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Rather eccentric blog of Melissa, an exchange student off to Utsunomiya, Japan. Join her as she blogs about her experiences in the land of the rising sun.
navigation to the left, click the V's.

Im back from Oosaka guys, and yes, it owned. Oooohh yeah :D
but seing as I did some other interesting stuff before that, I'm going to backtrack a bit...

The weekend before Oosaka I volunteered to go on a camp in Shiora, run by the local YMCA english department. It went from Saturday to Sunday and I spent it with kids mainly around the age of eight or nine and with two ALTS, an Aussie from Blue Mountains, Brooke, and a pommy. I forgot his name but he was interesting. He'll forgive me. Anyway it was pretty fun, I enjoyed it, the bathrooms were rank and the toilets were worse but I had fun playing soccer/volleyball/cricket with the kids. We made camp curry :D

After the camp, I helped out at the YMCA's Australia day, run by Brooke. Was pretty fun, cute kids, minties, damper, Aboriginal dot painting and very horrible Aussie country music. I enjoyed myself. I better have, the bike ride was 40 minutes both ways.

After Aussie day, I went to the summer festival in Utsunomiya held on Orion Doori. It was so good. Massive. Heaps of people, heaps of stores, I got to eat karaage, there were people carring those giant thingies to the temples and shouting and there was definitely drunks. I got to wear my Yuukata too. I'll post a pic when I can be bothered. :)

After the festival I went to Ibaraki to see my relatives again, pretty fun, got to ride eight trains to get there and back, and this time i rode my bike and caught the bus too. All by myself ^^ My cousin Aiko and I sat back and watched 'The L Word' seasons one to three, I skyped with Pranamie and my parents, I got fed Tim Tams and Filipino food. I loved it. Can't wait to go back :)

After that, club club club blah blah blah... and then, OOSAKAAAAAA (L)(L)(L)

It owned. I mean, the 12 hour car ride to get there, the heat, the sunburn, the overcrowdedness of it all... It meant nothing. I loved it. Seriously need to get back down there again. And my host grandpa was awesome, he owns a drinking bar - yes, alcohol. The house was pretty old too, japanesey. And on the tuesday I went to Universal Studios, oh hell yes. Also went to Sakai city, got to see all the massive moving things, bought stuff, ate yakiniku (mmmm) and took lots of photos. I loved it :)

So yeah, I got back from Oosaka last friday, went out and watched Dark Knight on Sunday with mie and took purikura, then got back in to club today. Dark Knight was so good by the way, new favourite movie. Anywho, from today, I have... club club club, and a camp on the last two weekends of august. Going to Kanagawa this saturday for camp, going to see andrew :O! Apparently he cut his hair. I dont know. I definitely cut mine :(


bye bye :)

SUMMER HOLIDAYS!
夏休み！

yes, that's right, I've finally reached the fifth month of my exchange and entered the summer holidays. Because my school is INSANE, we started on the first of august instead of like, 22nd of july like some of my friends, but we end on the 31st, my birthday :D. The downside is, I actually only have about 3 or 4 free days, what with three camps, Ibaraki, OOSAKA (oh hell yes) and... club. Yes, club. From 9 am to like, 2 pm, or whenever sensei decides he's tired of training us. (jokes. You're an awesome club teacher. just not when you make me do barbs. NO.)

so anyway, today was the first day of the summer holidays for me but I spent it at club. It was pretty fun though, we did doubles shuffle which is this crazy shuffly two person drill that goes really fast and requires you to smash, smash, clear then do those net shots which i cant remember the name of but are really fun to do. We did quite a lot of drills as well, and what the japanese call hard training... (you should see the tennis clubs workout, its MADNESS) but when we played doubles I won both (with mari-chan! wooo!).
I would have joined basketball club but considering in the past two months they have practised a grand total of five times, I decided to give them a pass. I WAS going to join tennis, too, but I decided I'd rather not die before I leave Japan. (They have a hard court too, which gets to 50 degrees on a 40 degree day, and they still have to do their usual 200 pushups, 200 sit ups etc).

as you can see I like club alot. :D

I thought I might mention my host father is in Thai right now on a business trip. He's coming home tonight though. Wonder if he'll bring some omiyagi (souvineers)? Usually, the Japanese love to bring home omiyagi, especially food omiyagi. They also love giving omiyagi to their friends. My host families always had a little something from somewhere in their kitchens. 面白いねえ。

Recently I also went to my first summer festival, and also watched Kabuki at Karasu Yama (crow mountain) at a festival called Yama Age (climb the mountain). Kabuki was pretty awesome, its like japaneseness and culture and history rolled into one show. Ancient japanese, no one understood but the grandparents, but it was damn good. At summer festival I caught four goldfish, then they died one by one in the three days after, leaving the very last goldfish which I have lovingly named Kamenashi Kazuya. (the others were Ryuu, Ryo Nishikido and Yamapi - RIP.) I love summer festivals. I finally bought my Yuukata (uniqlo lol) so I'll be going to the Orion Doori festival in utsunomiya in yuukata (which is actually quite boiling hot around the obi area). Can't wait!

We also recently had choir competition and dance competition at school - we came 3rd in choir and 4th in dance. Pretty good going though. We practised hard. Really hard. I mean, we didnt even go to club. ...I missed club then :(

Also we had Open House, which is like Open Night at penrith high, where potential kids come to see the school and we hold events for them. Me, being the exchange student, had to play an english game with the kids, which turned out to be Whats The Time MR Wolf. Carlotta, the Italian exchange student (who was here for a month but went home .. miss her) helped too, along with the exchange student course kids. We had fun, eating the candy and crankin' it souljah boy style (yup). I LOVE THE EXCHANGE STUDENT COURSE KIDS. they're insanely awesome.

Yesterday I also watched Ponyo of the cliff by the sea, which is the latest studio ghibli- its aimed for young kids but I went with my family anyway. (its studio ghibli. of course.) It was so cute. I loved it. I cant wait to go see Gegege no kitarou no. 2 though, I loved the first one. Going with Mie on one of my free days :D

Oh and I changed host families. I probably should have mentioned that earlier. I have to ride 3o mins to school, so thats an hour every day. I can do it in 20 but with my sister its 30 mins. It's pretty fun though, especially riding home and theres a tochigi soccer club game or training session on in the park on the way home.

That reminds me, I cut my hair. That is all I will say on the topic.

Last weekend I also met a bunch of american students because I volunteered at the local YMCA (which teaches english) so I get to be involved with all these international related events in Tochigi. These american students were here for 2 weeks and they couldnt speak english at all. It was pretty interesting. I had to translate for them from japanese to english, it was a little hard sometimes but I got through it. (よくがんばったよ！）

going to my first camp tomorrow with the YMCA in Shiora for the weekend. After that on monday I'm helping out at YMCA's Australia day, then Utsunomiya summer festival, then the next day I have club and then going to see my relatives in Ibaraki for three days... then on the tenth, OOSAKA! wooo!

I think thats pretty much it...
Going on hiatus from internet activities for a while, need to focus on studying, club and I have quite a few events to go to. Might blog after Oosaka though, so stay tuned guys!

じゃねえ！