Hello 日本

Yesterday (it was Monday, but I had a break from school for “School Foundation Day”) my host mother drove me and Amy to Osaka to go to USJ – Universal Studios Japan!
We were going to also meet Sehee there, but it turns out she didn’t go after all because her host sister was sick. The universe seems to be against her and Amy meeting.

It was rather expensive to get in; around $58 CAD. I was almost considering going somewhere else instead, but I didn’t know what was around and we did want to check it out. Luckily we got there fairly early, so there weren’t any long lines or anything.

The first part is a sort of outside street with all sorts of gift shops. It was set up like a street in Hollywood, as I think that’s the main theme of the park. The rollercoaster is called “Hollywood Dream”. We didn’t go on it. I could not do that.

We walked around for a while, exploring. We discovered an awesome retro-diner and a crazy pink ice cream parlor. We also discovered a purikura building! We got some pretty awesome purikura, but it was pretty expensive and we didn’t get to decorate them or send them to my phone! So that kind of sucked at the same time.

After that, we went to check out the ET ride, but we were feeling rather impatient at the time, and after getting in line, we left shortly. We went over to check out Terminator 2 3-D and since there wasn’t a long line up, we decided to do it. We got kind of annoyed, because we ended up waiting in line for a while and then we were all shuffled into this room to listen to some lady blabber on and watch a dumb movie, but after that we FINALLY went into the theatre to see the actual 3-D part. It was pretty awesome, and included wind and smoke effects. And there were actually actors on stage doing part of it too. It was pretty hilarious when the Japanese guy was like, “I’LL BE BACK!”. After that we went to eat lunch at the retro-diner. I had some chicken nuggets and melon soda. Mmmm, melon soda <3

After lunch, we wandered around some more. It started to get a little warm out, so Amy and I stopped so that Amy could take off her sweater. While she’s doing that, this group of 7 boys and a photographer come up to us and ask if they can take a picture with us!! We start freaking out and laughing and are like, “OKAY!!” So we stood there and had our pictures taken with this guys on like 6 cameras and a cellphone. And after that, the photographer guy kept taking pictures of just me and Amy! After reflecting on this, we decided it was kind of creepy, really….Still, that moment definitely made our day.

We wandered around another section of oldish-looking buildings. It was really cool, but of course they were all fake and you couldn’t go inside any of them. We stopped in front of the Spiderman ride and contemplated going in, but instead we just got a melon soda slushie. It was delicious. I love melon soda, have I mentioned this?

At this point, we consulted the map and made a plan. We walked to the Back to the Future ride and decided we wanted to go on it. We waited in line and were done with the ride in about one hour. It was pretty awesome, actually. I was expecting an indoor rollercoaster, but it was actually like a giant Imax screen with us and 5 other people in a car. It was pretty awesome, I love that feeling where it’s like you’re actually there. I also may have been cured of my fear of heights, due to the fact that the screen showed us toppling off of massive cliffs into icebergs and hot boiling lava, etc.

Next we made our way through the Jurassic Park, Waterworld, and Amity Island areas. They were rather unexciting. We finally reached our destination, The Land of Oz! It was pretty awesome, with super cute buildings. However, we kept straying from the yellow brick road and Amy and I had to constantly remind each other to keep to the road! Unfortunately, there weren’t any showings of Wicked that day, so there wasn’t really much to do there.

We slowly made our way back to the entrance, stopping on our way at the pink ice cream parlor for some ice cream. I had caramel and triple chocolate and Amy got a sundae with a cute Pink Panther mug for her to keep

After that, I mailed Mama and we browsed through a gift store (I bought Spiderman chocolate crunchie things. You are supposed to buy people presents when you go somewhere) and went and saw the Hard Rock Cafe. Then we went and sat out in the parking lot for a while until my Mama arrived and then we went home! Yay!

Today was actually an amazingly fun day, despite me hating that I was going back to school.
My first class was supposed to be Chemistry, but in homeroom, Kawamoto-sensei came and told me that I had self-study instead. I readily agreed to this, even though she’s been wrong every other time there is a schedule change. But no one came to get me, so I had a nice quite read in the library for 1 hour.

Next was English Oral, according to my classmates, but Kawamoto-sensei came to get me and brought me back to the Exchange Student Room, where Sehee was. We then discovered that I actually should’ve been in class, but I was glad to get out of it anyway. English O is super boring, because all Wakana-sensei talks about is sentence structure and crap and I can’t understand a word of it.

So I spent that class talking with Sehee and Kawamoto-sensei. After that I went back to 1-B for two hours of English Conversation with Rob the Punk Rocker. That class is amazing. Rob is hilarious and so are Tomomi and Shiori and wow I just love everything about it. During the 10 minute break between classes, Shiori, Tomomi, and I went out into the hallway and played catch with this hankerchief pillow thing that Rob brought (we throw it around to each other and have to answer things like “Hello, how are you?” and “What did you do in Golden Week?”) and Ki comes up and is like “OMG WHO’S LUNCH IS THAT?!??!” hahahahaha!!!! It was hilarious. And then Rob came down the hallway and I ran back into the classroom and sat in my seat and pretended I wasn’t doing anything. He gave us a look and proceeded to eat a bacon and potato sandwich. Tomomi and I were jealous due to our current state of starvation.

Next was lunch AKA my favorite part of the day. I do enjoy eating my obento every day. After lunch I had two Japanese classes, one with Kawamoto-sensei and one with another lady, where I read. It’s hard, actually, because I don’t recognize many of the verb conjugations and the reading is traditional style (vertical) so it’s super hard for me to read.

Last I had self-study again, but I decided to work on my drawing/painting of the front of the school. I actually started painting today, but my watercolors were crap/bought from the 100 yen shop, so I’m rather unimpressed with how things have turned out so far. Also, I’m a bit rusty. But I really want to start painting some more. I bought a sketchbook and brushes of my own, so hopefully I can do that!