Happy belated singles awarness day

I will start from today, and perhaps work my way backwards.

Today I went to Aeon (the mall) with some of my class mates and we saw the movie Benjamin Button, with Brad Pitt and all. And I cried. I tried so hard not to, but I looked over at my friend sitting next to me and se had her towel under her eyes and she was sniffling and I couldn’t fight it any longer. So I shed my first tears in a movie theater in Japan. The funniest part about the movie was that it was in Japanese. It was like watching an old Chinese Kung-fu film with bad English dubbing, except the other way around. Well… the dubbing wasn’t THAT bad, but it did throw me off a bit there in the beginning. It was interesting how the Japanese had to substitute certain voices and characters. Like the miracle preacher. This isn’t a character you can find in Japanese society, so the way his Japanese character spoke seemed really odd to me.

After the movie we ate doughnuts because none of us had eaten lunch and it had some home become four in the evening while we were watching the movie (how on earth!?). I just discovered I can’t spell doughnut. My English speaking mind is deteriorating. Then we took purikura… which is a strip of tiny photos taken in a small photo booth and then decorated at a monitor. Its amazing… I mean you can stick a little animated bit of poo in the photo… in fact… we did. Then we ate ice cream and made our way home. I had a good day.

Before that I’ve had two hectic weeks filled with various rotary events. Fist I went to RYLA, or Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. I got a new pin for my blazer. I had to participate in a discussion about what makes a person have a beautiful heart in Japanese… It was really hard. I basically looked like an idiot, but I think it got things moving. Next years outbounds were a little shy at first. They were shy afterwards as well but oh well.

Now I will go back to the beginning. I went to Hokkaido about two weeks ago. Hokkaido is Japan’s northern most island and is very very cold. Every year they have the winter festival in Sapporo with lots of giant carved ice sculptures. I saw these on my last day visiting. I went on a three day bus tour and basically got drove all around Hokkaido. First day we mostly drove and stopped to buy souvenirs. Hokkaido is famous for “nama caramel” which is a really odd candy that somewhat resembles gum. Its also really expensive so I only ate a little bit of it. That night we stayed at a Ryokan (Japanese hotel) and took a bath in a rotemoro (out side hot spring). And do too lucky timing we got to watch fireworks while taking our bath outside in the snow. It was AMAZING. Something I really can’t do twice in a lifetime. The next day we went really far north to see the “ryuhyo” or the ice fields in the ocean. We took a boat out a few miles till Hokkaido disappeared and then BOOM the boat is surrounded by odd enormous lily pad shaped ice … plates? We floated around in that for a few hours before headed back to Hokkaido. We stayed at a Ryokan again the next night, but no Ryotembero. That and I accidentally walked into the mens’ bathroom. And in Japan… that has a whole new consequence. That night there was a mini ice festival real close by so we went down and played around there for a while. Everything was made from frozen ice used from the river close by. And they had pretty colored lights to make an icy rainbow wonderland with a giant ice slide, that I slide down. It was epic yes. They also had little shrines made out of ice. It was actually really warm inside the ice too! I started to sweat.
The last day we went to Asahiyama dobutsukoen and the ice festival, then took a real late flight back to Tokyo. I got to bed at 2 30 that night, and had to stay home from school to the next day to rest and unpack.

That’s about all I got for now. I will try my damnedest to keep updating this blog, but like I said. 30 minutes a day. And updating the blog takes the whole time, so I’m a little reluctant to update it so much.

Photos on face book, check ‘em out.

Love You
STIL miss you
Half way home
Diana

and belated Hollidays.

I didn't do much for Christmas this year. There was a small Rotary party where we ate cake and such, but that was about it. I didn't do much for New years either, due to bad luck. My host mom is sick. Luckily, I went to another Rotarians house for a family party for New Years today, and I will be going out with him again tommorow, so my host mom can rest easy. Apparently this is the first time she has been sick in some 20 years. Tommorow I'm going to go to the movies to sea "The Day the World Stopped"? (I know the title in Japanese, and thats a direct translation). Any way, Keanue Raeves.

I don't have much else planned for my winter break from school. I go back on the 8th, and its the first time in my life I'm looking forward to going back to school. I'm quite bored here at the house. Im looking forward to tommorow though. I'm also glad that when I return to school, PE dance will be over finally. Since I came to Japan, until winter break, PE has been Dance. We started with folk, moved to ball room, and eventually we were givin the task of geting in groups and making our own dance. My group had 12 girls. You have to put together all your own music, make your costume, and coreograph the dance. It took about a month to do. My groups title was "Running moving garusu" with the running and moving in english, but the "girls" in Japanese. Our theme was being late to school. Out of 17 other groups we were voted 5th best, which was pretty exciting.I also took some exams before winter break. I took the German exam (which I bombed), and an Enlgish exam, which I did very well on. And before you go "of course" I was mostly being tested on matching Japanese vocabulary with Enlish, so It was somewhat challenging.

I feel really bad for anyone that doesn't own a dishwasher, because I have now just come to understand the phenomenon that is "dish pan hands" and no... its not when your hands get all soggy after being in water for so long. It happens with you wash dishes with hot water in winter, in a pourly inselated house. Basicly first your skin gets dry and itchy, and then it cracks, and then you actually get open sores that are like cuts... and it really hurts. I know this because I wash dishes three times a day now. I havn't got cuts yet, but my hands are rather dry and itchy.

Not much else to blog about.

Update when I have somthing better to say

Love you
Miss you
Diana