school and birthday weekend

so school is going pretty well. for the first few weeks the japanese students were gone, but now they are back yay! there are about 4000 japanese kids and 150 ryuugakusei (exchange students). actually i dont know the real statistics i just heard this from someone but it seems right.

i joined 2 clubs, international friendship club and movie club. intl friendship club is basically meeting every monday and thursday for lunch to talk to japanese kids and make friends:) they have some activities like this next weekend but i can't go because of the ies trip to takayama. but all the japanese people i know keep telling me takayama is really pretty so i'm excited to go there. movie club meets every friday at lunch and we talk about movies, and make them too! my friend joo is writing a script and hopefully the movie will get made with the help of joel, van, and myself!

so i've met random japanese people thru the clubs, thru other ryuugakesei, and just randomly. it's great to speak to them in japanese as well as japan-glish. they speak english so we mix it up sometimes. today, this girl named akiko who i have met maybe twice gave me a birthday present of pumpkin flavored chocolate inside a little cute plastic pumpkin!!

speaking of pumpkin flavors, they don't mess around here. there is so much pumpkin everything everywhere for halloween it's awweeesommme. i had a pumpkin shake at baskin robbins that was like drinking a pumpkin. and they have a lot of sweet potato stuff too! (which i also LOVE) i got sweet potato flavored ritz yesterday! oh yeah and did i mention they have grape flavored kit kats here???

anyway, on to the weekend. so friday i did nothing. slept early for once yay! saturday was my 21st bday woo! for lunch, my host mom and sister took me to a Beni-hana type place where they cook the food in front of you. But instead of steaks, the chef made us big slabs of tofu!! (special order!!) it was awesome and so were the veggies! (including..yes asian pumpkins...yayyy) while he was cooking, my host mom and sister gave me prezzies! 2 t-shirts, a little stuffed animal cat (black like midnight aww) and a little lipstick size case. my host mom is still amazed i don't wear any make up..maybe she is giving me subtle hints that i should lol.

so after lunch we went shopping and i was texting everyone like crazy trying to figure out what we were doing that night. we ended up meeting at sakae subway station and karaoke-ing/nomihodai-ing. (all-you-can-drink) but they brought our drinks way too slowly. And we thought it would be 16 dollars each but apparently it was per hour and since there were 10 of us we had to pay 48 dollars each??? it was weird but oh well the karaokeness was still fun. (they make you pay afterwards...rip off)

yeah so i actually made the bus on the way home. on sunday i took the subway and meitetsu train to tsushima with joanna. nell lives in tsushima with her host mom at a buddhist temple. and there was a aki matsuri (autumn festival) going on so we were there for that! it was really exciting! everyone gets dressed up in matsuri clothes and the kids were so cute! we met this guy called "the boss" who gave us all this free matsuri stuff! and let us take pictures with his town and everything! and after the festival we went to nell's house for matcha (green tea) and food and okashi (sweets). It was pretty much AWESOME! it made up for the overpriced karaoke the night before haha.

So i've got some pictures I took from karaoke and the matsuri here and i'll post some other ones above.

byeeee