Easter!!!

Sunday, April 20

Yay it's one of my favorite holidays!!! Apparently in Japan, you don't do anything special for Easter. When I was little, I always went on an egg hunt in my backyard and looked for my Easter basket hidden somewhere in the house. But Miyabi didn't have an Easter basket.

But we did get to do an egg hunt!
After breakfast (cereal. All day, erryday, I'm tellin' ya), I wrote my essay for Sadou (it had to be all in Japanese... *cries*) until lunch time. For lunch we had yakisoba (which I like, but it's so greasy!) with vegetables and then Yuko headed out to set up for the Easter party she was having for her English class.
Miya, Ken, and I were to follow after in about thirty minutes.
So Miya and I played the game my friend had sent with the pegs and the holes. Miya told me when she'd played it last night, she kept getting only two remaining (which means she's pretty smart). I didn't believe her so I made her show me. She got three first, but then was able to do it so only two were left! Uwahhh, sugoi!! I tried too, but I couldn't do it! I was starting to freak out that a seven year old is smarter than I am, when finally I managed to do it in a way where only two were left too! Haha. I showed Miyabi and she was like "whoa!" And then accused me of cheating, haha.

When it was time to go, we grabbed our stuff and headed over to the shrine right across the street, which is where Yuko was having her party. There was a little building in the shrine where we had to take our shoes off when we entered. In there, there was a huge room with sliding doors and a tatami mat floor.
Yuko had a boom box playing "London Bridge" in the annoying kiddy song way and she had written the schedule of what was going to happen on a white board, all in English.
Then she told me I was going to be reading a book. Wait, what? That was the first I was hearing of this. I hate reading books out loud. But whatever, I figured since it was English, no one would understand what it said anyway. But it turned out to be a super basic book. It was actually pretty cute, too. Each page asked if you liked something on your something, like "jam on your toast" and you would say yes or no and then you could flip the top (jam) or the bottom (toast) flap to get different things, like the next thing would be "jam on your toes." So Yuko wanted me to wait until the kids said yes or no before I changed the flap.

Kids started showing up then, so Yuko had me get out cushions from the cupboard and give them to the kids so they could place them on the floor to sit on.

It turned out that the kids were of a large variety of ages! The youngest was the one year old Yuko always talks about. And then there was Rana chan, the girl we went strawberry picking and to Hanamatsu zoo with. Then a bunch of kids Miyabi's age. And two 11 year olds, one of whom was there with her sister and were the two who had been over to our place for dinner that time back in January, I think it was.
Yuko made me say stuff to the older girls. I hate speaking on the spot, so I was all like "hello..." And they were super shy, but Yuko got them to say "hello" back. Then I was like "How are you?" And Yuko told them to say "I'm fine, how are you?" And then I didn't say anything else, because it was basically Yuko spoonfeeding them the words. Yuko was like, "nevermind! You guys are being shy," and then she turned to me and was like, "and you're being shy too!" Um, I'm not the one trying to learn English here...

First, we played London Bridge. I had gone to sit down because Miyabi had patted the cushion next to her. But then Yuko was all like, "Keito, suwaranai!" and had me stand up next to her and introduce myself in English, which was easy. I figured I was done after that, but apparently Yuko wanted me to help her the whole time and participate in everything. She'd never told me that, so I completely hadn't been expecting to be helping lead the lessons!! Like I said, I hate being put on the spot!
So Yuko and I made a bridge and sang "London Bridge" (but we said "Happy Easter" instead of "my fair lady") then, whenever we got to "happy Easter", we'd collapse and whoever we collapsed on had to be the one to make the bridge with me.

After we played that for a while, we switched to the alphabet game where Yuko had cards with alphabet letters on one side and a picture of something starting with that letter on the other side. For the first half, the kids had to ask me what the picture was and I said what it was, and for the second half, I had to ask them and they told me. For "I" I accidentally said lizard, so Yuko just went with it until I realized, and was like "nevermind, Iguana!" Lol.

Then we had pictures of food scattered around the floor and I called out a food and the kids would run to that food. We played that one for a while. It was so hard yelling over all of their voices!

Finally, then it was the egg hunt! I had to give everyone bags and say "here you are" (even though I would normally say "here you go" lol) and they had to say "thank you." Then Yuko gave me a bag too. We all went out and the kids were released in age order so the younger ones got a head start.
The eggs were hidden all around the shrine. It was cool doing an egg hunt in a shrine! I mainly let the kids get the eggs, so only got two for myself. After Yuko rounded everyone up, Ken found two more so Yuko have them to me.
I had to ask each kid how many eggs he or she collected and then tell them how many I collected (I said four). One kid had found thirteen eggs!!! Miyabi found six. Then we all opened our eggs to see the candy inside.
Once that was over, it was my showtime. Whoo, time to read the book. The kids loved it! They howled with laughter on all the funny ones like “Do you like jam on you toes?”, “Do you like a duck on your head?”, and “Do you like milk in your bed?” It was actually fun! At one part, I messed up and forgot which flap I had turned last, so I was hesitating, trying to remember and the kids all started shouting “shita! Shita!” So I knew to turn the bottom one, haha. Oh, and Ken recorded me reading it. I hope I never have to watch it.
And theeeen, we all got signs to wear around our neck and we had to go around asking people if they liked the food that was on our sign and then write down the name of the people who liked them. That’s exactly the same thing as what we do in Japanese class, except for us it’s in Japanese!
I was surprised when a lot of kids came up to ask me. I thought they’d be scared of me, but they weren’t! Yuko gave me a sign too so I could go around and ask kids questions. It was fun! That was the last thing we did. Yuko told them to bring their signs home and ask their parents, friends, and teachers those questions. Then she made them line up and thank me. Yuko gave me boxes of snacks to let them choose from, so they each could take one home. Their parents came to pick them up after that, so I helped clean up and played with the kids waiting with their parents until it was just Rana chan and her mom left. Rana chan’s mom told me “otsukaresama deshita”, which means I worked hard. I said “arigatou”, but I’m not sure if that’s what you say, or if you’re enven supposed to respond at all. We moved the tables and then Yuko came up to me and gave me some sugary looking bread that she said was made with black honey as thanks for helping her out. That was nice! :)

Then Yuko let Ken, Miya, and me go home while she stayed and locked up. It was sprinkling out, so I was glad I’d brought my rain jacket. When we got home, Ken said it was snack time, so Miya and I poured out our candy and ate it. Miya gave me her chocolate donut, so we’d both have one of each flavor! So nice!! She also let me trade my green apple Hi-Chew for her mango one, because I’d never had the mango flavor before. And it was really good! And we had little skinny, cylindrical chip things that tasted like asparagus wrapped in meat.

(My candy)

While we were eating, Ribbon jumped up on the table, so I rubbed her behind her ears and made her start purring really loudly. Miya thought this was AWESOME!!!! She looked at me in awe and told me she can never make Ribbon purr! I told her it’s because I have three cats at home, haha.
When we were finished eating, Yuko came home. We all sat in the living room and watched TV for a while. Miya tried to pet Ribbon and Ribbon ran away. But then she was able to, but she couldn’t make her purr!
Then Yuko and Miya lay on the floor to take a nap, so I went to my room. Yesterday, we had all been in the living room when Miya, Ken, and Yuko all had lay down on the floor to sleep haha. It was weird. So I just went to my room to watch Free!
And I did the same thing today. But I had to leave at 5:30 to go meet Emma for the International Party. I said goodbye to everyone and then left in the pouring rain to ride my bike to the station. Gosh, the bike rides smoothly. It’s like it never even broke.
When I got to the station, I realized I’d forgotten my train pass, which sucked. That meant I had to pay 300 yen both ways to get to Nagoya and back. Rawr. And it expired today, so I should have renewed it. Guess I’ll have to do that before school tomorrow. I was running late, so I quickly hopped on the train to Nagoya.
When I got there, I read the text Emma sent me more closely and saw she’d wanted to meet at Kokusai Center station! Crap! I knew you could walk there from Nagoya, but I forgot how. So I asked a security guard and he pointed me in the right direction. I found the entrance to the underground mall so I wouldn’t have to walk in the rain. Emma wasn’t at Exit 2, so I went into the International Building, and was about to go outside to cross over to the annex, when Emma saw me and ran up to me.
Then we went in to the party together. After we paid, we entered the big room where everyone was. The guy at the door bowed to me as I walked in and said “Konnichiwa” and then said something I didn’t catch before he said “san.” I was wondering what he had called me since he didn’t know my name. But then Emma came up and was like, “That guy knew your name! He said ‘Biseru san’.” OMG!! They remembered me from January?? Sugoi!

When we first got in, we started talking to these two guys. One was from Fiji and the other was Japanese. Then the program started and they put out the food, so we all went to go eat. While we were eating, Emma and I met a Japanese girl named Yui and another Japanese girl with really awesome nails! The food was the same as last time: katsu, spring rolls, dumplings, corn, raisin bread, chips, and fries.

(Emma and me with Yui)

Then we played a game, so we had to get in the groups that matched the letter on our pamphlet. I had A and Emma had B. My group was all really nice. We all played a trivia game where you had to write the answer to the question asked on your pad of paper and if any groups had the same answer, they were all out. They translated all the questions into English too, but I actually was able to understand all of them, surprisingly! The first question was to name a prefecture in Japan.
No one said the prefecture we put down, so we were safe!
Round 2 was to name a stop on the Higashiyama subway line. We said Kamiyashiro, and again were safe.
Round 3 was to name a country who has been a champion in the World Cup. Everyone in my group started listing country names who had been champions, and out of those, I decided we should say Italy. So the guy writing the answers wrote Italy. We were all ready to go, when one guy in our group brought up a list of champion countries on his phone. Then everyone decided to change our answer to Uruguay.
Well, it turned out there were four groups left. And three (including Emma's group and ours) put Uruguay. And the other group put something else, so they won! They hadn't put Italy, though, so if we had stayed with what I had said, we could have moved on to round 4. Rawr. That made me mad!

After that, there was a performance by this man and woman in kimonos. The woman played these two long string instruments, while the man played the flute. It was really pretty!

I sat next to Yui during the performance. And when they were done, we were allowed to go up and play their instruments. The flute was hard to play, but Emma and I both managed to make sound come out of it!

 

 

This was the sheet music for the flute!

There was an origami station, so Emma and I went over and a Japanese girl volunteering at the party helped us make origami shuriken!

(With the lady who helped us make them!)

When we'd finished, we ate some corn pizza and jelly and cookies.

Then these two Japanese girls started talking to us. Emma bonded with one of them over Takurazuka, the show from Ouran High School Host Club Emma had just gotten back from seeing in Osaka. Apparently this girl has seen it thirty times!!
So I talked with the other girl and she friended me on Facebook. Then we took a picture with them.

Finally, Emma and I went over to do calligraphy. We wrote "kawa" (river) and "yume" (dream). The girls working there, as well as some guys looking on were really impressed with our skills. We told them we were in a shoudo class. :) The girl wrapped our creations up nicely in newspaper so we could take them home!

(I drew "kawa"!)

(Me with "yume"!)

Then we went over to get our coats and purses. I'd been planning to invite Takuya to lunch this week because he's super cute, and I wanted someone with me when I sent the message, so I decided to get on the wifi and do it now with Emma. So I wrote an awesome Japanese text while she provided moral support.

Then we hugged Yui goodbye and headed out. Emma and I were planning to get the chick shaped donuts at Krispy Kreme, but when we got to the Krispy Kreme in Nagoya station, it was almost closing time and they had already sold out of all the chicks! Noooooo!!
So we planned to go Tuesday after hanga. Then we hung around the station a bit and talked until we decided we'd better get home.

I got home around 9:30 and Miya was asleep, but Yuko and Ken were in the living room. Yuko asked how it was and I said fun and that I had made a lot of friends! Then Yuko told me I could take my shower. So I did, and then studied a bit for my test tomorrow before going to bed.