Thursday 10th September
A pretty standard day at school, I had another of those no I didn’t go back to Australia for summer holiday convos today after one of the guys in my class commented that he saw me with a guy in the holidays and wanted to know if it was my boyfriend, I'm guessing that he means he saw me and josh, so after explaining who josh is, (if your reading this and don’t know ill be surprised but hes the other aussies exchange student in my area) going through no hes not my boyfriend, or brother or cousin or any other reliative, no not a school friend from Australia (even though he is both a friend and Australian I did only meet him in Japan. )they were like wait you didn’t go home for holidays. So then I had to explain that no I'm in Japan for a year, and ill only go home at the end of that, in January, apparently some of my class mates didn’t relize I have been here since January andinstead thought I came when the new school year started in april, and thus thought I would be her until the school year ended. I'm not sure yet, because I don’t know when winter holidays end, but I don’t think ill come back to school after them, as if I do it would be for 1 or mabey 2 weeks, but I guess it also depends on my host family at the time ect.
Friday 11th September
In calligraphy today I finished carving my name stamp, its really cool, I'm very pleased with it, I really want to get more photos up but the computers at school are rediciously slow at doing so, so I'm going to try and arrange something else so that I can. Aftrer school today I returned to my first host families house, actually the first time I've returned to any of my hosts houses, it was weird, not so much the going back, well it kinda was but its soo different to when I was there, the have sold their grand piano, and that has given the downstairs area so much more room, I didn’t go upstairs but I doubt that would have changed very much as it is just bedrooms and the bathroom. Also when I lived there we always had snow and thus the heaters and winter blankets to snuggle under while watching tv ect, but it now bwing early autum and to the japnese standards still really warm and mabey even hot, (sorry but I'm my books 20 doesn’t = hot) so they had the house a lot more open and we actually went out into the glass room, a room that we never used as it was always to cold, it is all glass, the walls are entirely windows and the roof is glass as well, there is only about a 2m wall that isn’t glass where it connects to the rest of the house, it’s a really nice room. Okasan was thrilled to have me back there, as I have really only seen here once since I moved, at the dinner with my family, but I was sat at the other end of the table from her and as one of the 2 Japnese people there that could speak English she spent most of the night talking with and translating for my parents while I was doing the same with my sister. The reason I went back there this afternoon was that we had an Australian, newzealand organization meeting tonight in toyama that Otosan had to go to as well so he was taking me to that. At the meting josh and I were the only exchange students, fitting as it is a prefectual organization and we are the only excahgne students in our prefecture, but again there wasn’t any other Australians or any newzealanders other than the embasicy members that they had invited. The Newzealand embacy lady has been in japan for almost 2 years now and has very fluent and formal Japanese, where as josh and I mostly speak informal japnese because that’s what used at school and home, at occasions like this we should be speaking formally, and believe me they are 2 completely different things. As I attend rotary weekly and do speeches at least once a forghtnight if not every week, I at least get this practice at my formal Japnaese, josh not so much. The Australian embasy lady has only been here 3 months and hadn’t previously studied Japanese and thus wasn’t that great and I felt awful when my Japanese was way better than hers and several of the Japense people there commented on this in front of her, though I'm not sure she understood. The meating was like an agm if I understood correctly, looking at what they have done during the last year and what they have planed for the coming year, they asked my feedback on the bus hike that they took us on back in April and I gave some constructive critisisum, though I think it came across a bit harsher than I intended. I was also given a really handy little book all about Australia, in Japanese and I mentioned to them that they should give these out at the beginning of our stay, when we don’t have the japense skills to explain for ourselves.
Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th
So this weekend was the 400th annerversary festival, so there was a lot of photos around and displayes of the town of how it used to be, which were quiet intresting, they also had a mini replica of the castle made out of plastic bottles in the park on Saturday, however it was no where to be seen Sunday which was annoying as Josh came on Sunday, Saturday also saw several local bands perfoming on a stage set up in the park, which was also very cool. Oh and I got interviewed for the radio! Sunday my host dad and brother were in the parade, and so we (josh and I) actually watched that parade twice, once where the 2 parades passed fairly soon after one another and the other time with the rest of my host family from their old house, which is above their business. I then got to watch a display that is usually reserved to a day in golden week which I missed in golden week due to band practices which was one of the main factors as to why I quit. But this involved banging to huge floats into each othe multiple times, quiet the ridoculiosness but intresting all the same.