Oh cleaning

Okay, you all know how much I love toilet cleaning, but did you also know I love wall cleaning too!? That was my mission impossible this time. I'm going to be really articulate and tell you it was ICKY! I don't know how well you can see the wall in that picture but can tell how skillfully I rearranged the dirt in lovely circular shapes? They must hire a heavy smoker part time to come in there and make the walls dirty. And continuing with my cleaning pictures...

These lovely pristine rags (aka dirt rearrangers) help us clean the floor the walls and sinks oh my! You know you want some to use in your own home. It's like swiffer but brown, I mean better!

Let's learn Japanese! Zoukin (zoh-keen) equals dirt rearranger! That was fun! And if you take out the rearr it leaves anger.

Please note that no one dies from cleaning at my school, not even me, but because I dislike it so much I get to be sarcastic and make it sound terrible and life threatening! Which it is! Beware! Don't clean! Never! Hire janitors! They're your friends!

This deserves its own post!

Last night my host sister and I completed Kingdom Hearts 2 for the playstation 2 (and do I get to mention it doesn't come out until April in the States, yes! ^_^). We played through two small earthquakes and even survived an accidental unplugging when my youngest host sister tripped over the cord and we still managed to get to bed by 2 am! Here's a picture that was on the back of a magazine that we um altered...

Subway Piggy Graffiti

Here's my next random picture for the week. You hardly ever see graffiti in Japanese subways, but I found this little cutie on my way home today. Pig? Cat? Piat? You tell me.

Today was the first day of exams, here's an example of a first year's test. I've darkened the ones they got wrong. It's kinda cute. But what's sad is that the same thing was on their mid term too. Maybe it's not sinking in too well...

Holidays!

Hey everyone! Getting ready for the holiday season? I am here! This weekend my youngest host sister and I did the whole Christmas decorating thing. My host mom took us shopping to get everything we would ever need to make the house seasonal. I took the opportunity to purchase a 200 yen (about a $1.70) Christmas CD called ‘Jingle Bells to Guitar’. Yeah, red flags should have gone up there, but I was desperate for some holiday music. Anyway, we played it during the car ride home and it was hysterical. The first track sounds like some kind of Hawaiian rock. Whoever made the CD took the chance to be artistically creative and alter the songs. Jingle Bells is the worst. And someone tell me if O Happy Day is a Christmas song. But despite the music we were successful in our decorating venture! You can see our tree below. We had some trouble getting the star tree topper on so we used a bow from another ornament (there’s a nakey angel out there now). We also used ‘snow in a can’ to make festive shapes on the windows. We made the mistake of putting Santa in front of the reindeer. I guess it’s time he pulls his own weight! Christmas here is really a commercial holiday though, or as I’ve noticed, the couple’s holiday. All the girls in my class who don’t have the required accessory of ‘boyfriend’ are all bummed out. I was telling them that in America Christmas is mostly a family holiday and this girl goes, ‘so that's why Americans get together with their families’. It must have been a great mystery to her as why we all gather with relatives during the holidays... Like maybe we were plotting something sinister. Well, I suppose not all Americans get it either. And ending on a happy note, winter break is a week away! No uniform during break! Yay!

Our Christmas fern tree thing! Isn't it cute! It narrows out in the middle a lot, but it adds character right! Anyway I think it's probably the coolest fern tree thing in Japan!

Okay! The elusive Mount Fuji! If you enlarge the picture by clicking on it you can see it a lot better. This was the best picture I could get despite the building of condos and power lines and part of the gym building at school... ^_^

This is me wearing the backpack used by Japanese elementary students. Usually they're black (for boys) and red (for girls), but now they're coming in colors! I found the orango one. Anyone want to guess how much it costs? 25,000 yen! That's almost $230. And that was the cheap kind. the red ones behind me were something like $500.