Week 21 in Japan: Paper Balloon Festival and Kamakura Festival

      Two festivals in one week so of course it was a pretty great time. On Monday I went to the Paper Balloon Festival near Tazawako Japan. I went with my host family in Japan along with Ryouen and Asahi from China, Nessa who is American, and Ayu who is Japanese. It was around an hour and a half car drive so I slept about half the way there. Basically there was a large area where they were sending balloons up into the sky and that was the festival. There were balloons from various different groups like schools, and companines. Even though I think companies promoted or sponsored some of the balloons there was almost no advertising. The balloons had great designs of various different things like Geisha, mountains, or animals, not things like "First National Bank", haha. There was a lot of food being sold in tents all around the area where the balloons were taking off. Also there were two really big fires that you could stand by to warm up. One cool thing was that the balloons would take off from anywhere there was not a specific zone so you could be as close as you wanted to it when it takes off. There were small balloons and big balloons. The small ones were a lot of times sent of by kids and were maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall. The big ones were very big. I'm not the best at estimating so you can just check out the pictures. The grand finale was pretty cool, 8 different balloons went up at once and there were also some fantastic fireworks which were definitely a surprise. It was a cool festival and it was all free too.

      The second festival I went to was Kamakura, a 10 day festival in Yokote, Japan. Kamakura are snow houses that are similar to igloos so it was basically a snow fort festival. I went by train with Teppei, Karen, Yunseok, and Palguem and we arrived in Yokote at around 3pm for the festival. In various areas in Yokote city there are Kamakura that have been built and also other snow sculputres like a giant horse that you can check out in the pictures below. One cool thing you can do at the festival is go into the snow houses and drink Amazake and eat some food. There are various Kamakura you can go in to warm up and chat. We took our shoes off at the entrance and sat around a little fire where they cooked a little bit of food for us. And we drank some Amazake mixed with rice wine. You can hangout in the Kamakura, have a snack, and a drink and it's all free too. It was interesting to make small talk with Japanese because that's not somehting that happens everyday unless you really go seeking it. Japanese people are not shy but they don't make small talk with strangers as often as other places in the world maybe do. The festival was great and I'm really happy I went.

     I leave for Tokyo this Saturday so the next blog will be late, but when it comes it will be awesome. I'll be going to Disney Land, Disney Sea, Studio Ghibli Museum, Shinjuku, Odaiba, and the Pokemon Center in Tokyo. I'm really excited. Thanks for reading, and check out the pictures!.. Oh also there is a video this week. I think I may try to add a video whenever I can from here on out. We'll see!

 Here we are at the festival. From left to right it's Teisuke, Ayu, Nessa, Ryouen, Asahi, and me.

 Me in front of a balloon with Son Goku on it. There was a big variety of different balloons.

 Yaay my first video for the blog. Sorry it's not perfect, I wasn't paying attention too closely to the camera, mainly just enjoying the moment ;)

 Here's a picture from the Kamakura festival that I I took. This is at the elementary school in the city. My friend Marina who is from Yokote said she used to go to this school and made the little Kamakura six different years.

 Here is a picture of Yunseok outside of a Kamakura fort. This one I think is like mid sized. At night there would be maybe a host inside that would serve you something warm to drink. Also a blanket or something to sit on and maybe a little fire too. Also that sign on the right says Kamakura.

 Again at the school with mini Kamakura. From left to right is: Palguem(Korea), Karen(Tawain), Teppei(Japan), Me, Yunseok(Korea).

 During the day the Kamakura are sometimes empty accept for a lightbulb at the top (not sure how they exactly do that). You can easily stand up inside of the kamakura. You can't see it well but we all had good smiles for this picture because the guy we asked to take the picture was getting snowballs thrown at him by his cute little kid.

 Pausing for a picture, I think we were on the way to visit the school during the day at this point.

 I can't remember the story on the hat I was wearing but they were offering for people to try it on. I think I felt cooler than I looked, but that's whats important right?

Week 20 in Japan: Finals, Bars, Work Trip

In January I turned 20 years old and now the amount of weeks I've been in Japan is 20. 20 is a big number and to me so much more than 19. Anyways I had a cool week so let me tell you a little about it. This past week was the last week of classes and so I had some reports to write, presentations to give, and tests to take. I think I did pretty well on all of it so looking back now at the hard work is a great feeling. Wednesday I had one of my more important tests at 9am. Despite of that I went to Karaoke with my friends Zen, Karen, and Yunseok until 1am. Some might say it was a poor decision to go have fun the night before a big test but it turned out alright because I got an A on the test. One key to studying, especially studying things you don't want to forget as soon as the test is over, is to study over time and put things into your long term memory. Studying 5 hours the night before a test stresses you out and you are prone to forget the things you learned after a few days. A lot of times forgetting things they teach you is alright but for me I want to learn the language well so I try to study things using the Spaced Repetition System. Anyways as for Wednesday me and my friends Yunseok, Teppei, Kaori, and Palguem planned out our trip to Tokyo and bought tickets for the bus and booked a hotel too. We used my credit card to book the hotel because I was the only one with one. I was actually able to pay using dollars rather than yen and that saved some money because the dollar is kind of stong in comparision to the Yen right now. I thought of my friend Tim James and his work with forex. Friday I went to a couple different bars in town with a group of friends. I went with Irina, Sebastion, Claudia, and Szilard who are all from Romania, and also Sasha who has is from Russia (and depsite the name is a guy). This was only my third time in Japan going to western style bars. Usually I go to places with friends where you have a private table sometimes in your own room where you drink. From Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon I had a work trip for my part time English job. The job is a fairly new organization on campus and is a place where students can come and study English. Students study to prepare for future exams, future traveling, and many other reasons. The trip this weekend was training for the staff on how to do different teaching methods for students who come. We also were planning out how things are going to go for next year. I work mainly with the special conversation circle nights that are twice a week. So me and a few others in particular are in charge of having that go well. So we come up with new ideas, and ways to improve it and to get people to actually want to come. Although it was a work trip it was a lot of fun because everybody who works there are my friends and the boss is really cool too. For the trip we went just a short ways to a town neighbooring Akita called Katagami. We stayed at a hotel where we had most of the meetings and training. The food was really Japanese style. The food was extravegant with so many different parts to it. I've been in Japan almost 6 months but I didn't know what some of the food was before asking. Thanks for reading this week and definitely come back to read next week because I'll be going to two different festivals over the next week that should be awesome.

 This is a picture of most of us on our way into the hotel, there were around 15 of us. You can maybe see me in the picture because I didn't take this picture.

 Here is the food from the dinner Saturday night. Things like squid, a couple different types of fish eggs, and some other crazy stuff.

 Here is me at dinner Saturday night.

 It's cool because you can drive just around 30 minutes out of Akita City and feel like you are far from civilization as you ordinarily know it. Here is a picture from the hotel.

Week 19 in Japan: Snow Festival and Taiko Drum Arcade Game

       This week there was a cool snow festival in Akita City. I think a lot of different snow festivals take place in February in Japan. A couple famous ones that come to mind are the one in Hokkaido Japan that is just called Yuki Matsuri or Ice festival, also one called Kamakura Festival that is in Yokote. These and also the one on Saturday in Akita City are all in Februrary. I was going to meet my friends Yutori and Ayano two Japanese girls from class and I saw the festival going on. After we ate and went to the arcade I suggested we check out the festivities. They didn't even know it was going on so I'm not sure if it's advertised much. Regardless of how much publicity it had there were lots of people at the event. There was lots of different thigns to do. I like that there are often events like this in the city. Seems like a great place to be a kid because there are things I know would be even better as a kid. For example they had constructed a hill for kids to go sledding down. Another thing they had for the kids was a pony pulling a slay that the kids could ride in. Plus everything except for food was free. They had other things too like snow sculptures, a place where you could help make mocchi, and some free amazake. Amazake is a slightly sweet fermented rice drink that was served warm. It wasn't my favorite thing ever but it was fun to try.
        That's already about it for this week but I can give you a quick view the other days of the week really quick. Monday there was a meeting about classes for next semester and which ones to pick. A couple interesting things for me are that I think I'm going to take a Judo class which is like martial arts, also I'm going to try to get into some classes that are strictly in Japanese (but not a Japanese language class), I'm supposed to be a level higher in Japanese to enter them but I'm going to try to get in anyways. Tuesday I met with my hostfamily for the second time. We had a good dinner and they always like to serve lots of drinks. On Wednesday there was a graduation celebration party for international students graduating either from a 1 year program or longer. There was lots of good food and drinks and it was fun to chat with everybody but kind of sad too. Sad because they are leaving and sad because I'll be in the same position in around 6 months. Most of them are staying for at least a couple of weeks before returning to their countries so I'll try and hangout with some of them a little before then. Thursday I had class until almost 6pm and Friday I had a final exam.
        I think that really is it for this week. I'm studying for my Kanji test now and I just took a break to write this. I've got a few pictures and as always I'll write a little along with them. Thanks for reading!

 Here's a picture from Tuesday night at the host family's house. On the left of the table is Ryouen and the one with glasses is Asahi. To my left is an American from New Mexico who I met that night... though I can't remember her name I do remember that she is from Akita International University which is a university maybe 45 mins from the city kind of out in the sticks. I've heard it's a nice univsersity. The little girl in the picture is the host families granddaughter Nao.

 On the left is Yutori, on the right is Ayano, and in the back is an ice pegasus. This was at the snow festival in town.

 This was a fun game at the arcade. I think it is called something like Taiko Drum Master. Its a rhythm but unlike most rhythm games it's fun even when you are a very beginner. I played it for the first time and had a blast. It's really cool because Taiko drums are actually an important traditional instrument in Japan and now because of the arcade game it is still very popular and known about. For the song I was playing with Yutori in the picture she didn't miss even one note! It wasn't on a difficult setting but that is still pretty impressive. I definitely recommend this game.

 We also took purikura pictures. It's always a good time.