Bonsai Blog

I have made a NEW way of displaying pictures, using Google’s Picasa album thing.  It’s easier for me, and I’m in love with the Picasa program.  So yeah, it’s super easy for me now!  My other gallery thing broke somehow when I switched hosts.  So for all of you who have been begging to see more photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/bonsaiphoto

Take note that the URL ends with BonsaiPhoto.  I thought, well, if my blog’s BonsaiBlog, then my photos should obviously be named BonsaiPhoto.  And BonsaiForum will be next actually.  Mostly for other foreign exchange students and xchange hopefuls.  I get *so* many emails.

So YES! 145 Pictures w/ Captions!  Including Singapore and South Korea.  It took me two hours to get everything set up, upload them all, and then caption them.  So please appreciate it.  I’m so tired now…

Today I saw Spiderman 3 with my friends Fumiya and Tatsuya!  This week has been made up of school days lasting only 2 hours because of tests, so today was the last day and only two hours.  I went home and changed into regular clothes and dropped off my backpack, and then met up with Fumiya on the train.  Tatsuya missed it… so we waited for him at Abeno.

We were going to have dinner after, but then they switched it to lunch, so we were like really early.  At about 1:30 we ate Ramen (it was good).  The movie started at 4:15 though, so we just hung out until then.  Tatsuya bought some new drum sticks, we looked at some music, and sports stuff.  And Fumiya wanted some new clothes so we looked at clothes too.

And we also went to Baskin Robbins, which was good.  I like the Burgundy Cherry flavor a lot… it’s really delicious.  There’s a new place that just opened up by my station in Fujidera, so I have quick access now!  I can regain weight.

Finally we watched the movie (2 and a half hours!) and it was REALLY good.  I know some critics have said less than favorable things, but I really enjoyed it.  Venom is definitely the coolest looking villian, even if Eddie Brock is a jerk and stuff.  And Gwen Stacy was a very eye catching woman, but the Wikipedia’s entry on Bryce Howard has a less than flattering picture of her, which is disappointing.

So yeah, I had a really fun day today!

And I will be switching host families for my last month in Japan.  I think it’s less than good, because I’ll already be stressed about leaving Japan and having a complete change of enviroment, but I’m also looking forward to a bit of change.  The Toyooka-sans live very much like Americans and have much less ‘Japanese-ness’ around the house then the Makis did.  So in that regard, I’m kind of excited.  But I really love staying with the Toyooka-sans too…so it’s hard to know how to feel about it.

This Sunday I have my last big Rotary meeting in Wakayama.  This isn’t like the monthly one I go to, but the one I go to every two to three months with the other Rotary students in my area.  I’m good friends with all of them, and I saw them last Sunday when we went to Sakai and made candy with Rotex.  That was fun.  So yes, this Sunday I have a speech to do and a long drive.

Then the Sunday after I will go with Ishikura-sensei and Toyooka-sans to a concert in KawachiNagano.  It will probably be a very adult and Japanese-filled concert, some traditional singing or instrument.  And next week Friday I have a Rotary meeting.  So that is a total of 5 Rotary meetings in about two weeks.  Sometimes I feel that it takes a large chunk of my time, and breaks up my schedule.  I haven’t been able to do anything with friends for the past two weeks because EVERYONE has been studying for the tests that finished today.  They take it very seriously.  So today was a nice change.

But yeah, my Sundays are out and most of my friends have clubs on Saturdays, so guess what the only day is that I have to hang out with people?  Yeah…  So I’m excited for calmer waters soon.  Hopefully my friends will also be relieved now that the tests are done.

I’ll try to keep this better updated, sorry~

So last week, I missed Rotary because I was sick.  Tonight they called and wondered if I’d be coming to this week’s meeting.  This made me extremely upset, because WHY would they call the night before?  Yes, I have a speech.  But no, I have not looked at it in a week.  I like planning things a LOT.  Tomorrow I’m going to have a good day, because I get to watch my classmates do presentations in Language Lab and then have a two hour special English Class with some third graders and the other two exchange students, like we do every Friday.   That was my plan, and I like it.  So I it offended me when Rotary called the night before to ask me if I was going to come.  If they had called on Monday, Tuesday- even Wednesday- it would have been ok.  But this is the night before, at 8 PM.  So I would like to schedule things with time to think about things and prepare.  That’s just what I like.  If there’s an abrupt change, I get very frustrated.  Not to mention there are tests next week, I have my big Japanese test looming in the near future, I’m getting ready to leave, and all my friends are busy studying!  So obviously when I have a bunch of stress, it was not a good time to ask me if I can make it somewhere on short notice.  I am very very sorry, but tomorrow was just impossible.  Not that it was a big issue that I couldn’t come, I actually made it into more of an issue with my mind, but whatever.

You can make a note about me that I do like things the same, and scheduled.  I eat the same thing for lunch every day, which is a noodle salad thing with chicken.  If that’s sold out, I have a Pork sandwich.  If that’s gone, I have a chicken sandwich.  If that’s gone, I have a Ham sandwich.  The drinks come in more variety, with me usually drinking Diet Coke, Sparkling lemon water, lemon ice tea, or CC Lemon.  If I go to McDonalds, I always order a cheeseburger with medium fry and a coke.  If I eat in the school cafeteria, I always have cuts curry.  I must be an awfully boring person, but it’s true.  I planned on going to Japan for three years, and now I’m here.  I like my life to run smoothly, and for me to always know what’s going on.  And yes, the fact that I eat the same thing every single day at school is extremely sad.  Writing it down helped me realize that.  But I also like uniforms, lots of fun.

So that’s a little bit about how I work I guess.  And why schedule changes  are on the top of my pet peeves list.  I would guess it’s also why I was so conservative for so long.

Anyways, now it’s rather late, and I’m going to be super tired tomorrow, and wake up in a bad mood because I will be tired.  Uhhhhh.

Oh, and I thought I’d mention too, that some Rotex girls were talking to me because they had seen my videos on YouTube.  The ALT teacher also talked to me about them, because he had seen them too.  It’s really weird how people that I know in real life watch them.  I’m going to do a new one soon, now that I have just shy of 100 subscribers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!  The only reason I typed this up so late was so that I could say that.  Hope it goes well!

Later everyone~

Ice Guy is an ice cream treat that I love in Japan.  It’s like ice cream coffee in a plastic bottle that you squeeze out, but it actually has some small crushed ice in it too, which makes it better than plain ice cream.  And it’s sooooo good.  Very similar to Papico, which is just plain coffee ice cream.  Just thought I’d mention that.  It’s SO hot, so ice cream is very enjoyable to eat.  Last Wednesday it was as hot as an average July day in Minnesota.  I’m not looking forward to it getting any hotter here!

And, right now I’m absolutely ecstatic.  I finally fully figured out how to get videos from YouTube to my iriver clix!  Takes two conversion processes, but the videos look so crisp and clear on my clix.  Anyone who bought an iPod Nano totally made a mistake.  The iriver clix is the most amazing flash player out there, with full Video, FM, and Flash Lite (game) support…which make it a head above the Nano.  PLUS the clix Generation 2 just launched and it looks AMAZING!  I could go on and on about how much I love my MP3 player.  It only has 15 FPS, but the videos look 150% better than I expected.  The clix 2 has a full 30 FPS though, I’ll probably have to buy the new one when I get back.  I’m just really happy about it today.  Got it upgraded too.

Aaaaaaanyways, I’ll work on the Photos soon.

I’ve been feeling pretty sick this week, and I ended up staying home on Friday. I wish I would’ve stayed home Thursday though, because I actually felt worse then. But I missed Rotary which is very unfortunate. I just felt really crappy and my stomach/throat/head thing.  And on Wednesday we had a big Sports Test day, where we did all sorts of gym excersises.  Including running 1,500 meters in 28C weather.  HOT!

And I don’t really feel like catching up with what I did this week, because it was just school.  ESS Club is doing Snow White for their new play.  It’s a little bit different, because the second graders will basically be in charge now that the third graders are very busy studying for exams.  Snow White is Sari, Prince is Yudai, Stepmother is Haruka, Huntsman is Me, and I forgot the rest of cast list.  And BTW Haruka is a very common name in Japan and I have about four friends named Haruka.  So I’m not always talking about the same girl.

Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom, and Grandmas, and God Mother!!  I hope all mothers have a wonderful Sunday!

Ok, so I’ve been procrastinating a LOT because I knew it would be a lot to write and…I am lazy.

So the first day we flew in and left Japan at about 12:50 in the afternoon and then arrived at Incheon Airport at like…I’m not really sure. Maybe around 2:30. It’s a really nice airport though, and the flight was on a new and nice plane. I watched a Korean film with English subtitles. It was fairly interesting. We took a taxi to Seoul with our luggage and stuff, and that was about a one hour drive. Taxis are cheaper there…but still, long way to go by taxi (SUV taxi to boot). We dropped our stuff off at the hotel finally, then went to the ‘Korea House’. It’s geared towards foreigners and is very traditional styled. So we ate a very traditional Korean dinner, complete with Kimchi. If you want to know what that is, simply read about it.  After that we watched an hour long performance which highlighted some of Korea’s cultural dances and stuff.  It was really interesting, and much better than I thought it would be.

Then we went to sleep in the Hotel and stuff.  Keisuke and I shared a room, and my host parents shared a room.  Same as Tokyo, and it was really nice.  We stayed at the Grand Hyatt and all the channels save a few were in English so I got to watch TV I understood!

It was really weird hearing Korean though.  I am very comfortable listening to Japanese, even if I couldn’t understand it, because it’s what I’m used to hearing.  Korea sounded so…foreign, and I realized how used to Japan I am!  I also used Japanese a lot.  I felt more comfortable knowing that the Koreans couldn’t understand me and think I had bad Japanese.  There were also TONS of foreigners in Korea.  So I justed wanted to show off my skillz.  Most were businessmen who were getting talked to in English.  This American Asian guy asked me something, and it really surprised me.  American English coming from someone Asian is just really…surprising to me now, because I’m very used to hearing Asian people using Japanese English.  So yeah, it’s kind of a jolt when you’re so used to a certain dialect of English.

Anyways, the second day we did more stuff in Korea, and I got to see JIN!  Which was really awesome!  We talked a lot (in English).  My host family took Jin to lunch and we had a Korean-style barbecue thing.  They have mini grills in the center of the tables.   So that was really great.  Then we went to the top of Building 67, named so because of how many stories it has, and looked out at Seoul.  That was really cool.  Then we went our separate ways, and I said goodbye and stuff, but I really enjoyed seeing Jin!

After that Keisuke and I stayed in our hotel room for about two hours while my host parents went to the spa.  He slept while I watched English TV.

For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant and ate the buffet, which was really good.  I have discovered that Nan is the most awesome bread out there.  So that was really good.  Then we went and saw a street festival thing that was going on, with tons and tons of foreigners.

And the last day we were supposed to go to an Amusement park but it was closed.  That was sad, but we saw some other interesting stuff.  Then we flew home, but the plane was a little late, and there was some turbulence.

My host mother speaks some Korean by the way.  And I am so tired right now, so I apologize for any spelling or grammar mistakes.