Gyoza making at my friends' place!

Sunday, March 30

It was pouring rain this morning! I ate breakfast with Yuko, Miya, and Ken and then headed off to church. I didn't really want to go in the pouring rain (it really sucks not having a car), but I wanted to try to see Manaka and her dad, because I was going over to their house for dinner tonight and I hadn't seen them since the end of February!

My legs got completely soaked on the way over, but I'm happy I went because after church when I had tea and this cool cracker thing...

...Manaka, her dad, and the Filipino lady who's daughter is friends with Manaka all were there and came over to talk to me! They all said "yoroshiku onegaishimasu", I'm not sure why. Do you say that when someone's going to come over to your house later? 

Anyway, I clarified the meeting time and place again with Manaka (3pm at Seiyu), and then I headed back home.

Also, I found out the Filipino lady and her daughter are coming as well, which made me happy because she speaks really good English!

When I got home, Ken and Miyabi were watching tv and Yuko was sleeping, since she's pretty sick. I went to my room and uploaded pictures from yesterday and did my homework. 

Also, for those of you wondering about my bonsai, it actually didn't die!! It's sprouting new limbs!

Ken, Miyabi, and I had lunch around 12:30 while Yuko slept. We had a scrambled egg on top of orange rice with hot dog pieces in it. It was weird, but strangely yummy.

Then Ken told me to vacuum my room, so I did that. It was weird because I'd just vacuumed before I left for Tokyo. But I think Japanese people like cleaning every weekend... Strange.

Then I went back to doing homework and listening to the rain outside until 3 rolled around. I said ittekimasu to Yuko and Ken and they seemed surprised like they forgot I was leaving, lol.

The rain had finally stopped! Perfect timing! I walked across the street to Seiyu. It was only 2:55, so I figured of have to wait for a bit, but Manaka and her friend (I think her name's Milayla) were already there waiting! I gave them each chocolate to share with their families.

We all walked to Manaka's apartment, which was only about a three minute walk from mine! On the way, we attempted to communicate with each other. Milayla was pretty good at English, probably because her mom is so good at it, so Milayla would translate whatever Manaka wanted to talk about. Manaka asked me about my favorite anime and told me all her favorite ones.

I always feel bad when middle schoolers ask me about anime because I never know any, but I told her I am going to try to watch Free! sometime, because she really likes it.

Then we went inside. Their apartment was really small, but it was nice and homey! I liked that when you first walk in, they had a huge cubby thing with a bunch of cubby holes for your shoes! It was way more space efficient.

In the entrance hall was the toilet and the bathroom (they're always separate in Japan). Then you kept walking and there was a door into the combined kitchen and living room. Off to the side was a room enclosed by sliding doors like Miyabi's playroom. Milayla's mom told me the name of that type of room, but I forgot! And then there was one more little room. 

I really liked that they had a nice long balcony with a glass door, so the room was light enough that they didn't turn the light on for a while. 

Milayla's mom and Manaka's dad, younger sister, older brother, and mother all greeted me when I came in! Milayla's mom took pictures of all of us and then gave me a gift of cookie-like snacks! So nice! They showed me how you can see my apartment complex from their balcony lol. Milayla's mom kept referring to it as "my mansion."

Manaka, Milayla, Milayla's mom, Manaka's dad and I all talked for a while, while everyone else worked in the kitchen. They had some snacks for us to eat too. I tried a bread with little fruits in it and it was so good! (Not gross like stolen). They also served me mugi ocha, which is a thick, cold tea served in the summer. It was good! I used Japanese a bit but mostly spoke in English so the girls could practice. Milayla's mom would translate for me, but I sometimes noticed her translating wrong, since Japanese isn't her first language either, so I'd correct her. She'd make little mistakes like say "rainen" (next year) when she meant "raigetsu" (next month). But I was really impressed by the fact that she can speak Japanese so well!

She told me about how she first came to Japan (she married a Japanese man) and had so much trouble, but she'd keep practicing. And now Milayla is really good and speaks really fast and sometimes she can't even understand Milayla! 

Manaka's dad was SO nice! He asked me if not being able to communicate is stressful. Hahaha, I told him all about my train pass issues.

Then we started making the gyoza! Everyone was impressed that I'd made them before. But it was a while back that I made them with my host family, so Manaka re-taught me. She was really good and could make them so quickly!

Milayla wasn't took great. I started out terrible, but then muscle memory took over and I started making beautiful dumplings.

I said I wanted to learn how to make misokatsu as well, since that's my favorite food. Milayla's mom told Manaka's parents that lol.

Finally, we finished all the meat, even though we had dumpling tortilla things left over. So we decided we were done! 

We talked some more while the dumplings cooked. Manaka's dad told me about this place called Tatayama near Nagoya that has snow tunnels you can go through in May! I want to go there now!

When the dumplings were ready, everyone brought food over to the table. There was SO MUCH food!! It was awesome!

We all got chicken, rice, mushroom and seaweed soup with bits of hot dog, salad, dipping vegetables, and gyoza! Uwaahh! They told me I didn't have to eat everything if I couldn't, but you bet I could! And they offered me beer, wine, and sake too haha. But I told them I was fine with tea.

During dinner, we watched a movie Manaka's dad had taken of Manaka and Milayla's Christmas choir concert at St. Mary's, where they go to school, in Gifu. They were really good! During one song a girl fainted from nerves and some of the girls started crying!

Also, they sang my absolute favorite Christmas song!! "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey and they sang it in English!! Ahhh! It was really cute.

When the Christmas concert movie was over, we watched a bit of Manaka at her archery competition (she's in the archery club). Then we watched some movies of their family skiing. Manaka's dad was all like "you probably can't go skiing in Texas, huh?" But I told him I can still ski, just in Colorado.

After we finished eating, we talked more. Manaka's mom brought out more snacks for us, including green tea kit kats. I love those! Then Manaka went and got ice cream for us. They were mini vanilla ice creams on a stick covered in chocolate. They were worried the ice cream would make me sick, but I told them that these were small compared to American ice cream pops. This prompted Manaka to ask me what typical American food is. I said "hamburgers" and she got all excited. She went to the adjacent room and brought out an English textbook that she uses. One page had a conversation between the Japanese and American characters. They were talking about what they wanted to order and they were each thinking about order enormous amounts of good (like two cheeseburgers, a slice of pie, a large fries, a milkshake, an ice cream cone, and pizza). But then the American guy was all like "If you eat that much, though, you'll get fatter and fatter and you won't be able to board the plane back to Japan!"

And then it was all like "Jiro decided to just get one cheeseburger and fries because he didn't want to be the fattest boy in New York." It also said if you ask an American what typical American food is, they'll say "sandwhiches, hamburgers, or hot dogs" lol.  And then it talked about how the food in America is huge, like hamburgers are as big as the plates and hot dogs are a foot long. I was reading it and cracking up, so Manaka asked me if it was true and I said it was a bit exaggerated, lol.

Then I asked Manaka and Milayla what American singers they liked and holy crap these girls have good taste. They liked Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne (even though she's Canadian)!!!! Manaka also like One Ok Rock (the Japanese band I love), so we sang The Beginning together! Ahh it was fun.

It was 7:30 then, so Milayla's mom decided we'd better leave. We got ready to go and Milayla's mom noticed these unopened SoftBank dog phone charms the family had hanging on a wall. Manaka's dad showed us one that was open. When you squeezed it, it barked!

I asked why they haven't opened them yet, but I didn't really get an answer, lol. Instead he gave me one! I was like "no, no, no!" But he insisted! Ah, they were so nice!

Then we all walked outside and Milayla and her mom got in their car and Manaka's parents and Manaka all took me home in their car!

Manaka's mom invited me over again so she could teach me how to make misokatsu!!! She said they'd email me! Omg! They are so freaking nice. I thanked them over and over and headed inside (they'd dropped me off right in front of my apartment complex).

When I got home just before 8, no one was home. They ended up getting home at 8:30. I wasn't sure if they went out to eat or what.

I finished up the last bit of my homework and then got ready for bed. Ugh, school tommorow... :/

(My gifts from everyone!)

Higashiyama Koen (and sakura)!!

Saturday, March 29:

Omg this morning was the first morning since I've been here that I woke up hot! My room is always freezing, but it's finally springtime! Yay!!

When I got up and went into the living room to say good morning to Yuko, she asked me what time I was leaving and when I said 9, she got breakfast ready for me. Look how cute breakfast was this morning!

She had made raisin muffins and they were so good! After I started eating, Miya came in, so we all had breakfast together.

Then I got ready to go and headed out. Today I was meeting a friend of my aunt's named Mariko! She went to high school in Texas with my aunt, but now is living back in Nagoya. I took the shortcut from Nagoya to see if I could do it with my new route, but I still ended up having to pay when I exited the station at Motoyama to use the bathroom.

Anyway, I ended up getting to Motoyama 25 minutes early! I wasn't really sure where to wait, so I just stood at the exit. Mariko and I had planned to meet at 10:30, so I was getting worried when 10:30 came around and she hadn't found me yet.

After about 5 minutes, this girl came up to me and was like "Keito?" and introduced herself as Nami. She couldn't really speak any English, but I figured she must be a friend of Mariko's.

She and I waited a bit before she decided we should go down to look for Mariko by the Meijo line exit. So we did and then we saw her exiting the platform!

She was really nice! She hugged me right away and I gave her the Texas chocolate I'd brought for her. She told me that Nami is her son's girlfriend. Her son currently lives in Michigan. And she brought Nami along because Nami went to Nanzan Daigaku too!

Then we all got back on the Higashiyama line to go a stop further to Higashiyama-Koen.

At Higashiyama-Koen, we exited the station, walked about 5 minutes, and there was the zoo! Mariko bought us all tickets, which was really nice!

Right when we walked in, we could see the sakura! They were SO pretty! Mariko kept remarking that it was too bad that the weather was so sucky. It was super cloudy.
There was a monorail that went all throughout the park, and in the distance I could see that big pencil-like tower I always see in the distance, but have never been to. It turns out it's in this zoo!

  

So we continued on through the park.
We passed these girls advertising Seto (which is an area near Nagoya. Nanzan has a campus there too). They gave us a bag of information about Seto and then asked me in English where I was from. I told them and then they asked if I was with my host family. I told them I had host family, but then Mariko clarified that she wasn't my host mother, but I was her friend's neice. The girl thought that was a cool connection, haha.
I had also been given a map of the park, so we consulted that.
First stop was the lions! There was a bridge that led to a little viewing area built right up in front of the lion area. Mariko told me the last time she'd been here, the bridge and viewing area hadn't been there, so you couldn't get as close up as you could now. So we all decided to go up to the viewing area.

 

 It was enclosed of course, with big windows, but still could feel a bit scary because we were so close up!
I really wanted to see the koalas because Kondo sensei had said Higashiyama Doubutsuen has koalas and Hanamatsu Doubutsuen hadn't. So we headed in the direction of the koalas.
This caused us to go up on this raised walkway where we saw a bunch of sakura trees. All the Japanese people were stopping to take pictures of this huge white one. I took a picture of it and then Mariko took Nami and me and Nami took Mariko and me.

 

Nami and me!

Then we continued to the see the tigers and bears. Hahahaha while I was writing this, I just realized it was in the order of "lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!" Lawlz. I wonder if that was intentional.
There was only one bear who was a awake. The tigers were cute, though. One cat was house cat sized, with leaopard spots. It was super cute! It was called a "yamaneko" (moutain cat) and is native to Japan.

We also saw giraffes!! I was excited since I hadn't been able to see them at Hanamatsu.

Hey, kirin!

Approaching polar bear zone

And then it was the koalas!!! They were in the "koala house." Again, only one was awake. But they were so cute all up in the tree branches!

Nemui koala...

The one awake one

Pretty droopy sakura tree in front of the pencil tower

 Once we'd seen the koalas, we walked down to the main area. On the way we saw the sea lions! They were so, so cute. One started sliding down the rock and tumbled into another one and the one he tumbled into started shouting at him and then they started fighting, haha.

Saying hi!

There were some seriously fat, lazy seals near the sea lions as well. They were funny to see!

We were all kind of hungry, so Mariko decided we could eat at the restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower (what the pencil tower thing was called) because it had a great view of Nagoya. Yay!
We got into the Sky Tower free with our park ticket, so we headed over. There was an escalator up to the lobby that only went up, so we took that up. In the lobby, we took a glass elevator up to the tower! We went all the way to the topmost floor (the 7th floor), which is where the restaurant was. It was 110 m above the ground! There, we wrote our names on the list and, because it was a 30 minute wait, we went down to the 5th floor to see the 360 degree observation room.
It was totemo sugoi!

 

Mariko showed me that we could see Nanzan! She was right!! I saw the orange buildings! AWESOME! I zoomed in and took a picture, see? (The two buildings with orange under the windows and the curved one with the green roof (which is the gym)).

Nanzan campus from the Sky Tower!

Nanzan's on the map!

We also looked around at the gift shop. They sold a lot of Nagoya themed things. And the okashi was all red bean flavored! That's so awesome Nagoya is known for my favorite Japanese sweet! :)
Thirty minutes later, we headed back up to the 7th floor. The wait for a table had now increased to 60 minutes! We were lucky we had come when we did! I went to use the bathroom, and when I came out, we had a table.
Mariko let Nami and me get our food first. It was a 70 minute tabehoudai, like Sweets Paradise! There were a bunch of different salads that I really enjoyed, yellow rice with clams in it, crackers with jam to put on them, and various kinds of pizza. It was super yummy. The restaurant was super fancy, but cost less than Sweets Paradise!
We had a nice view at our table, which was right next to the window.
And for dessert they had a large assortment of cakes! I wanted to try all of them, but I didn't want to look like a fat American, so I settled for three.
They were delicious!

 

When we finished lunch, the weather had gotten really nice and we could see blue sky. We went down to the 4th floor, which was the Sky Lounge to see if we could get a good view of the mountains now that it was clearer, but it was the same view as before, so we left the tower.
Outside, the sky was nice and blue and the tower looked really pretty against it, so I took some pictures. 

 

We visited the vivarium, which was right across from the Sky Tower. In there were bats, sugar gliders, bush babies, hedgehogs, porcupines, mice, and other creatures like that. They were so cute!
Then we saw the crocodiles. I found out that "wani" is the Japanese word for both crocodiles and alligators! Weird. They had three different crocodiles from India (that one had a really long snout), America, and Africa. It was cool!
Then we saw turtles and snakes. There was a huge python behind glass, just like in Harry Potter, lol!
Next stop was the botanical gardens! Yay!! That was the part I was most excited for! We saw a sign for the "sakura corridor," so we headed towards that. When we got to the beginning of the sakura corridor, we were a bit let down because the trees along the path up the hill had barely started blooming! They hardly looked pink at all.
But we went up the hill anyway. And it's a good thing we did. When we got to the top, we saw TONS of pink sakura trees! There was a huge orchard of a bunch of different sakura trees. Each tree had a nameplate on it with the type of sakura it was.
 

The name of this sakura was "America"! I liked that the tips were pink! :)

Mariko told me to turn around and smile, and this picture resulted from that. I love it!

Me with the "America" sakura <3

I think the rock says "sakura corridor". I know the first kanji is sakura.

We walked all around the sakura trees until we'd had our fill and then we headed out of the garden. On the way out, we passed various flowers and bushes. Such pretty scenery!

 

This statue was GIANT! Mariko and Nami said they'd never seen one so big before, lol!

Bamboo forest!

 

There was this beautiful, large building where a wedding was starting. And a guy nearby had a food stand and was selling these circular red bean buns. Mariko tried to buy me one, but I wouldn't let her because I felt she'd spent so much on me already! (She bought my lunch too).

 

 

Mariko wanted to go see this old timey Japanese house that's in the zoo, so we went over to it. But it turned out it closed at 4:50, and it was a few minutes before 4:50, so we weren't allowed in. But we got to look around the outside of it.
It turned out the zoo closed at 5, so all these announcements were coming on thanking us for coming and telling us to start heading out. Music played over the loudspeakers as well, as we walked back through the zoo. We'd wanted to take the monorail back to the exit, but it had shut down. So we had to walk all the way back. But I was happy we did, because we got to go along this path with a bunch of sakura!

Flamingos!!

Mariko also gave me a handkerchief and bottle holder! And that's the zoo ticket!

We left the zoo and then headed back to the station. We were all really tired on the subway ride back. We rode to Sakae and then got off there because we were all taking different lines to get home.
I thanked Mariko over and over again and told her in Japanese that today was really fun and that made her really happy!
Then I took the subway to Kanayama where I switched to the JR.

When I got home, I played with Miyabi. We read one of her kanji books. We played a finding hidden kanji game that I rocked at. Then we played games where there were a list of Japanese words and you had to find those things in the picture. I sucked at that because I barely knew any of the words! But I made Miyabi show me what each word was, so I learned a lot!

Then it was dinner time. We had these egg omelette things with rice, chicken, and salad. There was a new salad dressing on the table, that I really liked. It was a tad sour, but not too bad. Then Yuko told me it was ume flavored! So she was surprised I liked it, since I don't like ume. Haha weird.

After dinner, Miya and Ken watched tv and I went to my room and read my manga. I found out why it's been so hard for me to understand! It's not because I'm dumb, it's because the entire thing is written in Kansai-ben, so it has a lot of slang! Rawr, no wonder! But I found the English version online and read along with that because I was getting annoyed when I wasn't understanding a lot of it.

Yuko had caught a cold so she went to bed early and then Miya and Ken followed. I stayed up late talking to friends, so late that my head started to really hurt from lack of sleep (it was only 11, actually, I'm just a grandma), so then I went to bed.