Sushiro, purikura, and karaoke!

Since class only started at 1:30 today, I got to sleep in!!

When I woke up, Yuko had just left to go do her duty as the flag holder (today was her day to do it), telling the kids when to cross the street.

So I went into the kitchen where she had left me salad and two bread rolls for breakfast. I put jam and honey together on the bread, which actually turned out to be good! (I can't do weird stuff like this when I eat with everyone else because I freak them out, haha).

Then I did my laundry. After I'd hung it to dry, I still had an hour before I met my friends so I finished getting ready and went out to look at the bike.

Now that I was looking at it closely, I noticed one of the spokes was broken. That's why the wheel was tilting to the side. Man, I was going to have to get that fixed now!

When I went back inside, Yuko had come home. So I told her what I'd found, and she came out to look at the bike too. Then she said she could take it to the bike shop with me Friday, but we'd have to walk there since Ken would have the car. But she said she'd call first and ask about it, because it might be cheaper to get a new bike. Ahhh... I doubted it!

So then I headed out because I needed to leave now if I was going to have to walk to the station.

Well, I ended up getting to Nishi Takakura half an hour early! So I sat down on the platform and read my manga for twenty minutes. Then I decided to head up and see if Emma or Minju was there yet.

And Emma was! Yay!

Minju got there a few minutes after 11:30, and then we headed out. It was a pretty walk to Sushiro. There was a large sakura tree in front of a shrine and all its petals were falling beautifully. We also saw little elementary school kids in their yellow hats!

Minju had been right about getting to Sushiro early. There was no one waiting when we got in, but after we were seated, a line grew! 

We chowed down right away. I was so excited by all the cheap sushi, I forgot to take a picture of the first thing I grabbed off the kaiten! (It was a tenpura shrimp-like thing and so so yummy!).

They also had matcha powder and a hot water thing, so you could make matcha! Awesome!!

And when you ordered fresh sushi, it didn't come in a Shinkansen like at Kappa Zushi. Ah well!

Round 1. Love the ikura (salmon roe)!

Round 2. Emma and I both got the inarizushi because we were enticed by the fact that it was called "Brown sugar inari." Yeah, it tasted just like regular inarizushi...

And then I saw this weird blue fish on the kaiten. And I was like, oh man, I have no idea what this is, but I gotta try it! Because it was such a weird color, ya know??

My reaction when I bit into it: "what the fuck did I just eat??"

I still have no idea what the blue stuff was and I don't think I want to. Emma and Minju thought maybe it was umeboshi. But when I ate it, it had a weird hard, plasticy-rubbery texture, not as squishy as umeboshi. And it was sour, but it was also a little spicy. It was freaking weird. I swear that stuff is going to haunt my nightmares.

But I ate all of it!

After that, Emma and Minju were getting dessert, so I decided to get something too to wash down that disaster.

I got another set of rolls, tuna rolls. And then a matcha parfait!!!

I loooooooveeeee matcha and anko and am going to miss them like crazy when I get back to America. So might as well eat a bunch of it while I can (that's how I justify buying matcha chocolate all the time). And this parfait was perfect because it combined both of them!

I just wish it hadn't had as many of those weird fat rice krispie things as it did. The pink (raspberry?) parfait had cake at the bottom, and I wished this one did too. Ah well! It was still amazing!!

Oh yeah, come to mama!

It arrived!! Matcha ice cream, anko, and matcha jelly things! And then whipped cream, rice krispies, and vanilla pudding underneath!

In Heaven...

Emma got the matcha jelly things too!

In case you were wondering, here's the damage I did:

Awww yeah!!

After we finished, we went to take purikura!! 

We figured we'd have enough time, but we spent way too long doing it and ended up being late to school! Minju called ahead to the CJS office to let them know and we rushed onto the subway to get back.

We only ended up being 15 minutes late, so that was good!

When I got into the classroom, each of my classmates was surrounded by four Japanese people and talking to them. The CJS Festa was apparently something for Japanese people to get to talk to foreigners.

I actually went into the wrong classroom at first and saw Yukari in that room!

But in my room, the girl Haruka, I had also met at coffee hour last week was there! I felt terrible because she'd given me her email and asked me to email her and I'd completely forgotten.

After I got there and Dylan arrived (he was even later than I was), Mutsukawa sensei split the Japanese people up so we each got two. It was so fun talking to them! They moved around in pairs, so I got to talk to a lot of them. Most were ichinensei, but one girl was a yonensei (senior). Most were studying English, as well. I talked a lot about movies and books and food and things, haha. 

Haruka told me she had looked up Chris Pine and agreed he was totally smexy! Yes, I'm converting all the Japanese to Chris Pine lovers! Hahaha.

Some of the people I had a little trouble communicating with, but most I was able to keep at a conversational speed, so that was really great!

When class was over, some of the girls exchanged Facebooks with me. 

Then one girl, who I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to, but I recognized from coffee hour, gave me a paper crane! She had made one for all of us, even those of us she didn't talk to. It was so, so nice! And she wrote her name, Serena, on it too, so we would remember her!! Awww!

Mutsukawa sensei came over and was all like (well, this is my translation of what he said, haha) "Biseru san, are you okay? I heard you got hit by a car yesterday!" Lololol. I told him I was okay, but my bike was not.

Then I left with the girl who was a yonensei. She told me we'd talked at coffee hour. I felt bad because I'd completely forgotten! I invited her to come to karaoke with me, Yukari, Sara, and Hotaru, but she told me she was busy. Ah well.

While I waited for everyone downstairs, I looked at the kanji the Japanese students had written to summarize the past school year. They were so cute!! They wrote things that had happened last year on the right in English and it was adorable, omg.

The guy with the "study" kanji wrote about getting a girlfriend and celebrating her birthday!!

The girl on the bottom in the middle wrote about losing 8kg! (How?!?)

Then Yukari and Hotaru showed up. A few minutes later, Sara came over with her friend Yuka. But Sara and Yuka left quickly to go turn in money for something or other.
While I waited, I decided I'd start interviewing Japanese people for my project work project. I saw these two cute Japanese guys (well one was really cute, the other was maa maa). But I was too shy to go over, so I made Yukari come with me.
And I asked them my questions (in Japanese)! I'll put what they said. Well, Yutaro, the cute one, was the main one answering. Takashi just kind of repeated Yutaro's answers, haha.
1. When you hear "America," what's the first thing that comes to mind?
"Big"!
Takashi asked me if I wanted long or short answers here, but I didn't know what he said, so I just kind of laughed and said "hai," but Yukari told me later what he was saying. Aghh, I felt so bad!
2. What do you like about America?
"Nature"
3. Who's the current president of America?
"Obama"
4. Do you know of any American singers, songs, or movies?
Yutaro - "Monsters Inc."
Takashi - "Back to the Future"
5. How many states are in America?
Yutaro was like, "50... no, 40!" lol.

It was adorable. Then Yutaro started talking really good English to me! He told me how he's been to California and stuff. He was wearing a Hollywood shirt too. And he told me the two of them are graduate students at Nagoya University, but they were over here for some seminar. They told me they wanted to practice English with me, so Yukari was all like "Do you want to exchange numbers with her?" haha. So they gave me their emails and I emailed them later tonight along with Haruka, finally!

After that, Sara and Yuka came back, so we all headed to karaoke. At the entrance to the subway station, we ran into another friend of Sara and Yukari's. Her name was also Yukari and she was also half Brazilian, half Japanese! We talked to her for a while and then headed off to karaoke.
I was planning on taking everyone to Joy Joy in Aratama Bashi, where I'd gone with Taylor that time. So when we got to Aratama Bashi, we said goodbye to Yuka and then headed out. But then everyone decided they wanted to go to the place across the street instead. So we went there.

I hadn't said I wouldn't be eating dinner tonight, so I knew I had to be back home by 7. Therefore I had to leave at 5:30 and since everyone had taken so long leaving school, that only left us with one hour of karaoke.
But I was able to drink a glass of melon soda, a glass of hot chocolate and sing "The Beginning" and "Forever & Always" by T-Swift. But I queued up "Nagareboshi" and "Miss You," but didn't get a chance to sing them. :(
Ah well, it was probably for the best because everyone else was SO good at singing and I suck so hard at singing haha. There was such an awkward difference when I sang from when they sang...

The parfaits you could order. Salivating... I totally would have gotten the pink one had I not already had the matcha parfait earlier. I didn't want my stomach to explode!

But Hotaru got this waffle! She only ate it after I left, though.

Me, Hotaru, Yukari

After the hour was up, Yukari and I left. I really didn't want to leave, but I had to go home. :( Yukari came too because she wanted to see her mom. Her mom works at night, so she usually doesn't see her when she gets home. We talked a lot on the way home. I learned that Yukari is actually really good at English! I always thought she was bad because she would act like she didn't understand Sara and me whenever we talked in English and would never speak to me in English, but we had a whole conversation in English!

She rode with me to Kanayama, where we both took JR trains going opposite directions.
When I got home, a few minutes after 7, the house was empty.
No one got home until 7:40!! I was pissed. I easily could have stayed the extra half hour that Hotaru and Sara decided to stay! Man, oh man.
And then to make things worse, when Yuko and Miya got home, they told me they'd already eaten. So Yuko whipped up some curry rice for me and I ate alone. I should have just stayed at karaoke!