This post is long-ish, mostly because I took so many pictures during my trip to Kyoto that I just had to include. This is about the month of April up until the 19th. Yet another really busy month, there were a lot of schedule clashes to put it that way. I love being busy, although it can be hard to find time to study.
The day after I came home from the ski trip, I went to this really huge tea ceremony with my host mom, our tea ceremony teacher, and my host mom´s cousin. I was going to try to serve tea during, which I had been practicing. I woke up early to get my hair done and to get all dressed up in a kimono. I´d been to a few proper tea ceremonies before, but this was a really big one, and held at some kind of museum from what I heard. There were several different tea rooms serving different kinds of tea, I was really nervous I was going to make a mistake, because tea ceremony has so many intricate rules and customs. I helped serve the tea once, which was quite the experience. I had a hard time sitting down and standing up wearing a kimono, which was a little embarrassing. But other than that it went pretty well.
I got to wear a really simple pink kimono. Moving around in these things is difficult haha
My host mom went to my host sister´s shop on the way back, and on the way home I ran into some of my friends out on a walk. I practically jumped out of the car to go say hi. They were first of all surprised to see me, and also surprised to see me wearing a kimono. It was funny.
This picture was taken my last night at the Adachi family. In hindsight I wish I took more pictures that night, but we were too busy talking and enjoying the last night together. I gave everybody the Norwegian candies that my family had sent over, and the boys especially loved "Seigmen", for people who don´t know, fruity gummi candies shaped as men. They kept having me guess which color they were going to eat. It was pretty adorable.
Some of the funny pictures I found of Takaya and Nao on photobooth. I can´t describe how much I came to care about these kids. They´re some of the cutest, funniest kids I´ve ever met, which says a lot. I really felt like they´re my little brothers, which made changing host families extra hard. I love these boys.
So the next day I changed host families. I was originally supposed to move in with my fourth host family, but because of illness in the family, they couldn´t host me anymore. My Rotary club didn´t have enough time to find a new host family in such short notice, so they arranged for me to move back to my first host family for the month of April, and then move back to my second host family for the month of May, before moving to my final host family in June and stay there until I leave. To be honest, I wasn´t thrilled about the thought of having to move more than I had to at first, but then I realised I would get to spend even more quality time with my host families, so I was okay with it.
It was quite surreal moving in with my first host family again, it was like all the memories from my first two months of being on exchange came flooding back instantly. When I met my host grandma for the first time in half year, she said that I had changed, and that I seemed more grown up. I certainly felt that way. She also said that I had gained weight, which is true haha.
After I got over my nostalgia, I just fell back into the same routine as before.
A few days after I left, I got a message from my host mom saying that when it was dinner time, Nao said he was going to go call for me. When my host mom told him that I moved to my next host family, he ran up to my old room to check if I was there. Hearing that almost broke my heart.
This is a picture I took at kyudo practice. Around this time I started shooting my first arrows. The snow had melted, and my kyudo teacher decided it was time for me to start shooting. It was scary at first, I was afraid the bow string would smack my face, but luckily that hasn´t happened. It was really motiviating to finally be able to participate fully at practice. I started getting the hang of it quickly, and I started going to practice everyday, which is 6/7 times a week. I also started going to the more difficult dance classes.
My host family took me to Shirakawa-go, which is a village an hour away from Takayama, whic is famous for its "Gasshou zukuri" style houses. Shirakawa-go is even a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was the first time I went there, and there were heaps of tourists. It was also raining buckets.
We took a shuttlebus to the top of the hill and we got this awesome view.
Me and my host mom. Afterwards they took me to a nearby Aeon mall, because we don´t have any proper malls in Takayama. I didn´t end up buying anything though. It was a fun outing, and I ended up crashing on the couch when we got home.
The last day of spring vacation I met up with Kokoro from my class. We went out for burgers, and bummed around the old town just talking about all sorts of things. It was really nice, so we decided to get all the girls from our class together at some point.
Kokoro is one of my best friends from my first year class, but after we started school again we wouldn´t be in the same class, which was pretty sad.
The next day it was back to school, which was strange because the classes were different, and the entrance was different. I couldn´t find my slippers, so I spent the first half of the day walking around in my socks.
While my new classmates had some tests, my current homeroom teacher told me about my new schedule. Before, I had the exact same subjects as my classmates, but from now on I´ll have a lot of different subjects with different classes. For example, I now have Calligraphy, Music, and Geography classes with third years, Sewing class with second years, and help out in a first year English class. I also have study time in the library and computer rooms. I´m a lot more active at school now, and I´ve made so many new friends because of this arrangement. And I feel like I´m more efficient with studying as well.
The first weekend back to school, I went to Nagoya to hang out with one of the exchange students from Aichi prefecture. It was the first time I was the one showing the directions, so we lost our way quite a bit. We wanted to to purikura, and had the hardest time finding it. Finally, we got to a game center and took some pictures, edited them, the whole spiel, and when I checked my watch, I realized it was twenty minutes until my bus left! I would have to walk all the way to the subway, find the right line, and get to the bus stop in time. I ended up catching a taxi instead, because if I missed that bus I would have no way of getting home. Luckily I made it. From now on I´m going to keep track of the time better.
The next day I had to get up extra early, because we had kyudo practice at the big arena doujo. We had to pack up our equipment and walk there. It was strange practicing somewhere other than the school´s doujo, but it was a nice difference. I hit the target for the first time that day.
On the 14th of April, Emma came to see the Spring festival. I picked her up at the station after school, and we walked to my place. Living right next to the station is quite convenient. We had dinner before having to make an appearance at this Rotary party thing. After that we went out and tried to find the festival. Unfortunately, it was raining so they couldn´t parade the floats around. It was kind of disappointing, but we got to see a lot of cool lanterns and stuff.
There were a lot of street vendors selling all kinds of food along one of the main streets. It seemed everyone was out, cause I met so many classmates and clubmates and other people that I knew.
I had a really hard time choosing what to eat. I ended up getting a chocolate covered banana. After we got tired of walking around and getting rained on, we decided to go do karaoke. We initially payed for two hours, but my host dad said we had to come home at ten, because of some kind of curfew. Luckily, we got our money back. We stayed up all night talking about all kinds of things.
The next day it was still raining, but we headed back to the street vendors to get some goodies. I got chocolate covered strawberries, candy strawberries, and takoyaki. After we walked around looking for other festival activities, with no luck because of the rain. We ended up walking all the way to McDonalds for lunch, because Center4 was full. We both got really queasy after lunch. We ended up going back to my place to hang all the way until Emma had to catch her train home.
It cleared up in the afternoon, so they brought the floats out for a bit. I think I´ll have to come back to see the spring festival again some other time.
On the 18th, my host mom and I went to Kyoto. I´ve been in Japan for eight months and had never been there before. We went by bus, which took about four hours. Takayama is two to four away from a lot of places in Japan.
The first place we went to was Fushimi Inari, which was pretty much the only place I knew of. It was the first time my host mom went there.
There were so many tourists there, and kids that were on their school trip
The shrine is dedicated to the god of rice, and foxes are said to be the messenger of said god. So there were a lot of fox statues around.
Before going to Kyoto, my host parents explained the differences between Kyoto and Nara. They basically said that while the streets and architecture of Nara is kind of dark and heavy, Kyoto is very light. Coming to Fushimi Inari, I noticed the "lightness", if that makes any sense. The colors were so bright.
When we first entered the path of the orange gates, there were so many people it was impossible to take a good picture. As we went on, there were less and less people. It was really cool, but also kind of eerie and claustrophobic. I definitely want to come back here.
My host mom and I, plus some random chick photobombing us in the background.
The path just stretched on and on and on.
I had to take a selfie with one of the fox statues. I had to. I also had to buy a fox plushie to hang on my backpack.
When we headed down from the orange gates, we found this tree with the fluffy kind of cherry blossoms. They looked like cotton candy on a tree.
Next we headed to Kiyomizu-dera. My host mom kept explaining me things about this place but it honestly all flew over my head, because my knowledge of Japanese history is quite limited.
Another fluffy cherry blossom tree.
On our way down we saw some maiko. My host mom told me that they were just tourists dressed up, which I kind of knew. Apparently it´s extremely rare to see real geisha/maiko.
We did some shopping, and had dinner at this place with Kyoto style bento, then we pretty much crashed at the hotel.
The next morning we woke up earlier than expected. It was raining, but that didn´t stop us. We headed to Kinkakuji first. There were so many tourists, and everyone had an umbrella opened. It was kind of scary.
I sacrificed getting my hair wet to get this picture haha
After that we headed to Gion, the famous geisha district of Kyoto. We didn´t see any geisha, not even any fake ones. The streets looked a lot like a wider version of Takayama´s old town.
Host mom brought me to this area called Gion corner I think, se said it appears a lot in historical dramas.
Kyoto is such a romantic city, I´d say it´s the Paris of Japan. I couldn´t help think about how nice it would be walking along the streets hand in hand with someone you love.
I saw a lot of Japanese people jump out of their taxis to get heir picture taken in front of here, so I decided to follow suit.
We headed in to a nearby sweet shop, where I ordered this parfait. I usually never manage to finish parfaits, and this time was no different.
We had more time then we thought, so we ended up going to a few more temples. Among them Sanjuusangen-do, where this huge kyudo competition is held every year on the coming of age day. there were a lot of Buddhah and statues of deities inside the temple, but taking pictures was prohibited.
Next we went to Nanzenji, where we had to climb up these dangerously steep stairs. the view from the top was pretty awesome. I did however manage to drop my lens cap on one of the roof tops, which kind of sucked. I ended up buying a new one, so all is good.
By the time we caught the bus home, I was absolutely exhausted. So naturally I wasn´t able to sleep at all on the four hour bus ride home. I slept like a rock when I got home though. It was a really awesome trip, I´m looking forward to going back some time.
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