of probably around 100 people. We all took turns carrying the shrine. It was really fun and really heavy. Being taller than some of the other people, the beam kind of made itself at home digging into my shoulder. But the short people had it worst because the shrine kind of bounced on them; my older host sister has dark bruises from where the beam hit her shoulders. We carried the shrine all over and people on the sides of the street would throw water at us, so we were soaked and pruning all day. They even had the firemen out spraying us. We got free food which was so awesome (I had a bunch of Mister Donuts donuts!!) I stayed away from the KFC, I think I wrote about that awhile ago. I think my host Grandfather thought I was scared of Japanese chicken because he started talking about American beef and how chicken is fine and beef is bad, it was funny. Anyway it finally ended at 4 o’clock, I had no feet by then. The shoes we had to wear were these two toed things. They didn’t have my size, so the ones I had were a bit tight. I’m not wearing them in the picture but some of the others are. So that was my festival experience! And tomorrow I’m off to Kyoto! I’ll be back in a couple of days, probably postponing my onsen story. But I’ll have Kyoto stories instead!

Animenia

Hi everyone! I kind of went over board posting pictures but I had a really interesting Saturday, so before I talk about my trip to the hot springs let’s talk about Comiket 68! It’s pretty much the largest anime convention in Japan. Anime (please don’t anyone be thinking cartoons, it’s much more!!) is the Japanese style of animation which is most common in comic form (and I promise it’s not just pokemon). There are many genres, some of which I really didn’t need to see today. Anyway I woke up at 7 today and got a ride with my Host Dad to the station to meet the other exchange student from my school. I quickly discovered that there is a distinct crowd that goes to comiket…
I have drawn an accurate picture of what is called an ‘otaku’. Which is really pretty much a nerdy guy with a back pack, glasses, fanny sack, hat (maybe hair too!), a camera for taking pictures of cosplayers (girls dressed up), and who stays up past his bedtime reading naughty comics.
At 8:30 Jovana and I joined the masses in a large parking lot. There were way over two thousand people already waiting, and might I mention it didn’t start until ten. I’ve felt quite foreign in Japan before, but never so much as I did in that crowd, sea… ocean! of black hair. All day I saw maybe five gaijin not including myself (but I’m Japanese anyway! harhar). When we were finally released to rampage the convention site we headed straight for the cosplaying area. It was an area outdoors where all the people who wore costumes could show them off and have their picture taken again and again and again. You always had to ask permission to take a picture and the line most otaku used was something like ‘go mai yoroshii desu ka?’ (can I take five pictures?). Most cosplayers are pretty serious about what they do and never run out of poses or business cards!
Inside, what I swear was an airport gone convention center, were the anime goods. There were eight different halls (airplane hangers) filled with dealers selling their comics. On one floor I was leisurely poking around getting lots of flyers handed to me and when I looked down to actually see what people were handing me, I was greeted with a drawing of a girl who was apparently allergic to clothing, it was quite a shock. Especially since admission was free and there were little kids walking around!! But that seemed to be a common theme in four entire halls. Well, there was far too much going on there for me to write it all down but I’ve probably got enough here to help some ailing insomniac. So, I’ll leave the hot springs for another day…

We'll call them 'THE WALL'! It makes them sound cooler than they look.

In the left corner we have the other exchange student at my school versus some American we ran into! An exciting match!

McDonalds, or 'mahku' as they say here, even has it's own following of cosplayers! The guy who took a picture of them before me started singing the 'I'm lovin' it' song. Badabababa I'm rovin' it!

When I took this picture it was for the cosplayer but check out the background. I'd say that's about 1% of the people that were at the convention. By the way clicking on these pictures makes them larger.

Hey, whose that really cool person? Why it's me of course. Don't you see me? I'm hanging out on the daibutsu's (gaint buddha) feet. It took a lot of stair climbing to fit us both in.

My host sister and I sporting the onsen yukuata (hot spring summer kimono). In the evening everyone goes to the hot springs with their yukatas on. i had to wear a large because I'm too tall! Yay! It's boyish for a girl to wear a yukata too short.

I thought this was an interesting picture of Tokyo Tower and a temple that shows modern Japan and Japanese tradition coexisting, right?

I can't believe I'm posting this but there's me and there's my uniform in the same picture! So embarassing. This was in April so it was cool enough to wear the blazer and long sleeves. Anyone want to guess how much that blazer costs? Well, I get to tell you ;-P About 267 US dollars! Ouch. Glad I'm just borrowing it. Think someone might come after me if a button falls off or something?

I'm posting this one for fun, did it make you look twice? I took this of one of my first host sisters at a shopping center called LaLa Port. The writing on the first floor shop is also amusing but you can't see it in this size. It says, 'The Roux Specialty House may be the world’s first. Pouring cooked meals over rice is we enjoy the Tokyo Roux' Well, at least their meals are cooked.

Now that you can SEE what I'm up to...

Check out who I'm standing a safe three feet and a glass wall away from! This was at the wax museum in Tokyo Tower. None of the people looked much like they were supposed to, except maybe the Planet of the Apes people... apes. For some reason they also had a special wax people torture room that explained various medival torture devises while a whaling woman screamed in the background (but all the tortured people were guys, who knows).

Clap your hands and believe in pictureness!

I'm trying not to jinx myself but I think I just found a way to post pictures!! My eyes must be playing tricks, but if your eyes are playing tricks too (they better be) this is a picture of whale out to dry in Kamogawa.

Well, yesterday (August 5th), was the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Thousand of people gathered at the peace site in Hiroshima to offer prayers and water for those who have passed. If you would like to read a little more about the gathering you can visit the link at the end of this message. But the atmosphere didn’t seem that different here in Tokyo to me. I’ve heard before that some of the survivors of Hiroshima are worried that once they pass the anniversary will lose its true meaning.
In the evening they had quite a few specials on TV. My host mom didn’t want us watching the live action movie ‘Hiroshima’ because she thought it might make me feel awkward. So we watched the animated film ‘Hotaru no Haka’, ‘Grave of the Fireflies’, instead. It had the waterworks going on everyone by the end! I know those of you in Japanese class know what I mean! The movie is actually about bombings in Kobe and is based on a true story. The English version is out in the States if anyone is interested in seeing it. The story and animation are both extraordinary.
Well, that’s all for now~
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