I was staying at Yoshimi's, and we were going to go to visit her Grandparents. For Lunch, we stopped at a Mcdonalds.

I got a shrimp burger(I had to try one) and a grape soda. They have grape soda everywhere in Japan. The shrimp burger was really pretty good, and I didn't feel gross after eating it like I did when I ate Mcdonalds in the U.S. And they recycle everything, even the ice left in you cup!

Yoshimi's Grandparents were so cute. And her Grandma's mother, who is around 80 I think, was there also and she was making sushi rolls when we arrived. I couldn't believe she was 80! She looks amazing.


We ate some of the Sushi and drank some green tea, even though we had already eaten lunch. The sushi was so amazingly delicious. It was savory but the carrot almost had a sweet taste.

Here is Yoshimi laughing at me as I took photos of the Sushi.


Her Grandparent's house was so beautiful, it was a large traditional japanese house, with paper walls and a beautiful garden.




I got to borrow her Grandmother's bike and we rode to the local mall, where we did Prikura(photo booths), shopped, caused trouble, and ate at 31 flavors. Here is Yoshimi imitating some strange mannequins...

One thing I am going to miss is the ice cream. I don't know why, but it's just better. I got melon flavored ice cream at 31 flavors, and there are actually tons of melon flavored things in Japan.

Then we rode back to her grandparent's house, and we ate some sweet rice cakes. These are really commonly given as gifts or eaten as dessert in Japan, they're really delicous. Rice cake is basically rice in a firm jello like state, and then filled with some kind of sweet paste. I think is is called Mochi.

Here is a photo of me with Yoshimi's family. From right to left there is Rika; Yoshimi's mom, Yoshimi's Aunt, Yoshimi's Great Grandmother, Yoshimi's Grandmother, me, and Yoshimi's grandfather. It's crazy to think that I was hanging out 4 generations of women.

So we said goodbye and everyone came out to see us off, even Yoshimi's great grandmother hobbled outside and sat on a rock to watch us leave.

The night before Rika(Yoshimi's mom) had gone for Flower arranging with her friends. Apparently it's a popular hobby in Japan, women gather and arrange flowers and socialize. She brought home her flowers and I took some photos of them.


Here is Shi-zu getting dressed. haha, I felt kind of bad for her.




The next day Yoshimi and I met up with Ayako at the Mall, and we also met Ayako's friend; Hisa, who left to Argentina for a Host stay on the 26th. She wanted to practice her spanish and english with me.

I bought some peach juice, it was yummy. They have a lot of peach flavored things in Japan too.

Here is a photo of Hisa and I.

Here is an amazing 31 flavors sundae Hisa got. We basically just hung out at the mall all day and ate ice cream.

we ate a lot of ice cream.


These are some guys with weird hair that I took a picture of. I don't think they understood me so they were kind of freaked out. haha.

Then we said goodbye to Hisa and went to dinner at a delicious sushi place with Atsuko.
There were two tracks on the sushi railroad thingy. It was really awesome, each table had a touch screen computer, and you could order something on that and then the track above the main one would have a fast train zoom up and stop with your food.

Shu-Ji

The second time I stayed at Yoshimi's, I got to go to a Shu-Ji (japanese calligraphy) class with her. It was a small, quiet classroom with a few people sitting on matts, bent over their work. We went with Yoshimi's friend, Judy. Judy was really funny, and she asked if she could touch my eyelashes. So I let her. haha.
The word I wrote was Sara in Hiragana, one of the Japanese alphabets. I'm trying to learn Hiragana but I haven't gotten very far. The Japanese alphabet is very different than the English alphabet, as far as the sounds. Each charachter represents a syllable. So far I'm trying to memorize a,(pronounced as in car) ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra, and wa. Here is a chart of the Hiragana alphabet:


And that is just Hiragana, then there is the Katakana alphabet, which is just as big. Katakana is used mostly for foreign names and words. THEN there's Kanji, which is derived from chinese, and are characters that represent a thing or idea and can have more than one syllable. And get this-there are 50,000 different Kanji characters. So if you want to read a road sign or anything in Japanese, the characters are a mixture of all three of these alphabets, hiragana, katakana, and kanji. haha... it's insane! I was talking to one of Aya's friends about the Japanese prime minister, and she said that everybody in Japan hates him. She said he is not very smart and that he knows less kanji than she does. It seems so complicated to me, but I think if I had lived here all my life it wouldn't be.
Anyway here is a photo of me at the Shu-Ji class with the Shu-Ji instructor and Judy, and some other guy who was super shy. So we asked if we could have his picture. haha.

Yoshimi is in this picture too. I don't know why they have those matching sweat outfits, maybe it's especially for Shu-Ji?


Here is Judy and Yoshimi.

I think Yoshimi is really good at Shu-Ji.

Here are my shu-ji hanging up to dry on the laundry rack.

This is one of Yoshimi's shu-ji that her mom showed to me proudly.

This is Rika (Yoshimi's mom) and I before we left to visit Yoshimi's Grandparents. I'm going to do a seperate blog on that.

Yoshimi and I.

I took some photos of the house before we left; they live in a really quiet but beautiful neighborhood in the mountains.

Night Out

I have been taking less and less photos the longer I stay here, but here are some photos of the things I've been doing. Some things were a while ago, because I've been lazy with blogging.
I have been going to sixth grade classes in my school to learn Shu-ji, which is Japanese calligraphy. To me shu-ji is art, and I'm glad I have an opportunity to learn it. Anyway, the sixth grade class was going to visit the junior High school, and I went with them. It was really embarrassing, because I forgot to bring my school slippers, so when we got there I had to walk around barefoot for a while. haha. But then they lent me some slippers. We went to an assembly where the middle schoolers sang in a choir, and they were really good. I wasn't sure if it was okay to take a picture so I snapped this one quickly. I think the uniforms are kind of cute, but I wouldn't want to wear one. Even when its freezing outside the girls have to wear skirts! Cold. And the guys get pants.


The assembly was really long, and a guy talked for 2 hours strait. I was nodding off because I couldn't really understand any of it. But then we went to an english class, and that was fun because I got to talk to the teacher.
So the next day was Saturday, and it was Valentines Day(I know, I'm behind). I got chocolate for Aya and her mom and dad, forgetting that on Valentines day they only give chocolate to the boys. haha. But it was okay, and they were happy to get chocolate. I got Mitzuyoshi (aya's dad) cute animal chocolates.

Later that night we went to Dinner with Atsuko(aya's mom)'s friends, who were really fun interesting people, and they wanted to meet me to practice their English. There were three guys; Torah, Bourbon, and Naoto. They're all in the Airforce, Torah(means Tiger in Japanese) is a fighter pilot, Bourbon (you can guess why he has that nickname)is a cargo pilot, and Naoto is a Flight engineer, and they all look way younger than they actually are. So we talked and ate and ate and ate and the food just kept coming. It was amazing food, I ate exotic raw fish, raw chicken, raw beef. The raw chicken and beef actually weren't bad. I learned that in Japan if you order "Spaghetti" it just means noodles, not actually spaghetti. Bourbon was really funny, he kept asking me to say "Audrey Hepburn," because he wanted to know how it sounded. Anyway it was really fun and they knew a lot of english, and then we went to karaoke and sang and ate some more. haha. Torah and I sang "more than words" together, and Bourbon kept trying to translate the japanese lyrics into english for me, which turned out to be hilarious. In this picture there is Torah next to me, then Ayako and Atsuko. I can't remember the woman's name, she came later during dinner and spoke very little english, but she was really nice. She requested that I sing a Norah Jones song for her, so I sang "Don't know why" for her.

Here is Naoto and I.

Me looking gross, Atsuko and Ayako.