Exciting news: starting at the end of this summer, I will be working as a CIR (Coordinator of International Relations) for the JET program in Chiba, Japan! Which means this blog is getting revived. Stay tuned for more detailed posts as I get closer to departure (countdown: 48 days)! :)

sayonara, japan

So I've been home now for more than 24 hours, and it feels both very weird and very normal at the same time. It was sad for me to get on the airport tram and realize that the handles are once again too tall for me to use, unlike in Japan, where they are perfect. :( I'm also not used to seeing people drive on the right side of the road again, so I'll probably put off driving anywhere as long as possible. On the other hand, it is very good to be home and see my family/friends. :)

These past four months in Japan have really been an unforgettable experience. I've met so many amazing and unique people from all over the world, who I hope to stay in touch with, especially if I start globe-hopping and visit their respective countries! I had a fantastic experience in a home-stay (almost everybody else I knew in homestays always had something to complain about, but I never did), and I not only formed a strong relationship with my host mom, but also learned a lot about day-to-day Japanese culture and life. My Japanese has improved immensely (if I do say so myself), and I will definitely have to keep studying from here on out so I don't forget everything (especially what I learned in IJ600 about formal/academic Japanese). And of course, I think I've grown as a person - for example, I feel much more confident about traveling to strange places by myself; Japan has definitely honed my map-reading skills! Anyway, basically I had a wonderful time in Japan and can't wait to go back someday! :D

So to wrap up my Japan experience, here are a couple of lists.

Things I Will Miss About Japan*
*not including obvious and specific things like people and places, though naturally I will miss them the most

- speaking Japanese! Granted, I spent probably as much time in Japan speaking English as Japanese, but I will definitely miss being immersed in the language. 
- public transportation. I loved riding the bus and subway everywhere, especially using my commuter pass!
- TV. Japanese variety shows are the best! Also I really liked the kanji/quiz shows, too. As an added benefit, no matter what I watched, it counted as studying Japanese! I will also miss being able to watch TV on my electronic dictionary, because that was just cool. :D
- convenience stores. They are everywhere and actually really convenient, whether to buy onigiri for a snack or even to print out pictures! I loved wasting time in conbini (as they call them in Japanese).
- 100-yen shops! Loved shopping there, because there was always so much awesome stuff for so cheap.  The quality is so much better than dollar shops here, too.
- vending machines everywhere. I didn't use them that often, but it was still nice to have them available. Also, Japanese drinks are pretty tasty.
- karaoke. Definitely need more real karaoke places in the States! Basements and bars don't count.
- ready availability of Japanese cuisine. Particularly things like ramen, udon, and donburi.

My Japan Experience in Numbers
- Time spent: 3 months, 3 weeks, 4 days
- Pictures/videos taken: 1,410
- Cities visited: 6 (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Gifu)
- Classes taken: 5
- Ferris wheels ridden: 3
- Shinkansen rides: 2
- Clubs/bars visited: 3 
- Karaoke nights: 3
- Onsen visited: 1
- Trips to Disneyland: 2
- Totoro towels bought: 2
- Mugs collected: 6
- Analog Fish CDs bought: 3
- Uniqlo bags found in my room when I packed: 7

So with that, sayonara Japan! Until we meet again. :)

bye-bye, nagoya!

So I'm currently posting from a youth hostel in Asakusa, on my last night in Japan! I still can't wrap my head around the fact that this time tomorrow, I'll be back home in America (probably sleeping). But before I get too into my mental state at the moment, a quick recap of what brought me here:

On Monday night, I went for my last round of karaoke with my classmates! Naturally, it was a blast. :D The next day, my seminar class had a nabe party to celebrate the end of our group projects. Nabe is basically like hot pot, except that you start out with flavor in the pot (there are all kinds, from cheese to curry to sesame and soy milk), and then at the end you add in either rice+egg or udon to finish it up. It was delicious! Afterward there were lots and lots (and lots) of dishes to clean up, though. >_<

Wednesday and Thursday were spent shopping/packing/studying; nothing too interesting there.

Giant shaved ice!

Friday was my last final and last day at Nanzan! :( I took my Japanese final in the morning (it was easy, I think, but I doubt I'll ever get it back so I'll probably never really know), then went to go eat shaved ice with my IJ600 friends! It was a really weird shop that also served green tea pasta and banana rice, among other things...the servings were also enormous! We ordered three shaved ice things, and we failed utterly at finishing them. -.-' And then Song-yi and I went to Lily's apartment to kill time before the CJS farewell party; I finally sat under a kotatsu (a heated table with a blanket), and it was heavenly! We need to start using them in America, though I guess if we did my productivity would just disappear - once you get under the kotatsu, all you want to do is just sleep there!

Anyway then we headed to the farewell party, which was crowded with probably all the international students (both those going home and those staying), plus a lot of host families, and in some people's cases (or at least one), real families! My host mother came too, and I got to introduce her to all the people I'd been telling her about for ages (friends, classmates). Then we all took lots of sentimental group pictures, which made me get all emotional about leaving. >_<

One of many sentimental group photos

After the party, I went out to a club with my classmates! We got in for free, by using various member's cards borrowed from friends, which was awesome. It was my first time at a club and was actually really fun (and hot and crowded). :D And then I had to leave early to catch the last bus (as usual), and as it happened it really was my last bus before leaving Nagoya. :( I spent most of the bus ride trying not to tear up when I thought about leaving; I was successful, for the most part. :)

Saturday I spent finishing up packing and cleaning my room! It was really weird and depressing to see my room all bare; I guess it'll just have to wait until the next host student comes along! Then I went with my host mom to send my suitcases to the airport through a delivery service (to save me having to lug them around), and then she sent me to the station! It was a very anti-climactic farewell (my host mom is not one for sentimentality), but it's okay because I'm sure I'll come back and visit them sometime. We did exchange gifts earlier, also - she gave me some placemats and tissue holders that she'd sewn herself! Hopefully I'll put them to good use. :)

Disney hats!

Then, after meeting with Song-yi at Ueda and wandering around Nagoya Station with Mary, I was off to Gifu! There I met up with a friend I'd met at Nagoya Swings, and we went to a swing dance party. Needless to say, it was lots of fun; again, my only regret is not learning about these dance groups earlier! Anyway, after lots of dancing, I took the train back to Nagoya and got on a night bus to Tokyo! Then after a long bumpy night (hard to get too comfortable on a bus), I arrived at Tokyo Disneyland! I thought it was fitting that I came to Disneyland right after coming to Japan, and then again right before leaving. :) My friend Anna and I spent the whole day there, courtesy of free tickets my host mom was gracious enough to give me, and it was ridiculously fun! It was not the same as it was when I came in August; now everything was Christmas themed and also really cold! Anna and I bought Disney hats to keep ourselves warm (also they were extremely cute). We managed to ride all of the big attractions (except the Winnie the Pooh ride, which was inexplicably popular; I'll have to ride it someday to figure it out), and we even rode the teacups 4 times! It was a great day. :D And then I came to the hostel and here I am now!

As for my current mental state: I am still very sad to have left Nagoya; I miss all my friends and classmates already, and I haven't even left the country yet! Both Anna and I still can't believe that we'll be back in the US so soon; we are also both a little worried about reverse culture shock - I bet when I land in the airport I'll be slightly shocked by how many "foreigners" there are everywhere...anyway, I still have lots to do tomorrow, so I want to get to bed now. There will definitely be a sentimental wrap-up post eventually; these four months have meant too much for me not to rave about them a little bit more. :) So, until then!

do i really have to go home?

So inserting pictures into my last post was complete fail on my part...I totally forgot that I was going to that until now, oops. -.-' But today I'm updating from my laptop (for once), so all my pictures are in easy access! This time I will definitely have pictures!

This past week has been full of shopping and friends (not so much studying, which could be bad...), because I've entered souvenir-buying modehile also trying to see people while I still can. Anyway, as a result I've been having lots of fun (and spending lots of money...).

On Wednesday, I went ice-skating on plastic! (Or just plastic-skating, I guess). It was a very tiny little rink and was much harder to skate on than actual ice, but it was definitely an interesting experience. I had imagined that it would be some sort of really special plastic, but really it was just kind of ordinary plastic boards. I discovered that I am worse at skating than I thought I was, but my friend Evan evidently is naturally talented or something, because even though it was only his second time skating ever, he had really good form and looked like a pro going around the turns...not fair. :P Anyway, I am very happy that Evan and Andy came with me that day, because everybody else bailed. -.-'

Jana and Eunjin playing taiko!

On Thursday in my Japanese class, we had a farewell party for all the people going back home this semester - a grand total of six out of twenty. People put on little performances, and it was really entertaining: singing a song about tofu, playing the ocarina, teaching Korean sign language, playing taiko drums, imitating the teachers/classmates (everybody almost died laughing), singing a traditional Scottish song. They also gave the people who are going home presents, which was ridiculously nice and a complete surprise! I opened it later and it was a pretty little bowl plus chocolate. :) It was a nice celebration, even though the next day we had class as usual. -.-' Still, it was a great way to wrap up the semester; even though academically this class has been really hard, my classmates are awesome so it's also been really fun. <3

And then on Friday, I went to one of my classmates' dorm for dinner! It was a spur-of-the-moment event, but in the end there were 9 of us, plus the three other classmates who lived in the same dorm. We all helped make Indonesian fried noodles and fried rice, which were really yummy, and just joked and talked and had an all-around good time. :)

Mary in the light tunnel!

The next day, my host mom took me and my friend Mary to Nabananosato to see Christmas illuminations! We'd been seeing commercials for it on TV for a while, and I wanted to go but it's kind of far from Nagoya, so I didn't think I'd be able to. But I did, and it was awesome! On the way there we stopped at Kariya Highway Oasis, the place with a ferris wheel that we went to way back in September (or October?), which also had some cool illuminations. The ferris wheel was visible from really far away, while we were still driving there, because the spokes were all lit up and there was nothing else visible around it. Then we headed to Nabananosato! It's a really popular place, so on the way there we had to park somewhere else and take a shuttle there, after waiting in line for a while. When we finally got there though, it was pretty awesome. There were Christmas lights everywhere, plus light-ups for the momiji, or Japanese maples, which were also really beautiful. There was something called Island Fuji, which was basically a moving observation deck that started on the ground but slowly moved up to way high in the sky - none of us had any idea beforehand how it worked, so when we saw it we were all amazed (but nobody around us was). It looked like a giant UFO, actually. I would have loved to go on it, except the lines were ridiculously long (again, very popular and crowded place).

Me and my host mom!

Then we got to the tunnel of light, which was exactly what it sounds like - a giant tunnel made of millions of lights, all in the shape of little flowers. It was really cool and also really long, so we just kind of wandered around surrounded by twinkling lights - it was great. Then we came out and saw the main attraction: Fuji and the sea. It was gigantic Mt. Fuji made of lights, plus a huge 'ocean' that spread out from the foot of the mountain up to the spectators. It was quite a big area, and also I think it may have been on top of a pond. The lights would change colors to imitate waves, and Mt. Fuji also periodically switched from blue to pink and purple and back again. There were even dolphins that 'jumped' in front. It was pretty breathtaking. :) After that we braved the crowds in the gift shop to buy souvenirs, because with the admission ticket you get 1000yen worth of vouchers to use inside, which we figured would be a waste not to spend. And then we lined up to take the shuttle bus back to the parking lot, which ended up taking an hour and fifteen minutes! It was crazy how many people there were waiting and how long it took for all of us to get back to the parking lot - I'm pretty sure there were still tons of people waiting after we got on our bus. So in the end we didn't get to eat dinner at all, but survived on donuts that Mary had brought us, and got home late and tired, but happy. :)

Collection of our student IDs, where most of us look really different!

And then yesterday I went shopping with my classmate Lily! I managed to find some souvenirs and we had noodles together before heading to Nagoya Station, where we met up with a bunch of our other IJ600 classmates for dinner! Our German classmate Jana said that the restaurant we were going to had the best tonkatsu in Nagoya, and it was delicious! Kind of expensive, but you could have as much salad and rice as you wanted, so we all came out very full. Then we wandered around to look at the illuminations around Nagoya Station for a little bit (not as cool as Nabananosato, of course, but still pretty!), before going back up the towers to sit around Starbucks and talk. I think we were being a very obvious and noisy/obnoxious group of foreigners, but it was lots of fun. And then we walked to Fushimi Station together (because my commuter pass doesn't include Nagoya Station), and then I went home.

This morning I went with my host mom to do official stuff like canceling my national health insurance, which really made me realize how little time is left! This time next week, I'll be on a plane on my way home, probably either sleeping or watching movies, which is hard to believe. I'll definitely be very sad to leave (I'm already starting!), but at least I'll know that even after I go home, I'll have friends all over the world (and lots even just in the US) who have offered me a place to stay if I ever visit, so that's a comforting thought. :) Anyway, there's still some time and lots of things to do before I start getting (too) sentimental, so for now I'll focus on those and end here! There should be time for at least one more post before I leave Japan, plus maybe some reflections during my final layover in Toronto, so stay tuned! :D

time flies

There are literally only two weeks left before I leave Nagoya - my night bus to Tokyo is scheduled for 11:30 on the 18th, which is in exactly two weeks and two hours! Unbelievable. I've already started thinking about how every time I do something or go somewhere, it could be my last chance to do it, which is really kind of depressing. All I can do is keep telling myself that hopefully I'll be back in a couple of years for the JET program, and even though I probably won't end up in Nagoya, I can at least come back and visit. That, and just try and make the best of what's left!

Anyway, these past couple weeks have been pretty fun.  Last Wednesday, I went to a kimono lesson, where I got to try on a kimono! I even learned how to tie the obi, though honestly I think I've already forgotten how. -.-'  After we had put on the kimonos (it took a long time! There are more layers and steps than you'd think), we all sat around and had some tea and snacks, after taking pictures, of course. It was kind of short, but a fun experience; the two teachers were very nice and so were the other students - one of them was a fellow Nanzan international student! They asked if I wanted to continue and take lessons, so that eventually I'd be able to put on a kimono by myself, but I figured I wouldn't really have time so I declined. They put me (and everybody else) on their blog, though! You can check it out here. :)

The next day was Thanksgiving, but I did absolutely nothing special. Also, apparently turkey is basically impossible to get in Japan; my host mom has never eaten it, and said that most Japanese people probably haven't! Crazy. I told her if she ever came to visit me in the US, I would have my mom make some for her (because I don't know know how to roast turkey). Anyway, I am sad to have missed out on turkey and stuffing - this was my first Thanksgiving away from home! (Though not the first without family; there was that one time my parents went off to Italy without me...:P)

On Friday, though, I went out with some of my classmates, which was really fun. We ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and unlike a lot (most?) Chinese restaurants in Japan, this one was actually owned by Chinese people! Which probably explains why it was so yummy. After that we went to an izakaya, where our Korean classmate agreed to treat us all to whatever food we wanted (but not drinks). He said that it if it were Korea, he'd treat us for everything, drinks and all, but Japan is just too expensive. Anyway, it was very nice of him. :)

Saturday I spent at the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens! I wasn't expecting too much, but it was actually quite pretty. The momiji (Japanese maple) leaves have finally changed color, so there were brilliant red trees all over, plus flowers and all the other cool plants. All we really did was look at the plants there, so there's not too much else to say about Saturday...

On Sunday, though, I went and danced in A Christmas Carol, like I mentioned in my last post. Or rather, I swing danced for one song during the intermission of the play, but it was actually a lot of fun! I met up with the other Nagoya Swings people in the morning, and after a quick rehearsal we went to a cafe to eat lunch and pass the time before the show started. The play was actually called A Christmas Carol With A Heart, and was basically A Christmas Carol, except set in Texas. It was pretty entertaining, especially when the little Japanese kids said their lines in English. :D Afterward I went shopping with my friend Mary, who was in the play, and we (finally) did purikura (print club) together! We'd been wanting to pretty much since we got here, so it was nice to actually do it.

And then this Wednesday, I went on a field trip to tour the Toyoto plant! Toyota City is very close to Nagoya; it took us about an hour by bus. We went to a few different facilities, where we got to see the welding and part of the assembly process. It was actually really cool, and the welding was unexpectedly beautiful - the sparks flying everywhere looked like fireworks. Last we went to the Toyota Museum, where we saw a quick performance by a robot that could play the trumpet (not really sure how that related to cars, but it was cool), climbed inside lots of Toyota cars, and looked at some exhibits. :D

Yesterday, I went out for karaoke, again with some of my classmates. It's been a while since I went to karaoke, so I was really excited to go again. For some reason, the place we went to was a combination karaoke/rent-a-car place. O_o Anyway, we were there for 4 hours, all of which were lots of fun - I thought it was funny how a lot of us knew the same anime songs. :D Hopefully I'll get to go karaoke again before I leave!

So that was the past two weeks! As for the next two, they'll probably mostly involve lots of presentations and studying for finals, but hopefully also lots of fun and good memories! :) At the very least, I know my last few days will be action-packed. The plan so far is: dance party in Gifu, night bus to Tokyo Disneyland, day at Disneyland, Ghibli Museum the next morning, and then home!

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures in posts nowadays; I'm too lazy to get the pictures from my computer onto the family's computer. But maybe tomorrow I'll do it and add some pictures to this post, so check back later!

one month left

Oop, big gap between posts, sorry! Life in Nagoya has been alternating between normal (class days/during the week) and exciting (weekends). Since it's nearing the end of term (I go home in less than a month!), classwork and final projects are piling up like crazy. >_<

Anyway, on to the fun parts. Last Saturday I rustled up some friends and we went to the Nagoya City Art Museum, which was rather small but also had cheap admission, which was a selling point. It was mostly modern art, by artists from all over, plus one room of works by locals. My favorite piece was a self-portait that was really just a canvas with the words 'head' and 'feet' indicating his height, plus some descriptive words in between. After that we went to the Electricity Museum, which is free and meant for little kids (we were definitely the oldest people there who weren't accompanying children), but I think we all enjoyed it much more than the art museum. There were lots of interactive things where you could generate electricity and learn about it (though I'm pretty sure all of us were too lazy to actually read/figure things out in Japanese), plus a room of optical illusions. Very fun. :)

And then on Wednesday I went to Cat's Cafe to tackle the giant parfait again - nine people this time; we left about 2cm of sludgy chocolate ice cream melt at the bottom, so I guess that was technically a failture. But it was just as delicious, so that's all good. On Thursday I went shopping at Hills Walk, the new subway station/shopping area near my house (though the subway isn't done yet), with my lovely friend Mary, who used to be my bus buddy every day but has now moved into the dorms. :(

This weekend I had a gasshuku (kind of like camp?) with one of my seminar classes! We met Saturday afternoon on campus and then split off in our groups to various parts of Nagoya, gathering data for our projects. My group had some hazy/complicated ideas of trying to observe if people responded differently to international students/see how much onomatopoeia/mimetics they used when describing people. We had people describe their favorite foods and then Christmas trees; judging by the answers we got these were apparently very hard questions. It was also really hard finding people who would talk to us and who were also willing to be videotaped; we spent at least two hours wandering but were rejected by at least half of the people we approached. -.-'

With the hard part of the project over, the fun part began! We met up with the rest of our class for dinner, which of course included a nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) menu, plus yummy food. It was really funny to watch everybody (including the professor) get progressively drunker as time went on; Japan really is a drinking culture. After dinner we walked to a nearby supermarket to buy breakfast for the next day, and then we went back to the 'Nanzan hotel', aka the living space underneath our student center. I'm pretty sure it's often used for this sort of class/club campout; there were several big rooms of tatami mats, plus bathrooms, baths, and meeting rooms. I found the pile of futons underneath one of the shelves very comfortable, so I spent a lot of time holed up in there (and eventually ended up sleeping there, too). It was a fun night, with card games (with penalties for the losers) and chatting and chilling out.

In the morning we had to be out by 9, which sucked because we didn't sleep until late, and then we continued our project work. Our main task was to get the video files from our cameras onto our computers; as far as I can tell only one group actually succeeded. -.-' So after trying for about an hour and a half, my group gave up and just watched the video on the camera and starting taking notes from there. Since one of our group members was gone this weekend, we ended there and then I went home and went straight to sleep.

A few hours later, I got up, ate dinner, and then headed out for Nagoya Swings! Basically it's a group of people (foreigners and Japanese people alike) who meet once a month to swing dance. I only found out about them this month, from their blurb in a newsletter I picked up, but I really wish I had known about them before! Even though I didn't know anybody there when I went in, it was a very friendly atmosphere so that didn't seem to matter at all. I got there in time for a basic lesson, which was basically just review, but after that there was open dance, which was ridiculously fun! I haven't danced at all since June, so it was good to know that I hadn't forgotten how (except for apparently lindy hop -.-' Almost everybody danced east coast though, so no real problems there). There were some really good dancers there, and one of the teachers said I was pretty good, so that made me happy. :) It also turns out that Nagoya Swings is performing during A Christmas Carol, which is happening at Nanzan this weekend, and I volunteered to dance with them then, too! It's especially cool because my friend Mary is in the play, and now I get to go see it for free. :) So I will get to dance at least one more time before leaving Japan - although one of the guys I met yesterday said he knew of another dance thing somewhere and would give me details later, so there could be even more chances! Anyway, I was really happy to dance again, and it was definitely worth having to stay up late to finish my homework afterward. :D

fall break!

Apologies for taking so long to update; I am bad at finding time to post. -.-'

Anyway, last Friday morning was the start of fall break, so I got up bright and early to take the trains to Kyoto! My mom's friend was working there for the day, so the plan was for me to go to Kyoto, meet up with her daughter for a little bit, then drive back to Osaka. The train trip was uneventful, minus the part where I got on the wrong train and got to Kyoto half an hour later than expected. I met up with my mom's friend's daughter Kiko, who has lived in Japan since she was 5 and so mostly speaks Japanese instead of Chinese (like me with English!), and we had lunch, wandered around some shopping streets, and went to a cat cafe! Kiko wouldn't let me pay for anything, which was really nice of her. After that my mom's friend took me back to Osaka with her, which was a 4-hour drive, including stopping for dinner. And then I was really tired so I went to bed.

On Saturday my mom's friend and her husband both had work (they're both Chinese/Chinese literature professors at different universities), so I planned to explore Osaka by myself. My mom's friend took me to her university, then snagged a random student who happened to be going to the station and asked him to take me with him. He agreed, luckily, and we got on the train together, where I found out his (last) name was Watanabe and that he was on his way to a part-time job in Kyoto. He even looked up where I should go after getting off the train for me on his iPhone, which was really very nice of him. And then he got off the train and I continued on my merry way. After spending a long time wandering the underground of Umeda/JR Osaka station and staring at maps, I made a plan for the day. First stop: Shitennouji, Japan's first Buddhist temple (according to Wikipedia). It was still pretty early in the day so it was very quiet and peaceful. It was actually part of a big park-ish area full of temples and shrines and stuff, so I wandered around for a while.

Then I went to Osaka Castle, which led me to the conclusion that all Japanese castles are pretty much the same. The architecture is very similar, so they all look similar, and inside is usually a museum or at least has exhibits of some sort which encompass several floors, and then after climbing a lot of stairs you get to the top and see an amazing view. That said, I still really enjoy visiting them - Osaka Castle was quite pretty, with lots of gold decorations on the outside, and the view from the top was gorgeous, of course. When I wandered out of the gate, I was stopped by a volunteer tour guide who offered me a map of the castle. Since I'd already been I asked her instead where the nearest station was (the Osaka castle park is enormous!), and she said she'd take me there. She was a very lively middle-aged lady, and talked basically non-stop while we walked. And then somehow by the entrance we got mixed into a group of young (probably late 20s) salarymen who were also from Nagoya, and who got excited when they heard I was from America and took a picture with me. And then after some explanations of the castle architecture that I didn't understand, the tour guide entrusted me to the group of salarymen and told them to take me to the station, which was the second time in one day I was told to go somewhere with some random Japanese people. Anyway, we only went as far as the parking lot before splitting ways, and then I got back on the subway to head to my next destination, the HEP 5 building.

The HEP 5 building is really just a big shopping mall, but it has a big ferris wheel on top, which of course I went to go ride. I went around sunset because I figured that would be pretty, but I couldn't actually see much sunset so it would have been cooler to go when it was all dark. Still, a ferris wheel is a ferris wheel, and I enjoyed it. After that I wandered around killing time in stores before meeting up with Anna and Liz from Carleton, plus their friend from Kansai Gaidai. It was great to see them again (and meet their friend), and we had dinner together, which was fun. And then I went back to my mom's friend's house.

The next day my mom's friend took me to Nara, which was maybe an hour and a half away by car. It was a rainy rainy day, but there were still deer everywhere, just hanging out. My mom's friend said that they're basically wild deer and nobody takes care of them or anything, but they're completely used to people. You could buy deer senbei (crackers) to feed them, but I decided I wanted to see the giant Buddha at Todaiji first. The giant Buddha, or daibutsu, is the world's biggest bronze Buddha (again, thanks to Wikipedia), and it was huge! According to my admission ticket, its ears are over 8 feet tall, if that's any indication. It was very impressive. Next I decided I wanted to feed the deer, even though I know it is bad to feed wild animals. The interesting thing is that even though the deer can easily get to the stacks of deer senbei that the vendors sell, they don't even try to eat them until somebody buys them. Once you do, though, they crowd around you and starting nipping and pulling at your clothes until you feed them - they were really impatient and one of them even bit my butt! It was a little alarming, really. But then once I ran out they understood right away that I didn't have any more and lost interest. Much better than feeding monkeys. >_<

Once we got back to Osaka we collected my mom's friend's husband and went to eat dinner! I'd planned to take the train back to Nagoya in the afternoon, so I could get home around the same time as my host family and eat a late dinner with them, but my mom's friend and her husband wanted to have dinner with me and even insisted on buying me a shinkansen ticket for Nagoya! It was incredibly generous (shinkansen tickets are at least $100 each) but they wouldn't let me refuse, so I'm very grateful for how nice they were to me. :) Dinner was yakiniku and absolutely delicious! It was all-you-can-eat for a specific time period, so we ordered a lot of things, including beef tongue (which was surprisingly tasty) and stomach (not bad taste-wise but had a weird texture). The all-you-can-eat included dessert, so I had one vanilla ice cream with blueberry sauce and then another vanilla ice cream with hot sweet potatoes; needless to say, they were really really yummy. And then I got on the shinkansen and was back to Nagoya in less than an hour.

The next day I went to an onsen (hot spring) with some of my classmates! Actually it is apparently more of a public bath than a real onsen, but it was basically like a spa and fantastic. The one thing about going to an onsen in Japan is that you always go in naked, which was a little awkward, but the water was so nice that we stopped worrying about it. There was an outdoor bath, which was really great with the wind blowing, plus things like a milk bath, sauna, and what were basically giant pots that you could climb into. It was very relaxing. After that we dressed in the loose-fitting clothes they gave us and met up with the boys to eat lunch, and then we decided to try out the sauna-type rooms. Basically they were rooms of varying (hot) temperatures where you could go in and lie down (and sweat) on top of heated rocks (or just on the floor). It was nice but too hot for me, so I ended up just taking a nap on the mats outside. It was all in all a very lazy experience, but I was still somehow really tired when I went home.

On Tuesday I took it easy and didn't really do anything, but then on Wednesday I went to the university festival! There were booths run by various clubs and teams selling food lining the road, plus a big stage with various performances all day. There were also lots of things going on inside the buildings, like an okama (male cross-dresser) cafe, which I slightly regret not going into because I think it would have been amusing, but there were actually a surprising number of boys in school-girl uniforms wandering around (maybe the cafe members on break?), so I probably didn't miss much. I think the school festival is a chance for people to dress in costume to advertise their events, because I also saw a lot of other random costumes, too. Anyway earlier I had been recruited to talk about America (aka bring pictures of Carleton/Atlanta and explain them) at an international cafe-type thing, so after lunch I went and did just that for an hour.

And then this Saturday I went to Meijo University's school festival, which was much bigger than ours and also more crowded. I spent the whole day watching dance performances, some of which were really cool, plus participating in a Ghibli trivia quiz. :D

Sorry this ended up being such a long post; thanks for reading it all (if you did)!