OCTO AWFUL


Guess which color team I was on?!

Sooo I should probably write this in segments of 2-3 days instead of 1 week because I have a habit of … forgetting things.

Oookay, this week started off with Monday. Bet you didn’t see that coming. It was practice for sports festival. Which entailed doing a whole lot of… nothing. We got all dressed up in our sports gear and went out to the field, sat in rows, sat in a different sort of row, ran back and forth a few times, sat in another row, ate lunch, ran out and did the wave, and sat in in a row again. Sit down stand up sit down stand up. Like church!

All this for about… 5 hours? Yeah. It was scintillating. I must have brushed my bum off for dirt more times Monday than I have my entire life put together.

Tuesday was the real deal. The school was divided into 4 teams, I and I was on the yellow team. My… favorite color. Thankfully, we spent lest time sitting in rows and more time… watching sports happen. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of some of these Japan only sports, so you will hear my beautiful words instead.

Relay, Obstacle course, you know the drill

Taifunome- Eye of the hurricane. 5 girls would all grab a pole and run to a series of cones, at which the girl on the inside parked at and the other 4 ran around her to the next cone. Actually pretty funny to watch. Especially when girls would miss the pole handoff and have to scuttle after it while the rest of their teammates would be dashing for the pole.

Kago thingy derp forgot the name; They suspend a basket about 12 feet above the ground and scatter beanbags around. The team that gets the most in within 1.5 minutes wins. I did this. This was all I did, since I had no idea what was going on at signups. I think I got three beanbags in. We won!

Piggy back fights; Three boys would hoist another wearing a colored hat, and run around with him. The boy on top would attempt to snatch the hat of the other boys. This was especially amusing since there’d be 12 of these 4 boy teams at all times and it was a total free for all sdfk haha. Slappy fights commenced, like the kind little kids tend to do and what you imagine Neo and Mr.Smith should be doing in the epic midear rain battle of the 3rd matrix movie.

Tug a war; Made more interesting in that maybe 150 people would participate at a time … or more.

Hoard the stick thing; Players would line up on the outskirts of the field, and a bunch of poles would be lined up in the center. The object is to get the poles to your team’s endzone. Proves hilarious when theres only 5 or so poles left and all ~80 players are on just those.

Wish I’d signed up for some different things! It was till interesting. My team won! Yess.

Playing field from the window of my classroom. Note Bike corrals filled to brim.

Wednesday was more normal. I cannot remember a single overly interesting thing happen. I choose not to correct this grammer on a reread to show you that my English is dying.

Thursday was my first Japanese rain. On the way out the door, I shunned an umbrella from host mom. Ended up getting completely soaked in the last segment of my travel. The girl that walks with us thought it was funny how I had the biggest smile on my face all RAIN RAIN RAIN and snapping pictures of the herds of cyclists all hoisting umbrellas.

Thursday was also my first real Japanese lesson with Shimo-Sensei. It was a lot of fun, actually, she kind of opened my eyes to a few things. That, unlike in English, if a person is saying ‘un un un un’ [yes yes yes] it’s actually because they want to you stop talking, and less of a ‘YEA I GET WHAT YOUR SAYING’ thing. Oh. Woops… sorry host mom.

After, I went to the Illustration [manga drawing] club with one of my classmates. [Who was giggling over something madly with someone else the next day about me, artclub, and the word Minami, which I was under the impression was her name, so I’m not going to make the claim that… it was her. CURSE YOU, JAPANESE NAMES. But I digress.

It was kind of… awkward. Uh. I do not function well in groups yet . There were some fairly skilled people there. Lo and behold, the classmate who took me was also skilled, and showed me some of her art on her phone. Who knew? [This lead to my giving her my DA, which led to her finding and google translating this blog, so I think that I’ll be watching what I say more here. Or maybe I’ll just throw in more confusing things to translate and talk in complete slange. I ‘LREADY FANCY Y’ALL MAI HOMEDAWGS PLEASE DON'T CONSIDER ME SKETCHY]

It only took me a 5000 miles to find people who share my interests. Great.

I don’t know if I’ll go back, though. There’s a few other clubs I’m interested in too.


Rain!

Friday, I visited the art club. Whenever I’d brought up the subject at school, I would always get EMIRI BE CAREFUL THE ART CLUB TEACHER IS REALLY WEIRD.
He ended up being yes, a little strange, but also nice. It was pretty funny, actually. This school is used to having exchange students, so it was a little weird when people actually were interested in me at the club. I managed to make the first impression that I didn’t understand Nihongo at all, and ended up getting the English treatment from the Teacher and 2 girls. Which. Was. Hilarious. We just kept looking at each other like all ‘YEAH. WHAT?’

I met two girls there, one of which’s art I had intensely admired at the art exhibit during culture fest. I was all ‘oh so what do you like to draw!’ and she whipped out her phone and showed me… dang! I had one of those ‘tt- t- t-that was you! Amazing!’ Reactions and she just laughed kind of embarrassed like. She was really nice, and it was pretty funny when she was trying to express the order in which I should be drawing this bottle and peach.

I ended up drawing a flower for most of the time, which I promptly took home with me and gave to my host Mama like a 6th grader finishing her first crayon drawing and giving it up to the refrigerator, haha. I’m going to miss her a lot when I change families. : (

Saturday has been shopping day. Me, Hmom, Hsis, and Hbro piled into the car and ran into town to go to this huge shopping mall. Ow. My feet hurt by the end of that. Japanese clothes are ridiculously expensive. I went with 4,500 yen [Approx 50 $] and left with a hat, 100 yen, and two plain, flimsy shirts. Seriously.

Lunch time, Host sis enthusiastically said to me, "SO EM YOU KNOW WHAT TAKO IS IT’S REALLY GOOD."
I was all! Tako! Oh, like Taco? Mexican food? Yeah, I love tacos! .
So she rushes off and gets us tako. Which are actually not Mexican food, by the way. They are these fried balls. I didn’t comprehend. I smiled and nodded.

I got about halfway through one and… found a tentacle. In my fried ball. A purple one.
Cue freakout

Imagine. You are eating this thing fried thing. You have no idea. You eat half of it. You hover your chopsticks over the rest of it expectantly, look down, and catch a glimpse of the tip of a curled up purple tentacle nestled in the creamy white sauce. It looks like something out of a horror film.

Goodbye, appetite.

Hello, Octopus.

Bubble tea made things better later. Strawberry milk with tapioca balls. Delish.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we are apparently going to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka! Should be fun.

Monday is no school. Yay!

Tuesday or Wednesday, I plan to visit badminton club and finish up my visitation rounds for clubs. Then decision time.


Week 4, OVER AND OUT.
[One month already? No way.]