Tanoshii

Jason stabbing the Easter bunny into 24 equal pieces for the American Culture class.

I can`t tell you how much I love this man.

Me and Satomi!! I love her tons too.

Easter eggs!!! We just made them yesterday, even though Easter was last week. It has been so long since I have made them!!

Mira, Jenny, Shane, and me!!!

Pictures of the sunset on Thursday night after class...man was it beautiful.

I took these right before I rode my bike home.

This bridge is right by school on the bike path.

Special camera effects...

Me in transit...on my bike, actually.

A bridge from our second bike ride...we went all the way to Kitahiroshima!!!

One sunny day, I found this giant hill at a park by school...

So I sat on the hill and read some homework.

Giant Pikachu!!

Pokemon store...

In Esta....

10th floor of all ramen restaurants in Esta!!

Sapporo TV tower in Odori park!!!


So, these are the pictures that this week brought!!!

My first taste of hiking and updates!!!

Last night with the Brits and other Japanese students.

We were at this really important Shrine in Nagoya, but it was under construction.

Me playing in the woods.

Mame and I on a bridge in Tokyo!

More playing in the woods.

This was in Kamakura...it`s a really cool tree. :D

Ahh, the woods of Japan...we were actually outside of Sapporo.

More...

Look at these shoes!!

PEANUT BUTTER! It`s almost gone...

Soba ocha! The best tea here...

A bridge and mountains by school.

Me on my bike!!!

More woods...that is Kato-san.

Me! I saw this log, and I had to have a picture with it. :D

Kato-san going down our first hill.

Me messing around as we climbed back up!


Hello everyone! I have been terribly busy with school, friends, riding my bike and walking around Sapporo, and spending time with my host family. That is definitely a good thing, though! I finally have time to update this, and I am doing it for my sake and for yours! I have a lot to say, so here goes!

The pictures are from Thursday, mainly. Kate and I went for a bike ride that day in the afternoon, because I finally had a bike! We rode the Shiroishi bike path for about 20 minutes, and then we saw tons of hiking trails!! We decided to go out for a mini-hike. Lol. We weren`t really dressed for it, but decided to explore anyway. It was too gorgeous not to! The weather here has been great; we have had tons of sunshine ever since returning from Honshu!! I love the sun, and it makes any good day a better one...sorry, off topic...let`s see. We spent about 30 minutes playing around in the woods, but it was getting late, and we had to go back to our houses for dinner. I was so happy to be riding a bike. Honestly, there were so many simple things about Thursday that just made me smile. I am not hard to please, so I guess just the beauty of the woods, mixed with the excitement of finally getting a bike was overwhelming in the best way possible. I am so glad that I was able to feel these great emotions away from home.

I eat breakfast and dinner with my host family, and I typically eat lunch here at Hokusei. We`ve had ramen: one of my favorite meals ever, fish twice: delicious in Japan, oyakodon: chicken, eggs, and onion over rice, udon: not my favorite, but still very tasty, and curry: another one of my favorites; it`s generally spicy, which I love! Some other foods that we`ve had are apple and mayo salad, potato salad, miso soup, grapefruit, banana, dried fruit, daikon: Japanese radish that is very delicious, raw and fried tofu: fried tofu may be my favorite taste here, hard-boiled eggs: I didn`t think I liked those, but apparently I do, cheese, nori: dried seafood-I generally have this and rice for breakfast. I`ve had cereal a couple times, but again, I have really grown to LOVE plain rice. I have had it at every meal for at least 3 days now. It`s so good. And unless you`ve had it, you don`t understand. :) Kate is able to pack her lunch, and she often brings onigiri, which she calls the Japanese version of peanut butter and jelly. Sometimes it`s plain, but other times it has spicy salmon or cheese in it. Very good! She`s so nice that she lets me try every version! Kato-san ga daisuki desu! Anyway, I am definitely enjoying the food here. I love it. I didn`t think I would like it this much, but I am so glad that I was wrong about the food. I already know that I am going to miss it. I asked my okaasan if I could help her make dinner tonight, because I want to learn how to cook Japanese food, and she said, "ok!" Yaya!! Daijobu. :D

Speaking of my host family, I really like them. They teach me so much about the culture, and I love practicing my Japanese every night when I go home. My okaasan-mother-knows a lot more English than my otousan-father-so we communicate better. It`s good that she only speaks a little though, so I can practice my Japanese. The last few days have been especially busy, so I haven`t seen them as much as I like, but hopefully I will have more time this week. On Tuesday of last week, we went bike shopping after dinner, lol. I felt so special that they were taking me out so late. They never cease to make me feel special or wanted in the home. Oh yea! I have chores too!! Normally, I would think that people would just get frustrated with having chores, but the more I think about it, I like doing them. It makes me feel like I am a part of the family, which is the whole point of homestay!!! Yay! Right now, I primarily take out the trash every day, but I know I will have to sweep soon too. Once I learn how to use the washing machine-lol-I will be doing my own laundry, which I prefer to do anyway...Umm, and I clean the shower every so often too. Oh yea, in Japan, people shower at night. Yes, that`s right. I have never ever showered at night, so I was a little weary about it, and I had no idea how I would do my hair and stuff after sleeping on it...Needless to say, I over-thought the situation a little...But it is fine. I actually like showering at night. Typically, we talk for a couple hours after dinner, and then around 9 pm, I get in the shower, and I am ready for bed by 9:30. Of course, I still do a little studying and writing in my journal before I actually go to bed, but they can use the shower if they need to at that time. So yea, I like that routine. :)

I have a nice story about my first shower at my host family`s house. They have a thermostat that you adjust for water temperature every time you take a shower, so I set it on what I like...and then I got in, and tried it out. Well, I didn`t have very much hot water. In fact, it only lasted for about 2 minutes, and even then, it wasn`t that hot...CRAP!! How can I take cold showers all semester??? Lol, I freaked out about that too. I could only bear to wash my hair, and then I had to get out. I was too cold and being cold it a pet peeve of mine, so you can imagine how I was feeling. For that to happen on the first night worried me a little, but ever since then, I have had wonderfully hot showers, and it has been great! I think the first night, I didn`t have one of the dials completely on, so that`s why the water wasn`t getting so hot. Anyway...that is just something for you to giggle about.

The first couple days, I rode with my otousan-father-to the bus station called Oyachi, because it is very close to school. I lucked out that he normally goes there anyway for work, so we were able to ride together. I would ride the bus in the morning, and then walk home in the afternoon. The walk took me about an hour, which isn`t bad, I guess. I knew a couple weeks ago that I primarily wanted to use a bike for transportation, so I looked around for a cheap one. Well, I couldn`t find one, but there was a bike sale at school and Tada! I found one! Yayayay! It was pretty cheap too, only 4800 yen, which is roughly 50 bucks. I was given a certain amount for transportation to and from school, and all you need to know is that it was more than the 50 bucks I used to pay for the bike....:D It takes me about 25 minutes to get to school by bike, which is just a tad bit less time than it takes when I ride the bus. So, I get to leave on my own schedule, get exercise, and get there sooner! That`s a no-brainer...

Classes are really easy here. I mean, REALLY easy. Japanese class will get harder-hopefully-but the others may or may not. In the morning, we have Japanese class every day, except Wednesday, for 3 hours, and then on Thursday I will have an Impressionist class with Jason for an hour or so. Fridays, however, are a little bit more busy than I am used to. I had class until about 6 pm yesterday, pretty much straight through with a break only at lunch. Yuck!!! Oh yea! Jason normally offers Christian and Shinto Traditions in the fall, but not in the spring. However, Kate asked him if he would offer an independent study for her, and I had been interested in the class too before I came. A couple days ago, he agreed to let me do it as well, so I will also be in that class! Yay!! I would say that I am most excited about that one. Lol, I am just thinking about all the hours I have this semester, and I swore I would never do this again. I am technically signed up for 22 hours. That sounds like a lot, and if anyone knows exactly how awful it is to have that many hours, it is me, but in Japan, everything is different. And having classes with Jason, the director here, will make things a little bit easier as well. At this point, I am not worried at all. I still feel like I will have plenty of time to explore Japan and do what I want to do, all the while learning what I want to learn. :D

I have Japanese class with 6 other BCA students, and we are all in Level 1 Japanese...I have mixed feelings about that, but I don`t want to make a big deal about it, so I am taking the high road! Lol. So far, homework has consisted of hiragana practice worksheets...they take me and Kate about 5 minutes....lol.

What else should I tell you about??? Oh yea! We don`t have classes on Wednesday, so Kevin, Elias, Kate, and I-we call ourselves the Vegetable club-ventured out to Shin Sapporo and Odori for some shopping. I may have already written about this; I don`t remember. Anyway, I bought a scarf!! It is brown and turquoise, and it is very fashionable. :D I really like wearing it, and I am definitely glad that I bought it. Oh yea, I found a Costco the other day...I was out running, and I stumbled-not literally, although that is definitely a possibility with me-upon a Costco. Woo!! Kate and I love that place...in Hawaii, we bought a 4 lb. bag of trail mix, and just finished it last week. It was our security snack. Lol.

Oh, I have a funny story about this morning. Okaasan said today is laundry day, so I went upstairs and got my laundry. We put it in, and she showed me how to turn it on and everything. I went upstairs to get dressed, and she continued making breakfast. After about 20 minutes, I realized that I left my "With You" card in my pants pocket, and they were in the washer. OH NO!!!!! I freaked out, because I just spent 10000 yen, or about 100 bucks on it, and I had only used it once. It is basically an all-access pass to the bus and subway, and it is pre-paid, so I would have just wasted so much money if I had ruined it. I went down and told okaasan, and I wish I had recorded her reaction. It was in a very high-pitched voice, "AAAAHHH! Ichiman en!!! OHHH NO!!!" Now, I was really freaked out. Crap! She stopped the machine, and we looked through the clothes. We couldn`t find it. Then we carefully looked through all of them again, once they were all out of the washer and dripping on the floor, and then I found it. Few!! And she said that it would still work, so thank God!! I just dodged a huge bullet there. Oh man. I was so nervous about it, and afterwards, I felt terrible because she was right in the middle of making pancakes for breakfast-man were they good! It was my fault that the last one was a little burnt. And it`s not like it was just one tiny pancake. No, the Japanese pancakes we had this morning were about an inch thick and the size of a regular frying pan. Ginormous if you ask me. We did cut them into four pieces though. I felt so badly, but she kept saying, "yokatta desu" and "daijobu". The only thing I could say was "gomen nasai!" Sorry!!! Anyway, I thought I would end with a funny story from this morning. Lol.

Kate and I are off for a picnic in the woods this afternoon, eating onigiri, bagels with peanut butter, and strawberries!!! Oishi!! Delicious. Man, you guys are learning so man Japanese words...hahaha. Tomorrow for Easter, we will be going to a church-surprise!-and then to a Jazz concert in the evening. I will also get to meet Kate`s host family, so I am very excited!

First few days at the Ito House!

Inside the Sapporo Dome
Home run, home run, Inaba!!
Inside again.
Outside...
And from a ways away!
My beautiful room!!



This is the video from my room!!

Media update!

Look at how big that claw is!! About 9 flights of stairs in the Kyoto station. More stairs at the Nijo Castle...These weren`t bad because they felt like you were going down stairs...it`s hard to understand unless you were there. Look at all the ice cream flavors! The eggplant, onion, and garganzola cheese pizza that Kate and I shared...We figured since most Japanese portions are so large, we could split it. It was very tasty, but too thin. It didn`t fill us up at all. Lesson learned. It was in Kyoto. Before the onsen. Inari gates!! I am fascinated with them!! Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto. Cherry Blossoms in Kiyomizu Temple. Bamboo forest in Inari. Group pic at Inari. Me at Inari!! A Shrine. Me at the Nijo castle. A few of the 10000 gates at Inari. Some of the BCA group...from left, John, Elias, Patrick, Me, Kayla, Sapphira, and Ben. Sakura in Kyoto. Sapporo Tower. Marimokkori... Downtown Kyoto.
My blog from Kyoto!!
The first one from Sapporo!! P.S. I have a bunch more pictures, but they are all on other cameras. My batteries were getting low, so I didn`t use my camera for the latter part of the trip...I`ll have to upload them soon. Check Kate`s Facebook for more!

This is from Tokyo!

Daijobu?

At least that`s how I think you spell it. :) It means, are you okay?

Yes, I am!! Well, that`s my answer. Yesterday, we were in Ise, home of two very important shrines. One belongs to the Sun God of Japan, and she is the most powerful of them all. That`s right, I said SHE. We couldn`t see the shrine as well as others, but there were many people there to see it, so it was a completely different experience. We went to another one on the beach-I totally went down to the water and put my hand in it, just so I can say I`ve been to the beach in Japan if I don`t get back to it in July-and supposedly on New Years Day, the sun rises right over Fuji, between these two rocks. We couldn`t see Fuji, because it was a little cloudy.

There`s a chance we`ll see it today, though, because we are taking the Shinkansen!!! I am sooooo excited about this. It`s the fastest bullet train in Japan, and I`ve been hoping to take it for a very long time! Thank you Jason Barrows! What a guy he is. I am enjoying this trip so much, and a large part of it is because of Jason and his hysterical antics and wonderful surprises. :D

Also yesterday, I tried wasabe ice cream. YUM! I have been excited about it for quite some time, and I jumped at the chance to eat some. I actually had ice cream twice yesterday...:) The second time was mint ice cream covered in chocolate on a stick. Yum!

On thing I want to write about is all the delicious snacks and drinks here. Man, we go to 7/11 or Lawsons a lot and just pick out crazy things, and they are SO GOOD. Last night, I bought this guava chocolate, yum! Guava was the brand, not flavor. Yum! It`s better than Hershey`s...Also, the rice snacks are pretty delicious too. Pocky and toppo are the coolest snack invention ever!! Pocky is chocolate covered pretzel sticks, and toppo is chocolate filled pretzel sticks. Both are deliciously addicting!!! Of course, they have all sorts of flavors. The weirdest thing I`ve seen so far is a green tea Kit Kat. Like, the chocolate was green tea-flavored. Hmmmm...I really like Soba teas...Umm, Calpis is pretty good, in moderation, too, especially when it`s warm. I had this other drink, it was like Pakoma Sweat or something like that...it reminded me of carbonated Squirt.

And one misconception I had about Japan is that there would be no bread. WRONG! Some of the BEST bread I`ve ever had has been here. A lot of times, we`ll have pastries or something for breakfast because we are on the go, and they all have been pretty good. I had a couple ham and cheese crossiants the other day, and I liked this nikuman sandwich thing the other day. The bread here is very good and not difficult to find! The only dessert slash bread item that I don`t like is the mochi treats filled with bean paste. Barf!! We`ve had so many of them, and I just can`t stomache them anymore. That`s where the chocolate will come in handy. :D

Oh yea! The most exciting thing about yesterday was the Karaoke! Woohoo!!! I had been looking forward to going to this long before I arrived. The whole group went last night for 1.5 hours, and we opted for the non-nomihodei, which means non-all you can drink. As someone who doesn`t need alcohol to have fine, that was completely fine with me. Everyone was excited to be there, and we all sang together, so I don`t know how alcohol could have made it more fun????? I am sure we`ll try that style eventually, because not everyone has the same views as I do, and it will be cool to compare the styles.

Off to breakfast, and wish me luck today on the Shinkansen! I am hoping to record some footage of us passing by Fuji!!! Woo!!

One huge update from Kyoto!!

So now that I have about 30 minutes before we get on the train out of here, I want to update this as much as I can. I recorded another video blog, but I don`t have the connector with me...Anyway.

These past 4 days have been jam-packed with all sorts of temples, shrines, and castles. On Wednesday, we went to Inari, which is this huge shrine on a mountain that serves as a cemetary. We climbed up so many stairs and saw so many graves. It was really, really moving, and I am starting to really appreciate the purpose behind shrines. I really like the shapes of them too. Don`t they call that architecture? Anyway, the gates were these orange square things-I am just going to have to put up a picture. We saw bamboo forests as well...We went to the Nijo castle, and that was pretty cool too. The artwork inside was all done in gold. We couldn`t take pictures or video inside it, but I did take both on the outside. The artwork was so simple, yet complex. It had scenes from every season, and it was a real treat to look at. Oh yea, one really cool thing about the castle was the floors. Jason told us that when samurai or ninjas would sneak into the castles, they would try to be really quiet so they wouldn`t give away their location. But in this castle, where they moved, it didn`t make a sound. Instead, it made a sound somewhere else to trick them into thinking that someone else was coming from another direction. I found that to be really fascinating!! I bought postcards here.

On this night, we walked around Kyoto as a group, looking at the shops and streets. I really like the structure of this city. Everything is so compact and little that every time you turn the corner you feel like you`re in a completely new part of town. :) At the end of our walk, we stopped at the 7/11 near our hotel and bought ice cream. I wanted chocolate ice cream to put Bailey`s over, but the store had neither. Oh well...I tried green tea ice cream, which is pretty good. I`ve had ice cream a lot in Kyoto...four times. :) Each time, a new flavor!

Thursday was a free day. I went running in the morning, and then the rest of the group headed over to the Kiyomizu shrine that was highly recommended by Jason. We walked up a really long street with all sorts of stores, and most of them had ice cream. I got cherry blossom flavor on this day. We spent a while in the shrine, and I took lots of video and pictures. We actually got to see some cherry blossom trees, or sakura trees, in bloom, and they are very pretty. One cool thing about this shrine was that they had a fresh spring of water that you drink from for good luck. A lot of us bought these souvenir cups and drank from it. It tasted really good, but I mean, it was water. Water always tastes good. Lol. It was a neat experience, and one of the group members, Elias, didn`t get in line, so he took pictures instead. That was really nice of him to do that!

After the shrine, we split up, and eventually ended up having lunch at a pizza place. Since the Japanese portions of food are so large, we decided that we should split a pizza. Bad idea. These were really small and thin, and we could`ve easily eaten our own. Kate and I shared an eggplant and onion pizza with gargonzola cheese. It tasted really good, but it wasn`t veyr filling. That`s okay, because that means there was room for ice cream!! We went to Baskin Robbins, and I had Nuts for you flavor...mmm!! We eventually ended up at this really cool strip mall place that the guys stumbled upon. We shopped there for a bit, but I didn`t buy anything. We then saw this arcade place, and went into one of those cheesy photo booths. It was all in Japanese, so we really had no idea what was going on. I had never done one of these things before, so it was all new to me. We did so many crazy poses, but it took us forever to finally get all the prints and stuff. It was so funny because we had no idea what was going on with the machine, and we didn`t know what it was asking us. We just started pushing buttons, and eventually our cool stickers came out. Aww! I think I`ll think of that memory as one of the first spontaneous ones here in Japan. :D

That night, the four of us, Kate, Elias, Kevin, and myself went out for dinner, but the place we initially went to was closed. Darn. Well, Elias knew that there was a ramen floor in the Kyoto station, so we headed there for dinner. I love ramen!!! Seriously. I had pork ramen with chicken dumplings. Yum. We were so hungry by the time we ate it that we just gobbled it up. We then got on a random bus and rode it for a while, switched to another bus, and got off it too early. Lol. Oops! It was about 10:30 at night, and we were just walking down the street to our hotel. I came up with the idea to sing songs to past the time. We sang ``All-Star`` and ``Tubthumbing``. That was a pretty cool adventure too. I really like all the random stuff we happen to do. Another great night.

Oh yea! I don`t remember which night I did this-that sounds so bad-but I went into the onsen, which is a really hot bath. The way the process works is that you wear a robe, with nothing under it, and go into this room and basically shower before you get into the tub. It reminded me of a hot tub, without the jets. Let`s see...the two girls here, Mame and Satomi, helped me through the process. We first washed our bodies, then our hair, and then rinsed everything again. It was a little weird for me being naked in front of all these people, but the two girls thought it was as normal as anything else. Lol. We finally got in, and it felt so good. I remember it was on Wednesday, because we were tired from climbing up Inari. Yea. We spent about 10 minutes in it, and it was really relaxing and calming.

So I guess this brings me up to yesterday...we went to Nara yesterday by train. We saw the biggest Buddhist temple in Japan, and it was really great. It was almost like a park, and there were different buildings with all these cool things in them. The one with the huge Buddha was definitely the best. I bought a couple post cards and took lots of video.

We headed over to Uji and the Byoijin(?) musuem. Uji is famous for their green tea, so we definitely bought some there. I bought some for my host family. We also had a mini tea ceremony and got to see how tea was made in the old days. Got it all on video!! I liked the tea, but it was a little strong. Overall, I do like the green tea here, a lot, but it has to be warm. I can`t do cold. They also gave us these bean snacks that they treat as dessert. Nigate. That means, I tried it, didn`t like it, please don`t serve it to me again. We had a lot of those yesterday, and I was getting really tired of it. We had a fun time at the Byoijin place too. This temple is actually on the back of the 10 yen coin, so it was really neat to see it in real life. We couldn`t go in this one, but I took video of the outside. Pictures too!

Last night ended with ramen again! Yum!! We also walked around in the park, looking at sakura. There was supposed to be a festival going on, but we missed it because we got there so late. We walked to a convenience store and ate some food by one of the fire pits. Good times. Then, we headed back to the hotel to play Uno! Oh yea, I bought some real chocolate after being fooled so many times yesterday by the bean desserts. We played Uno as a group, and it was fun. Lots of fun.

Ok, Kevin needs to use the computer, so I am out!!

Urg.

Just a little one. I am trying to upload a video, but all the websites are saying it`s the incorrect video format...Oh well. I still have it on my camera, so I`ll post it eventually.

The rest of the BCA students are here, and we are relaxing on this sunny morning, waiting to go to a local bread shop. Yes, I said BREAD! MMMM!