That's fascinating Kelley, no really, it is.

Just to make my life a little more complicated, my university forced me to open a Japanese bank account. Today I walked to the nearest branch and attempted to withdraw money from it for the first time. I found to my despair that the ATM had no "English assistance" option, and I was staring at a touch screen with twelve buttons, each button with about six unknown kanji. I had no choice but to resort to pushing buttons at random. After about five minutes the machine finally spit out some money, although I suspect it was just trying to get me to leave.

On my way home I stopped by the 100-yen shop, the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store. Dollar stores in the US can be kind of ghetto, but the 100-yen shop is actually pretty interesting. You can buy washcloths, origami paper, toys, dishes, flower seeds, makeup and even food. I've been to the 100-yen shop several times because there's almost nothing else to do in my town, but today when I stepped through the door today I saw a brand-new display case of KNITTING SUPPLIES! Score!! I bought some yarn to make a scarf for my new Japanese friend. Then when I went home I realized that the yarn I bought was really ugly.

Yesterday my new Japanese friend Ayako and I were walking to a restaurant when we passed by a bridal shop. "Kelley, what color is your wedding dress going to be?" she asked.
"Um....white?" I said. I think I even said it in English because I was distracted by wondering how a purple wedding dress would look. I don't really remember. Ayako told me that sometimes in Japan women wear colorful wedding dresses, or sometimes a white wedding dress at the ceremony and a colorful one at the reception. That explains why I've seen bright yellow and orange dresses in the windows of bridal salons. I just thought they were prom dresses.

Do they have prom here?

Just Another Weekday

Here`s what I do on a usual weekday.

I wake up around 6:45 am, re-set my alarm and sleep until 7, eat breakfast, get dressed, stuff my backpack with textbooks and homework and head out the door to catch an 8 oclock train.

Often the train is too crowded in the morning to do anything but stand and listen to my iPod. Or "human watch," as my host father calls it. But really, watching salarymen, office ladies, high school girls in short pleated skirts and old ladies in kimonos doze off in their seats gets old after a few weeks. And everybody dozes off, including me. I'm lucky I've never missed my station. Occasionally I also study and memorize kanji while riding the train. I have nearly an hour on it, after all.

After the long uphill walk to school I buy my lunch at the convenience store because it gets totally swarmed during the afternoon, and the line of students waiting to buy their lunches reaches out the door. Usually my lunch consists of two rice balls, tea, and a dessert. Then I go in the bathroom and try to make myself look presentable and less like I just walked up a hill to school wearing a heavy backpack and sweating like crazy.

Next I have a three or four 45-minute periods of Japanese language class/doodling session. This is very, very taxing on my attention span. By the time I get out of class I`m usually starving too. On most days I also have other classes after a lunch break. The professors who teach us Japanese have code names among the exchange students. Only one is known by her proper name, Yamada Sensei. The others are known as Blazer Sensei, Super Genki Sensei, and Spazzy Sensei.

Blazer Sensei got her name by wearing blazers and t-shirts about three sizes too big. Personally I also think of her as "The Claw" because her hands are often stretched into sort of a claw-like position. Yeah, we`re not too nice to poor Blazer Sensei. It`s `cause she`s so boring. But despite her mild-mannered appearance she can be truly scary if you stretch her patience too much. Anger not The Claw.

Super Genki Sensei got her name by being hyper and cheerful every. Single. Morning. I don't know how she does it. She is also the only professor with any sort of fashion sense.

Spazzy Sensei, less widely known as "Crack Sensei," is probably the least popular of the professors because he's so crazy. Seriously. He waves his arms around and wiggles his hands while he talks. Also, his face is like rubber and he is constantly constricting it into new and disturbing expressions. While you're attempting to speak a sentence in Japanese, he will mouth the words along with you while staring at you intensely and waving his arms. If you get a word wrong, his entire body spasms like you just twisted his arm behind his back. When class is over he bows so low that his forehead nearly touches the desk. He also has a habit of wiping the white chalk dust off his hands onto the back of his black pants. I just know he was a problem child once upon a time. Spazzy Sensei's craziness makes some classmates nervous, but I like him because you can't possibly fall asleep while he's teaching.

Yamada Sensei is spared a nickname because she's pretty normal. She also has the sweetest voice, and no matter what she's saying she sounds like she's reading a bedtime story. The only weird thing she does are these drawings she makes. In class we do drills this way: when the teacher holds up a drawing of, say, someone eating, we say taberu (to eat), changing the verb form to tabekatta, tabenakatta, tabetakunai, taberareru, taberarenai, whatever the lesson calls for. Yamada Sensei has a lot of drawings, but they look like she scribbled them out in five minutes before class. Sometimes she holds up a drawing and my classmates look at each other wondering what the heck is that supposed to be. It looks like an umbrella wearing a sock. There's one that looks like the guy from the "Scream" painting, and somehow we're supposed to figure out that this represents the noun "free time."

Sometimes after class I go exploring or shopping with friends or alone. I take my time returning home because there's pretty much nothing to do there. Once I do return home, I do homework, take a shower, eat dinner with my host family, play some video games, write blogs, and listen to the washer chime a happy little song when it's done with the laundry.

Autumn Festival

Today my town had their Aki Matsuri, or Autumn Festival. My town in small and their festival is too, so it wasn't a really huge occasion, from what I could see. There were several groups of men, women and children wearing blue and red festival coats and pulling small shrines and floats on wheels around the town. They stopped at various spots around town chanting, beating wooden sticks, taiko drums, blowing whistles and waving banners. According to my host mom, at the end of the day everyone meets up at the local shrine and the children receive candy. Probably some small religious ceremony goes on as well but I don't know what. I took pictures while they were stopped, waiting to meet up with another group.
Here's one of the shrines:


I feel really white.


You cannot....resist.....the cuteness!!

I'm Famous

Japanese fashion magazines have strange names. "With." "Vanilla." "Egg." "My Nail." (The last one is a magazine solely about doing your nails. Yes, it's truly scary.) But my favorite magazine name has to be this one:

...even though they spelled my name wrong. At least they got the L's right, though.

Why Dad Should Come to Japan

That's why.
Makes a great desktop wallpaper.

Love Hotels and Ii Naosuke's Castle

On Sunday a Japanese friend, Saki, took two other American exchange students and myself out to Hikone Castle. It was an hour and a half drive, but everyone had so much to talk about that it went by quickly. On the way there we passed some strange-looking buildings.
Me: What is that?
Saki: That's a hotel for...um...a very specific purpose...
Me: Oh my gosh, is that a love hotel??! I need pictures!!
"Love Hotels" are a Japanese phenomenon (at least as far as I know) where you rent rooms by the hour. One of my goals when going to Japan was to get a picture of at least one. Be sure to read the signs on the one with the palm trees.


You've probably seen enough pictures of castles from me, so I'll spare you any more. Hikone castle was beautiful, but since it was the castle's 400-year anniversary, it was super super crowded. I enjoyed the old garden much more. It was really beautiful and peaceful. If I could buy it and live there forever, I would.

Notice the castle in the background!

I'm happy with the way this picture came out:

There was a ferry on the castle moat, and this amazing leafy swamp was behind the castle garden.

It was a really fun day, mostly because the people I went with were totally awesome. I pretty much live for the weekend here.

Maybe I should have chosen the dormitory?

This evening some fellow exchange students, who are with a different program than I am, got to see Aida in Nagoya. I am so jealous.

Another lovely family dinner.
I don't know why, but Host Mom was in a really bad mood. She was scolding her sons right and left in that growly voice she uses when she's really angry.
Whiney and Origami Boy, on the other hand, were in very high spirits and found everything hysterically funny. I don't know why. Even the head slaps they received couldn't stop the giggling.
Host Dad was trying his very hardest not to laugh at whatever the boys were laughing at.
When Host Mom is really upset, she seems to find things to scold her family for. And when she scolds people, she talks super fast so I have no idea what was said, although it's not hard to guess. This was the only part of the dinner conversation I understood:
Host Mom: Papa, why do you eat so quickly? Everyone else is eating slowly and you're finished before all of us.
Whiney: Yeah Dad, you eat like a shinkansen! (a bullet train)
As dinner progressed Origami Boy and Whiney's snickering was sending corn kernels across their plates and milk up their nose. And every time another potsticker fell to peices from their grinning mouths, to them it was so much the funnier. Host Dad, still trying not to laugh, cleaned off his plate and went outside to work on the car. I could tell that Host Mom was about to snap. Finally Whiney's hysterical laughing with his mouth full of half-eaten rice did the trick, and she grabbed him and dragged him literally kicking and screaming through the house, shoved him outside and locked the door. She turned to see me and Origami Boy watching with astonishment.
"Sorry about that Kelley," she said. "His manners were so rude."
I wonder if she wouldn't have reactly so harshly if I hadn't been there to make his bad manners more embarrassing.
Origami Boy was about to head towards the front door when his mom snapped,
"Don't even THINK about going outside!" She said it so fiercely that Origami Boy actually jumped and backed off. Later they had a hard time getting Whiney to come back in the house because he knew his Mom was going to slap him, which she did.

How was your evening?