Fall Festival and other Adventures

This past week has been filled with much fun, I kept thinking "I can´t wait to blog about this", so here goes!

On Tuesday school went as normal, and I went to kyudo as normal. Apparently almost all the other club members were busy with fixing things for the festival, so it was a pretty relaxed practice. The sensei had a lots of time to instruct me, and he says I´m making great progress. He was pretty strict at first, but now we´re pretty good buddies. He´s translating an instructional  kyudo book for me, and even referred to me as "musume-san", which means daughter. There´s a kid that joined club after me, so I was instructed to help show him the ropes, which is funny cause I´m not qualified at all. It´s nice to not be the only newbie in club though.

TUESDAY

トリ・I noticed that they wrote my name on the scoreboard, I really feel like I´m becoming a part of the gang! 

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday we wrote our juunengo, which is our wishes for what our life will be like in ten years. On cute little hearts because everybody likes cute.

I also made everybody pose with their hearts, they didn´t seem to mind.

After school I was having pretty bad caffeine withdrawals by the time school was finished, so I stopped by McDonalds for some coffee.

Here is a picture of a vending machine, one of the reasons why I had caffeine withdrawals in the first place. My mom asked me for a picture of these contraptions, because I speak so highly about them. I felt kinda awkward taking a picture of it to be honest, because these things have become so commonplace for me, even though I was pretty excited about them when I first got here. Here you go Mom, this is for you.

On Wednesday there was a lunar eclipse. Couldn´t get a decent picture, but it was pretty amazing. 

THURSDAY

On Thursday the Takayama Fall Festival started. I only got to go in the nighttime,  because I had school during the daytime festivities. It was magical. The pictures I took really don´t do it justice.

Selfies with the staff because why not?

It was a pretty awesome night. Already looking forward to the spring festival.

FRIDAY

The festival continued the next day, and after school i biked down to the old town to try to meet up with a friend who was in town for the festival.  Meeting up proved to be a little tricky because of the lack of proper wifi, but I eventually found them. While biking around town I got a pretty nice tour of town, and got to see quite a bit of the festival. I also think I got some exercise.

While asking for directions I met some friends from school who were working at the festival.

Also made some new friends.

Some kind of dancing at the Hachiman temple.

My new friends were kind enough to send me this picture of one of the floats.

It was a gorgeous day, almost felt like I was in a movie or something.

When I got home from eating dinner with some friends I tried on my kyudo glove. I was pretty proud that I remembered how to put it on. Also, do you remember the deer from one of my previous posts? It takes one of those to make one of these.

SATURDAY

On Saturday I met up with my friend, Haruka. We had some mutual exchange student friends that introduced us. 

We ate some delicious pasta.

And played it dangerous by taking some pictures by the train tracks.

Also did some shopping. I didn´t buy Sully, but I might go back later to do so. He gives good hugs.

Also, it´s not a date if you don´t take puri. 

We walked all the way to the old town and took some selfies on one of the bridges.

The lighting was too gorgeous not to.

More shopping. Eventhough it was a Saturday, we wore our school uniforms because Haruka came straight from her school club, so I thought I´d wear mine so we could match. Kind of. We don´t go to the same school, but it´s cool seeing two different uniforms together, right?

We had some ice cream and a smoothie in one of the cutest cafes I´ve seen. Will be going back.

Roaming around in the old town.

More selfies. It was an awesome day. We´ve already planned another hangout. We walked all over town, so I slept like a rock that night. Which was good because I had to wake up early the next morning.

SUNDAY

On Sunday I went to our Rotary Districts Intercity meeting. I was the only exchange student there, but it was okay because I really got to bond with the members of my Rotary club. The picture above is of my next host dad holding a speech. I got to know him a lot better, which is super reassuring since I´ll be moving in with them next week.

We also had a charity violin concert for tsunami relief. It was quite cool.

At lunch this troop performed some sketches. One of them involved a guy in drag. We ate a lot at lunch, and the grown ups got pretty tipsy.  Hanging out with a bunch of old dudes isn´t as bad as you would think, it was actually very fun. I laughed a lot.

On the bus ride back to Takayama we had an ice cream break, the best kind of break.

This week is my school´s culture festival, on Friday I´ll be appearing at a concert, and Saturday there´s a Rotary conference, and next Wednesday I´m changing host families. 

I also finally finished my YouTube video after many failed attempts at making it, so please check that out: