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.

Chugakkou!!

Saturday, March 22

Before I'd left for Tokyo, Yuko had invited me to join other ryuugakusei the Saturday after I returned from Tokyo and meet middle schoolers learning English and speak English with them. I said I'd go because it sounded like it could be fun!

 

Ken had taken the car to work, so I got on my bike and Miya sat in the back seat of Yuko's bike and we headed out. It turned out that this English group thing was taking place at a chugakkou (middle school) that Yuko reads English books at every month! It looked like all the schools look like in manga, haha. And the students all had cute sailor uniforms!

 

At the entrance of the school, we had to take off our shoes and put them in shoe lockers and then put on slippers. Miyabi had brought her school shoes with her so she wore those. It made me wonder why we don't have to take our shoes off at Nanzan?

We walked in and stood outside the classroom. There were so many students in there! Yuko saw I was getting kind of nervous and was all like, "Daijoubu, Keito?"

 

The hallway

Then one of the senseis showed up and told us we were actually supposed to be downstairs. We went down to the room he led us to and there were a bunch of other gaikokujin (foreigners) in there. There were four girls from Malaysia and a guy from Russia, with his host mother and host siblings (a little girl and three little boys. I was jealous he had so many siblings!). They were all younger than I was, and looked maybe middle school age (in Japan, that's 13-14) themselves.

The lady in there who I think was leading the class gave us all a cup of tea. But pretty quickly after that, it was time to go up to the class.

 

The class had about 25 students in it. They were some pretty cute kids!

First, we gaikokujin had to do jikoshoukai (introductions). I was the only one who could speak Japanese, so everyone else did their intro in their native language and then English. Then it was my turn. I started with "Ohayou gozaimasu" and all the Japanese kids were like "ohayou gozaimasu"! Omg! I didn't expect them to reply! Then I said all my introduction in Japanese and everyone was really impressed. Yuko was all like "jouzu!" And then I said it in English too. 

We played a bunch of games with them. The first game was Fruits Basket. Sasha, the Russiajin taught everyone the names of the fruits in Russian. It was a lot like musical chairs, in that in each round everyone rushed to get a chair and one person was always left standing.

Then we played a game where you had to form a group with the same number of people as the number called out. The numbers were called out in Malaysian, so it was really hard. I felt kind of boring, since my native language was English, and not something cool like the other gaikokujin. Whatevs.

At the beginning of this number game, we all had to join hands and Yuko and I laughed at how the whenever a girl was next to a boy the two of them got all shy and awkward when they had to hold hands, haha. Yuko asked me if it was the same in America.

I noticed that during this game, some of the girls took a liking to me and always wanted me to be in their group of whatever number the group had to be.

 

Then we all got cards with a phrase in English, Malaysian, or Russian on them. The English phrase was "Good Morning" and you had to find other people with the same phrase as yours. I got a Malaysian phrase. Then those people became our group for sharing time. I was in the same group as Sasha, so they put me in another group so that each group had a gaikokujin.

 

We all had to bring something we liked to talk about. I brought my pink goggles, so I could talk about my love of pink and swimming. So yeah. I talked about that. And all the little Japanese students in my group just stared at me with blank faces. Sigh. So I repeated it in Japanese and then they were like "ahhh" and nodded. That happened a lot. I'd ask them all a question and no one would answer until I asked it again in Japanese.

But two of the girls were fairly good at English and asked me a lot of questions in broken English. Some of them brought things they liked as well. One girl brought a whole bunch of PSP games, folders, and CDs from her favorite anime and asked me all about what anime I like and what anime is popular in America. I felt bad because I knew nothing about the various anime she was so obsessed with, but she told me all about the characters anyway.

The one guy in my group brought CDs of his favorite band. It's a Japanese band with an English name. He asked me if I knew it and I said I didn't. The name was pretty funny, I'm not sure he knew what it means in English lol. The name was Porno Graffitti. Haha.

Then one Japanese student in the group shared with the rest of the class what they'd learned from the gaikokujin and the gaikokujin also shared what he/she thought about the group.

The girl who'd asked me all about anime stood up and said that she liked talking to me about various manga and anime I liked! Aww. I shared that the group was interesting, everyone seemed to share a common interest in music (another girl said she liked karaoke, and one girl played the clarinet), and they were good at English and asked me a lot of questions.

Sasha brought strings for everyone in his group so they could play string games like I play with Miyabi! That was a good idea! And he amazed everyone by doing Jacob's Ladder. I can do that too

>:(

 

 

Me with the girl who really liked anime and asked me a ton questions haha

Then this girl and her friend who was also in my group told me how they love kendo and play kendo with the school and invited me to come watch their practice after this!
Then another girl and her friend who I hadn't really talked to, came over and gave me a purikura of them!! They told me something that Yuko translated for me. It's a Japanese expression that means "Please treasure this gift." O.m.g. SO CUTE!!
Then the girl pictured above saw them give me a gift and proceeded to give me this keychain of her favorite character from her favorite anime, Kuroko no Basket.

Gosh, they were adorable!

 

Then, while the students cleaned up the classroom, the gaikokujin and host families walked over to the gym to see the kendo practice. It was cool! The students all paired up and bowed to their partner and then started fighting. I'm not sure why the girls liked it so much. It seemed kind of rough to me.

 

Then that one girl who was obsessed with anime and gave me the keychain and her kendo friends ran in. They brought out a kendo uniform and taught us about the different parts of it. They also showed us the sword and different fighting poses.
Then the sensei asked if anyone wanted to try on the uniform. The other gaikokujin looked all shy and unsure, but I shouted "YES!! I want to!" haha. The girls were all really excited and took me to the locker room. A second later, there was a knock on the door and two of the girls from Malaysia joined us. Guess they changed their minds.
The girls dressed us and showed us how everything was tied together. It was a bit hard for them because they've only ever put the clothes on themselves, but they figured it out!
Then we got to take a sword too!

The kanji on my outfit is the name of the anime-obsessed girl's friend, who's uniform I'm wearing

Then the sensei picked me to tell the kendo players "arigatou gozaimasu." I did and then she told me to tell them in English what I thought, seeing them practice. So I just said thank you for letting us watch, it was really interesting and I liked being able to wear the kendo outfit. Haha. I'm so bad at speaking on the spot.

Us gaikokjin with the Japanese kendo players

Yuko got a close up of me!

The three brave gaikokjin who tried on the kendo clothes

And then I had to change out of my outfit because Sasha decided he wanted to wear it too. But then practice finished so he got to wear the guys' version, with a blue shirt.

Sasha with his host brothers and me with Miyabi

After that, it was time to go home.
When we got back, I played with Miyabi a bit and then we had spaghetti for lunch. After lunch, I wrote blogs while Miya and Yuko went to the store and then took Maple on a walk.
When they got home, Yuko made dinner and I made origami with Miyabi.

Her cute mini origami paper (called chiyogami)

Miya taught me how to make a ribbon and we both used half of the pink paper to make itty bitty ribbons.

 

Ken came home and we had dinner. It was this stuff they called chan chan? Idk. It had hunks of salmon and vegetables in it and was grilled. It was good!

After dinner, I said I had a surprised and Miya got all excited. Then I went to my room and got the Tokyo banana omiyage I'd bought.

When I opened it, I was kind of disappointed, because I thought they'd be soft like the Tokyo banana Minju gave me.

But they turned out to be hard cookies with hard banana flavored cream in the middle. I guess I really did get the cheap ones. But they were still delicious! I really like banana. The banana flavored Laffy Taffies were always my favorite.

 

We each ate two, one white and one brown. That left me with four of each left, so I can share them with my actual family back in America!

 

 

P.S. So I did some stalking. Since I didn't know the name of the middle school, I looked on Google Maps around our house and I remembered crossing train tracks, so I looked on the other side of the subway tracks and found the school! And then I searched the name of the school on Google and found the website! And I looked under the news for 3/22, and boom. Pictures of me galore!

Here we go:

 

Actually, I can't copy them and I'm on the computer at school, so I don't have my snipping tool, so I'll just post the link:

Click here to see pix of me on a Japanese website!

You have to scroll down a bit to see me. My favorite is the last pic of us with all the students in their classroom. I didn't realize they were all doing peace signs or I would have too!

 

 

Also, I finally got the purikura from Tokyo (the night we went host clubbing)! Sayaka's sister has a purikura account, so she helped Sayaka get all the pictures! Yay!

 

 

 

A まあまあ day...

Nothing really exciting happened today, but I've heard so much positive feedback regarding this blog that I decided I'd write a post anyway.

That being said, all you lurkers out there, please leave a comment! I love getting comments. They make me happy! :)

This morning at breakfast my iPhone fell off my chair and dented a tiny bit. :( It's really bumming me out. Because that wouldn't have happened if I had a case. But I've been looking everywhere and the only cases I can find are $17 and up. The hyaku en store only carries cases for iPhone 5 and 4/4s. I guess the iPhone 5s is still too new for Japan... Sadness.

But, hey, we did have cereal for breakfast! And the orange tea I really like and was craving last night. But of course cereal always comes with salad... Haha I still can't...

Yuko told me I looked kawaii this morning, so I think with my new 400 yen outfit, I'm finally starting to blend in!

(Whoo selfies! And see guys, no pink! I didn't even wear my uggs because I saw it was supposed to rain. But you know me, I have a pink shirt on underneath ;) )

So I found this Subway earphone thing in the street one day and I really like it! It's cute.

(See? It's a little sandwhich sticking out of my phone haha)

The trains still really baffle me. Like yesterday, I got on the 7:57 train and at 7:58, it still hadn't left yet. It was just chilling there with its doors closed. Then the doors opened again! So I guess if someone had been late they still could have hopped on, but no one did. Then finally, at 7:59 it left.

Today, I got up to the platform at 7:58 (I should have speed biked but I didn't think I was that late) and the train had already left! Whaaat, I'm so confused!

So I had to catch the 8:07 :(

But then, the 8:07 train showed up on the opposite side of the platform (aka behind me) and I didn't realize it, so I missed that one too!!! Ahhhh.

So I had to take the 8:17. Damn I was so scared I was gonna be late to school!

The train I finally got on at 8:17 made a stop before Kanayama, which was weird. I want listening to the announcer because I was too busy trying read what my new game was saying, so I almost got off, but I looked up and didn't recognize the kanji, so I just stayed in the train and thankfully Kanayama was the next stop.

Since I missed the subway I usually take, I was like oh man, I'm gonna miss the blind lady too. I like watching her because I'm seriously in awe of her. But she was on my subway!!!! 

Maybe I caught the one I usually take after all? Idk. Or maybe she was late today too.

So yesterday I bought Pokemon Pearl because I figured I could play it even without understanding it because I played it so much when I was younger. So yeah, it's been a challenge so far. Like at one point this guy on the game was saying something about a monster ball (which I figured meant pokeball) button and he kept saying it over and over again, until I finally realized I had to tap this button on the pokeball on the lower screen to make him shut up lol.

And this is the first screen where I completely understood what I was reading lol.

(Although I've never heard それとも used before)

When I came out of the station, it was pouring rain. That was a fun walk to school. When I got to school, I talked to my friends for a bit. Then I went up to class. One of the CJS ladies told us that Matsukawa sensei was "osoi", and I was the only one who understood that that meant he was late, so I had to translate for everyone else.

Class was pretty boring. At lunchtime, I met up with Rana and Emma and we walked in the rain over to Dagane. Emma told me that her host mother always sees pictures of me on Facebook and has started referring to me as "pinku ga sukina hito" aka person who likes pink. Omg.

I got the sides again because they had fruit and salmon!!

(Whoops someone already ate the noodles :P )

And then I got rice too because I was still hungry. Gosh, I eat sooo much here I've probably gained so much weight lol. But the scale in the bathroom at home is in kilograms and I hate converting all the time.

After lunch Emma went home and Rana went to the dorms with some of other friends. I didn't feel like going, so I went to the library to watch some of the movie, Onmyoji, that I was supposed to watch for class today. Whoops.

It took a while with my broken Japanese to talk to the librarian and find out where to get the movie and where to watch it, but I did it! The system here is that they keep your student ID card at the circulation desk and then you get a remote control and you can go watch the DVD on a tv that's in a little cubicle.

The movie was actually pretty good! I would have liked to watch more than the half hour I did, but I had to go to class. Apparently things get really weird later on in the movie though haha.

And it took me like 10 minutes to figure out how to make the freaking subtitles show up. But I finally saw the kanji for English so I selected that and bam, subtitles!

In class, the teacher was having so many problems with her computer so we lost a lot of class time.

After class, it was dark out. Esteban and I walked to my locker so I could get the manga books Emma gave me.

(The books. The one in the middle looks pretty risqué lol)

And then we rode home together. 

When I got home, I couldn't get the door open with my key for some reason, so I rang the doorbell. Miyabi answered with two girls I'd never seen before and told me they were her friends.

Their mom was here too. It was 7:02 when I got home, so we ate right away. We had curry on top of rice and salad. I spoke a bit of Japanese to the mom of the two girls, telling her where I'd got my outfit (so many people asked me that at school today, so now my secret shopping spot is known among the girls in CJS and this lady, dangit!) and about my long commute to school and how I effed up at the station this morning. It was a little intimidating at dinner because no one had told me we were having guests, so I hadn't been expecting them and I was trying to remember all the things Yuko had taught me about what to do and not to do at the dinner table.

Then I made origami with the two girls and Miyabi. The older girl, Kaori, was really good at origami and showed us all how to make 3D cubes that we all then played ball with.

Then it was time for dessert. We had strawberries for dessert. We each got four of them. They were so, so sweet and tasted better than American strawberries for some reason! I was excited and surprised because strawberries are expensive here!

Then I played with the girls a bit more before they had to leave. Then I played with Miyabi. Finally, after that I sat down to memorize the stupid dialogue I have to do tomorrow.

But hey, at least I'm going to an onsen tomorrow!! Yayyyy!