So tomorrow I’ll be going to Rochester with Mark to go shopping. That’ll only be for like 3 hours, then back home and drop him off. Then Katherine is going to come pick me up, and pick Mark up again, and we’ll hang out at her house…then we go to a concert at St. Pius church. The church concert was appended because Katherine had to go, but we’re also meeting Nina, the German exchange student. We went out for snacks after school at the Bakery today actually, which was cool. We discussed America and Germany.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to hanging out with friends. And in class today, the AP Comp sub didn’t come in until the last 15 minutes of class. She was on the 9th/10th grade schedule, so lunch overlapped 5th hour and she didn’t realize it, so it was cool. We all just were hanging out and hoping no teacher would notice we were teacher-less.

Yep. I’m pretty tired, so I’m getting off. I really should make a page about the people, both in America and previously in Japan that I talk with and hang out with. Hmmm.

EDIT: And I just broke 200 subscribers on YouTube.  Yaaaay.  Time for a small celebration.  Here’s to 1,000~

So I’m at school during lunch break, updating my blog because of a funny story.  At least it’s humorous to me.  Background:

Chihiro, Ayana, and two other girls did an English project, and picked Paparazzi rights as their topic.  And all they found them annoying, the conceded that it’s a way to make a living to them.  Part way through the project week (last week) they got in a bit of an argument with the teacher.  They had put work in and done it a certain way, and the teacher wanted it a different way.  The teacher ended up telling them to start over, because it wasn’t the way HE wanted it.  They were obviously very mad about that.

So this week, they did the presentation.  At the end, that teacher told them that the first two groups had done very well, but the third group had room to improve, which was of course Chihiro’s group.  I didn’t go to that class because of Japanese Lesson, so I only got around to talking about how it went today.  After hearing about it, I wanted to confront the teacher about it, because I had CHECKED their project myself, and had helped them on it a little.  It was very good.  So for a teacher to single them out as needing to improve set me back.  I’m quite disturbed and angry about it.

Before confronting the teacher though, I wanted to gather background information.  I have no problem talking to teachers, but I wanted to check my facts and make sure that they pulled the presentation off nicely.  So I talked to the teacher from Trinidad who had watched them what she thought.  And she said that they had done it very well, and didn’t see why the recieved the comment that they did.  She said the teachers would meet and talk about the group presentations next week, and she’d see what had driven the comment.

She also said I should probably just let sleeping dogs lie, as Japanese teachers can get maybe kind of scary.  But I view it from the other end.  The teacher shouldn’t have made the comment and made me come in and fix this.  It was an unfair comment, and they will get a good grade on it.  Chihiro’s an awesome girl, and the presentation was good.  It’s annoying when teachers possibly use past arguments as an excuse to critize.  If that is the situation.

What are you looking at? ‘Pepsi Ice Cucumber’, a Japan-only flavor. Believe it or not, Japanese are not so different from Americans. This turns them off as much as it does you probably. No one in my class could actually believe I bought a bottle of it, and I got a lot of attention for it. Why did I buy it? I thought it would taste good. Japan has things like ‘melon soda’, which is actually cream soda- nothing to do with melons at all. And other things that are not what they sound. So, heck, why not try the ‘cucumber’ pop?

Well, turns out Japan didn’t lie about the vegetable it contains. It really does have a sickeningly sweet taste, complete with a cucumber-ish bit. Absolutely disgusting. Everyone in my class had to smell it, and I think that right there ruined Pepsi’s chances of ANYONE in my class buying it. It smells disgusting too. And the picture doesn’t show it that clearly, but the stuff in the same could be Listerine if you put it in a different bottle. Absolute same color.

Some of my friends tried it too. So I drank some, later Ryuta did. The Tsutomu wanted to try. And after school the foreign teacher tried some (Ben), and the Chahiro and Junko wanted some, and then the Canadian (Bob) tried some. So the bottle ended up with a 7 person count. I did not drink the majority of it. Then I just dumped the remaining 1/6 because I was kind of like ‘too many people’… I’m a compulsive hand washer, and germs aren’t my thing. Actually right now my hands are really dried out because I’ve washed them too much.

Anyways, new experience in Japan. Yay. Because you’d never find something like this in America, you just wouldn’t. And that’s exactly why I bought it.

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Oh, and I probably got around 45% on JTest. Not as bad as I imagined, but not good at all. The listening part (which I was hoping would be easier) was so fast, and the segment and answers were only read once. Thanks. At least my Spanish teachers would go over things multiple times so we could get it. The writing was a bit easier though, so I guess it balanced out. And a lot of intelligent guesses.

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And I lost in Badminton today, which was sad. But it was against a really good pair, the gym teacher and some kid who obviously knew how to play. So yeah. I’m partners with Tsutomu if I hadn’t mentioned it. We’ll win next time. I love badminton so much, and gym is my favorite class now. Art has fallen from grace, because we’re doing oil canvas again…and I have no inspiration nor artistic talent. My mind doesn’t work for art.

Well, it’s 2:30 AM now…thought I’d do a blog update.  You know, since that’s what normal people do.  And amazingly, I wonder why I’m tired all the time.  Of course…if tomorrow wasn’t Saturday, I’d be asleep by 12:00.

So what’s taken up my time this week?  Many things…  After dinner all this week I’ve been watching Prison Break with my host mother.  She decided that she was going to rent all the episodes and watch them…  So she’s started on that project.  I just happened to catch some of the fourth or so episode and realized that, hey, this is a really awesome show.  I thought it looked really stupid and would be a macho-prison-violence like crap-filler for Fox, but it’s actually a very educated thriller.  Really awesome show!  So now I watch it every night, with no commercials, which is nice.  And tonight we actually watched three episodes (they’re an hour) because after the second one, it left off with a big cliffhanger.  No choice, obviously.  Had to watch the next one.  And tomorrow I can bet that my host mom is going to want to watch a lot of them.  Keisuke is not really interested in the show.

School?  Well, ESS is doing Snow White now as I think I mentioned before.  I’ve been dedicating my time to trying to help that.  I tend to take over projects like that because of my Speech/Drama background.  Starting of course with my third grade performance in Willy Wonka.  Those were the days.  It’s coming along I guess, but as always, ESS is kind of going slow.  Japanese people just don’t have the built in drive that I do to get things done.  It’s a culture difference.  Now, give a Japanese person something they’re interested in and tell them to do it repetitively until they’re perfect, and they could beat me hands down.  You have not SEEN what Japanese arcades are like.  These people put in six hour days and are literally unbelievable…

Besides that, my friends still have stuff going on with the big dances they’re preparing for the Gym Festival.  I have no time to participate in that because (1) it’s much too time consuming and (2) very tiring.

Weekend schedule…let’s see…  Tomorrow I will do a video blog for my BonsaiBlog account, and another video for my other YouTube account.  BonsaiBlog has over 100 subscribers now, not too shabby, eh?  I’m not sure what I’ll talk about, but it’s long overdue.  I’ll make it a fun one and change into my gym uniform.  Maybe show off my swimming uniform too.  Now that I’ve lost weight and everything, ha.

So tomorrow night I’m going to ShinsaiBashi to meet Yudai after he finishes his English class and we’re going to eat tacos.  We haven’t hung out in a long time due to busyness.  He was trying to get a scholarship for his EF exchange, but unfortunately he didn’t make it.   EF had promised one full scholarship and one half scholarship…and there were only three people for two scholarships.  But you know what?  Instead of being content with charging and arm and a leg for their exchange program, EF pulled their full scholarship.  Because apparently no one impressed them ‘enough’ to get it.  You know what?  That’s just cheap and back handed.  I know for a FACT that Yudai has excellent English and I know that he passed the first scholarship test on the first try, and that’s an achievement.  EF has officially gotten on my bad list.  *mental note*  Luckily Yudai’s family can afford it, but obviously a scholarship would’ve been nice.  Compared with the base $3,000 I paid for Rotary, EF Japan is $10,000!!  And that’s standard fair for Japanese exchange programs.  Absolutely unbelievable.  *rant rant rant*  I hate it.  So yeah, tacos, yum.

Sunday I’ll go to a traditional concert with Isshikura-sensei and my host family.  It will be very traditional.  Yes, my other friends are going to a movie.  But I’ll be getting exposed to more Japanese culture.

And on my last Rotary meeting that I’ll go to, apparently I don’t have time to make a speech.  What…?  So yeah.  They want me to come to a second one, but honestly, I’m not sure I’ll have time.  I’ll probably be clinging to my friends and classmates and dreading the 20th when I have to say good bye to them.  I’ll even miss all the girls that constantly yell in high pitched voices.  American girls just don’t do that…

So now that it’s 2:51, maybe I’ll try to get some sleep.  g’night.

I hope everyone enjoyed Easter…it was completely skipped over in Japan.  No one mentioned it, no decorations, sad.  In fact if a bunch of family members wouldn’t have emailed me about it, I wouldn’t have known it was Sunday.  Oops.  Well, hope it was fun!

Hiroshima was a lot of fun.  Our Rotary group has become really close, so it was even more fun than Tokyo.  Everyone likes to hang out together and stuff, and it was a good trip all around.  The first day, we took the bullet train to Hiroshima.  I had never been on that, but it wasn’t that exciting, it just felt like a regular train.  Besides the fact the scenery is rushing past at 300MPH.  We could turn the seats around so they were facing each other and talk the whole hour and a half, so it wasn’t boring at least.

Once we got to Hiroshima we had okonomiyaki in this multi-level restaurant.  Usually I love okonomiyaki, and it is one of my two favorite foods here.  However, they prepare it differently there and I HATED it.  I only ate like half.  So yeah, I don’t want to have okonomiyaki down there anymore.  Then we just went to the hotel to drop our bags off and stuff, although we had to walk so it kinda sucked.

Then we went to the Memorial Museum for the atom bomb.  That was really really sad.  I was really amazed at the before/after pictures and scaled model.  Like, there was just NOTHING left.  That kind of power is completely terrifying, I’ll be honest.  Most of the city was just absolutely *gone*, with just a few walls left standing.  Then they had on display a lot of clothing, unfortunately from Elementary students, that showed all the burn marks.  Hell on earth kind of thing.  So much stuff that was just really sad and gross.  At first I thought it was bad, and I didn’t want the guilt trip, but I think it was a very good experience.  After seeing that, I don’t think I could ever justify any country using an atomic/hydrogen bomb.  What I learned in history class didn’t even scratch the surface of the devastation that just one bomb brought, and then later of course, the other city was bombed.  And I didn’t know the US was planning to drop a ton more if Japan didn’t surrender, which was really sad.

I didn’t end up feeling that guilty though, because I felt more like it was a different time, different generation.  It was also during a war, and so it wasn’t like both sides weren’t guilty of killing.  I was worried that since I was an American going there, it’d be…bad.  But the Holocaust museum was almost more sad in some ways, because that was a completely innocent group of humans that also had unimaginable stuff happen to them.  Either way, both situations were extremely sad, and so were both museums.

Then we went to sushi for dinner, the one with the moving plates.  It was good, but I only had shrimp sushi and french fries, I wasn’t that hungry.

Back in the hotel we all like hung out in one room and drank pop and had a lot of snacks, with the supervision of the Rotex girl, Noriko.  She’s really cool though, so it was fun.  Went to bed at about 1, although we all went to our separate rooms at like 12.

Second day we basically just went to this island.  We took a ferry which was interesting.  On the island there was a really famous Japanese shrine and gate thing in the water, and we looked at that and stuff.  There are also tame deer EVERYWHERE that you can feed.  And they follow you and sometimes nip you, just like in Nara.  That’s really cool.

Then we took the bullet train back and some other trains and a bus to get back to Toyookasan’s house.  About 4 hours of public transportion…uh!  Then when I got home, I left again right away because Toyookasan’s wanted to go Okonomiyaki.  Osaka goodness, luckily.  But I was so worn out, I wasn’t very happy that I couldn’t just sleep.  Turned out as a very good dinner though!

And school was really great to be back in today.  It was fun, and nice to see my friends again, I forgot how much I missed them.  Today was a half day, with just a ceremony and cleaning.  Tomorrow’s a half day, but we actually have some classes an I have to do something with ESS after.  So yeah, been having fun lately.

Ok, today I’m going to talk about after school activities, or clubs.  I am in the English Speaking Society, like I mentioned before, mainly because that was the group that gave me a tour around the school and it looked like a good place to start making friends.  And I am extremely good friends with most of the members, and I like to hang out with them.

There are many clubs in Nagano High School, here are a few: Tennis (Soft and Hard), Soccer, Drums, Band, Basketball, Kendo, ESS, Baseball (I think), and some others.  Some students are in multiple, some don’t join one at all, but most just pick one and stick with it throughout high school.  Clubs are require a LOT of commitment.  You must go on weekends usually, they are after school everyday, and you still have them over breaks.  That’s part of the reason I’m part of ESS club, because it isn’t as commitment-heavy as some of the other Sports clubs.  Joining a sport would lessen the time I have to do things with my friends and host family, and also be interrupted when I have mandatory Rotary events.

I thought about switching from ESS club to something different now that I’m moving up a grade, but in the end I’ve discovered that clubs in Japan are a lot more work than what we have in America.  And if I had less friends and a less busy schedule, I might be up to that, but I can enjoy a taste of some activities through gym and other school lessons, and still keep a social life up and have Rotary happy.  Just an interesting part of Japanese student life.

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Off of that subject, I’m beginning the preliminary web design for my new Student Activist League website.  I hope to have it fully operational by May.  Hopefully do some in-school promotion for the URL before summer break, with Dean/Kent/Kayla’s help.  That’d be really cool.

I’m really excited to really start up my group once I get back.  It’ll be awesome.

I just wanted to comment on this random part of my life in Japan.

Here in Japan, or more specifically, at the Toyookasan’s house, it has changed a lot.  In America, I usually went to bed by 10 because I was just plain tired.  Now, at midnight everyone’s still up and carrying on like it’s the day.  2 AM is usually when I got to sleep if I have nothing planned for the next day, and 12 or 1 if I do have something going on.  It’s been this weird kind of transition, late sleeping, late waking up.  Of course, my host brother falls asleep sometimes at 6 AM, so yeah, it’s kind of weird.  Japanese students as a whole all stay up really late.

But today I’m really tired.  And worn out.  So I can’t wait to go to sleep.  Haha.  But that was just like random for anyone was interested in sleeping patterns~