Tuesday...!

Hello all!
...The post settings are too different... this is weird..

Anyways!!

I'm going back to Japan... this Tuesday, February 5th! I don't arrive until the sixth, though. I'll be there for one month, mainly in Kyoto/Kansai, but I will also be traveling to Tokyo.

I'm going to be staying at my old host family's house for the majority of my stay, and other than that, friends houses and guest hostels.
This is not an exchange program, this is my own trip.
Although, I am going to visit my school on February seventh.
I'm going to take way more pictures this time around... haha.

I haven't even started packing, oh my gosh.
Anyways, I leave from Winnipeg in the morning of the fifth, have a two hour flight to Calgary, layover in Calgary for about three hours, and then a thirteen hour flight to Tokyo, arriving at 3:00PM JST on February sixth(about 12:00AM, Feb 6th, Canada & USA central time).
I hope I'm sitting next to someone interesting.
 

To answer a question a couple of people have asked (I answered in the comments but meh), I am completely self-taught in Japanese, other than the lessons I got at my school in Japan.

I taught myself using mainly the internet, talking to people and practicing. It's the best way to pick up vocabulary, too. Grammar I learned mainly through different pages on the internet, specifically Tae Kim's guide to Japanese Grammar. I did pick up a few books in Japan, though.

If anyone has any questions about Japanese, Japan, getting to Japan or exchange programs feel free to ask, and I hope you enjoyed my blog/continue to enjoy my blog in the near future!!


Ashley

Until Departure. Answering Questions.

My last day in Japan in June, I went to a temple (forgot the name) with my host family.

no one's very happy i was leaving lol

OK, so I've decided to be more clear with what's been going on. Although, it super sucks.
Basically, some things went down that I don't really want to get into on the internet, only my personal friends know what's been going on, because it's super huge and super sucks. But being Japan, JFIE was really big on the whole "you need to be with your family at this time" and made me go home until August. And, they made me take the more expensive flight... (I had to buy this one to ensure I could come back)
Basically, I hadn't heard anything from JFIE or ASSE until I emailed them in August.
To me, going back seemed.. well. I didn't have any money from the $2000 plane ticket back, and then they were basically waiting until last minute again, so it would have been ANOTHER $2000 plane ticket rather than like $1300. (Or letting me have bought a roundtrip ticket before...)
I could have probably scraped by with.. not buying much of anything while there (seriously I had $1700 left) and borrowing money from my parents, but they were making me switch schools and I hadn't heard anything. So I just emailed and said I didn't want to go back this time (because I also have university coming up..).
But, that's definitely not the end of Japan to me.
I have a plane ticket to go back in February( Feb 5th) and have a blasty-blast in Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Tokyo... Everywhere.
I do want to apologize for the taking so long to make it clear... The situation has made me very upset that I've been crying almost everyday up until recently, I really didn't want to think about it until I kind of got okay with it recently.

Up until February, I'll be posting about things I didn't post before and when that runs out... I'll answer any questions anyone has about being an exchange student/JFIE/ASSE ect.

And to the question about how much it is to go with ASSE - It cost me $8450 CAD. They have prices listed on their website every year.

Just a small bump in the road.

I've been avoiding making this post, lol.

At the end of May, nothing special really happened other than my birthday. I got a LOT of cake. Cake from my friend, cake from my family, cake from my teachers. It was all delicious cake, though.

cake from host family

cake from teachers

It was exam week, so I only had to go to school for three hours. I got TONS of presents. Presents from people I barely talked to! Lots of scrunchies, some Arashi's Nino pictures, a necklace, a handkerchief, Oda got me a giant stuffed Boo, host sister got me an eyebrow plucker thing (can't remember the word right now -.- ) and a hair.. thing. I dunno. It like swallows your head for when you're in the shower...? Haha. And I got cute PJs from my host parents, and a nice card from obaachan. It was quite fun.  That was the 23rd.
The next day after the exam, I was only there for 2 hours, and I went with my friend Hisashi to the aquarium!

I love this picture. Lol, it's face.

We got a picture done at the aquarium too, he was like "put on this hat!" and I was like "Wha- oka- where's your hat? fkdjfuidf" It was a cute octopus hat though.

After we went to the aquarium, we went to shijo kawaramachi for a bit and went to the arcade and he beat me at everything, the little bastard >.>
And he wrote "best friends" on our purikura, I was super happy. xD But he asked me if the kanji was correct, and I was like "LOL why are you asking me?" I knew the 友 was correct but I didn't know the first one. xD Probably asking me because all of our mails are kanji-filled :P

After Kawaramachi, we went to Kyoto Station to eat some ramen. x3  It was fairly delicious ramen, and there was a LOT of stairs, so I told him we should race up them and he kinda looked at me like "wtf?" and said let's just take the escalators. XD
Then we talked for like, half an hour or 45 minutes and we were like okay, let's go to Kyoto Tower! So we did, and it was beautiful. Except, right when we went, an out of town class (probably 30-40 people) of middle schoolers were doing a field trip

hoorraaay, shaky picture. x3

And after that he was taking me back to the station to catch me bus, we found a light show on the way, see above picture. lol.  Then we ran to catch the bus and I got on and he was waiting and I was like laughing and theeeen we saw all the middle schoolers come and start getting on the bus, so I was like ._____________________________.'' and he just laughed.

Then, the next Saturday I went to meet his parents because they're having an exchange student stay with them, but Hisashi had club so he was... absent. That was really, really awkward. But his parents were nice. We went and toured the beer factory, but being 18 and not 20, I could only have juice. : <
Then we went to their house and made gyoza, and then Hisashi came home at like 7:00pm with Gen and Hori.

Was quite delicious.

Alright, so stay with me from this point onward, please.

Due to certain circumstances, I have returned to Canada for a short while.
I've been here since the 5th of June, and I'll be here until August because JFIE and the school both feel that because I'm leaving partway through, when I return I should go to a different school. Dunno why. But I will be going back around the 23rd of August.
When I know where and which school and such, I'll let you know.
Before I left though, the teacher told me that my Japanese is as good as the people who have been there for 10 months, so I'm kinda bummed now because I wanted to get really, really proficient. I'll just work harder when I go back, but I hope it's Kansai because I speak Kansaiben.... and that would be awkward in other regions if it comes out. xD

Anyways, yeah, I'll be back in Japan in the end of August, so just sit tight and I'll update as soon as I can.

May! ..Kind of

Hello :3

I love my second host family! They're lovely. Obaachan is hard to understand, but mama and papa are funny, and Risa is really nice!!

Everyone's studying for tests so... I haven't been doing much. I hung out with Oda, the exchange student from Norway a few times. We had a fat day and ate too much McDonalds. ;;
And before that, I hadn't gone for McDonalds for a long time, and the ONE TIME I DO, and get a big mac, there's three guys from my class sitting at the table across from us... That was just embarrassing. ;~;

I got my class picture yesterday!

Yay :3

So.. I don't have much to say because I've had no cheer practice or no friends for the past week and a half due to tests, so.... this will be short, but tomorrow is my birthday and the next day I'm going to the Kyoto Aquarium with a guy in my class so it should be interesting so I will update then! :3

Thanks for reading!

Updating, sir. ._.

Hello hello.

Up until now nothing much exciting has happened, just went to school and to cheer... man cheer was tough! >< First we do about 15~20 minutes of stretches, then help the other person stretch. Then first year students get to go running, and do physical training like 60 sit ups, 60 push ups, 60 jumps, and a bunch of other stuff. At first it really tired everyone out, but lately everyone's been getting a lot better... including me! :) We learned a lot of new cheers, and I've missed four practices (three due to being an exchange student and having to do stuff like go to the ESS club which was asked for their Welcome Party, which was fun, we played hangman and no one could guess my word, giraffe.   One being due to the fact that school was done for me at 1ish one day, and the other because I switched host families. ><) , but I learned all the cheers just in time, because Sunday we're all going to cheer on the football team.

 School is pretty good, other than I can't understand Contemporary Japanese at all. That's okay, Japanese students can't, either. :)
Really weird thing happened though - I was eating a banana, and like, 10 girls took my picture. Apparently I'm cute when I eat bananas. So I called Oda over and told her, so she took my picture with the banana too.

Just amazing, amiright?

I switched host families last Saturday.
I share a room with my new host sister, Risa. There's Obaachan, papa, and mama as well. It's a thin house but three stories tall. It's closer to the school than the last one! :)

I was supposed to switch on the 30th, but... I bought tickets to a Morning Musume concert in Hiroshima for the 29th so my new host sister took me. We got on the bus the night of the 28th, and arrived at like 6:00 am on the 29th. God that was awful. Nothing was open, so I got to eat delicious McDonald's breakfast.
There was some time before the concert, so we went to Miyajima on the ferry... after waiting a few hours, anyways. Took the ferry at like 9:10.

Leaving for Miyajima~

We got to Miyajima and the first thing I saw was lots and lots of deer. I was happy.
I got pictures of the deer, pictures with the deer, and pet the deer.
And watched the deer eat some lady's handkerchief. ^^

 After the deer, we ate some shaved ice and went to the shrine which name I have sadly forgotten. ><
We didn't go in though, we walked around and then walked around more parts of the islands, then I had some corn and we went back to Hiroshima Station. (ferry - walk - train) And went to starbucks for a snack.

After Starbucks, we took a taxi to Alsok Hall. We arrived at like 1, and there was already soo many people! So we quickly got in line for goods, but when the hall opened at 2:30 we still hadn't made it to the front of the line, but we were close, so when we entered the building we got to go to the one inside. I got a Niigaki Risa shirt, a NR fan, NR picture and a Tanaka Reina picture, and then two green glowsticks. It was kind of funny, after buying everything Niigaki "and two glowsticks, please"
The girl at the counter was like "....Green?" I was like, LOL.

So after that we had to ask a nice "Onii-san"(as said by staff member, LOL) how to use it because it said don't snap it but you had to snap it anyways so.... yeah.

The concert was epic! Everyone's faces were really small, but you could tell who Tanaka was! :)
I was on the second floor, in the back... kinda sucks but, whatever. :)

We went back to Kyoto by shinkansen, which was nice. We ate first, though.

Since then I've just been going to school, my friend's birthday's coming up so I'mma bake him cookies.  Then my birthday is coming up too!! May 23rd. x3 I'm super excited! But I feel really old ;~;

That's all for nows~

Cheer!

Hello! So today was the first official day of school. I already went before for class photo (I don't remember if I said that..) and that was pretty fun.

Today I had a cell phone(bought it yesterday), so everyone was asking to exchange mail addresses and stuff. :) I switch classes a couple times... I was in the wrong math class (not my fault :P ) and I took notes and everything ;~; Oh well. XD

I like the English classes, they're fun lolol. I introduced myself in the Oral Communications class, in English and in Japanese.

Oh yeah, I'm in year 1, which is grade 10, but the year 2 students are all going to like Australia and stuff, so... but Takemi-sensei said that because I can speak Japanese well, I might be bumped up to year 2 or year 3. :)

There's another exchange student at my school, Oda-Victoria. Just Oda is fine. She's from Norway. o:


So, after school we went to see Takemi-sensei, and we got talked through some stuff (all in JP. ), and then we went to see the ESS (English) club, and introduced ourselves in English. Or.... Japanese.. Or both.. I don't remember. xp

After that, we went to see the Cheerleaders practicing. OMG THEY ARE WONDERFUL.
I joined the club.
I start going tomorrow.
Everyday. :D
I have to ask about weekends...

I became a bunny. I'm so happy. They're so cute. x3


Well, that's all for now~

It's been a while!

Hello!

It's been a while since I've updated...

On the 31st of March, Moe's friend Hii-chan came over and we made dinner and baked a cake. It looked like a delicious cake, but it was not a delicious cake ;~;

Then on the first of April, we went to a brass band concert. It was actually really cute. The second act was a play of Aladdin, and they sang "what time is it?" at the end, and made high school musical sound cute. Right after that we ran to the taxi and went to Kyoto Station, and got on the shinkansen heading for Tokyo. Mama, Shin, and Onee were already there (they went on the 29th). We got to papa's house around midnight, and fell asleep around 1, but we had to wake up at 6:30 to get ready and go to Disneyland. I was completely happy with the wizard hat I found.

Disneyland was exhausting. I had no idea what was going on at first but apparently we were getting fastpasses for rides, lol. We waited for like three hours to go on Splash Mountain, and then after that we ran to Space Mountain and got in like nothing (fast pass!). We went on more things like Pooh's Honey House thing, and It's a Small World... We watched the night parade, and after that papa went back home, Onee went to sit in the warm place, Moe and Mama went to Big Thunder Mountain, and me and Shin went back to Space mountain and waited in line for like two hours. It was fun though. xD

The next day we went to Shibuya, and we went to Forever 21 for like ever >.< But after that, Shin, mama, and Onee left and went back to Tokyo, so it was just me and Moe. We checked out a few other shops but the weather was getting pretty bad(Typhoon after all), and then Moe's umbrella broke, so we were going to head home, but then we accidentally found Shibuya 109 so we went in there for like, not even 20 minutes. But when we came out the weather was a lot worse so we ran to the train station and it's a good thing we got there when we did, because shortly after that all of the trains stopped running. The rest of the night, we just stayed at Papa's.  (Got home around 5:30.)

The day after that was the last day in Tokyo. In the morning we went to Akihabara, but nothing was open when we went so we just went to Mr. Donuts for a little bit and chatted. When we left, stores

were starting to open up so we went around and I found Morning Musume's DVD concert "Ai Believe". I was quite happy. x3 After that, for lunch we ate at a maid cafe(lolz), and then we went to Harajuku. It was PACKED with people ;; but we managed to get some pretty awesome clothes and deals. x3
After Harajuku, we went to Tokyo station and got on the train to go back to Kyoto. We arrived back at the house at around 8 or 9 at night.





It's now the 9th of April, and today I get to go to school for orientation (So I will probably post about it later today or tomorrow). I'm super nervous, because there's a new school ceremony for all of the first year students(Shin is going :3 ), and the school might be busy but.. I guess I can handle it. Haha, first day of school for everyone else is the 10th, and for me, it's the 12th... I'm super nervous. I wanna buy more clothes before then, because my school doesn't have a uniform(unfortunately). There will also be another exchange student, Victoria, at my school. Hmm. x3

That's all for now~!

Thanks for reading