Sunday 8th march
Okasan had to go to a follow up party of the tea ceremony that was held yesterday. I had a kinda lazy morning sleeping in and then doing my washing and some Japanese study. Had lunch and then went for a wander in the park, it seemed extremely busy today and then I wandered past a heap of stalls selling all types of foods and kids toys and masks so I knew it had to be a special advent. Which I later found out was the bird watching festival now that some of the birds have returned as it is now spring and warm enough for them. Spent a fair amount of time in the afternoon trying to make sense of the rest of my events guide for the year so that I don’t miss any of the advents I want to go to, because the bird one was interesting and it was just by chance that I happened to wander upon it at the right time.

Monday 9th March
School today, had my lesson with Ibata sensei and then English which was cool, I struggled to explain when we say something is made of something rather than saying something is made from something. The example sentences were
The cloth is made of silk. The butter is made from milk.
We then spent ages setting up for the entrance exams which will be held over the next 2 days actually giving me a break from school. But this process was interesting, I was up in one of the 3rd year class rooms with some others from my class and we first of all did the standard push all the tables to the front sweep the back of the class room, but as we shifted them to the back we had to turn them upside down and get rid of all the fluff that’s stuck to them. The sweep the front. We got rid of the excess tables so we had the exact number of desks to the number of students that would sit the test in that room. Getting rid of the ones that had more marks and scratches of them, quality control! And then we set them up roughly and checked to see if they were wobbly and taped cardboard to the relevant feet so they didn’t wobble anymore. And then set them up so there were and exact distance from each other… reminds me of QCS tables!
And then we placed the numbers on the desks with the template that had been made for us to make sure they were all the same distance from the corner of the table.
Oh and somewhere in all that we put white paper over everything…. Over the things on the chairs that say the brand and the height that they are meant for, over the heater control, over the thermometer over everything that has writing on it basically. Just a little insane I think.
After that was all done we were free to go and it was home to do some more Japanese study for me

Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th March

Had these 2 days off school coz the entrance exams being taken. So we went to an onsen on Tuesday night. But first Tuesday … actually not all that much to say I slept in something chronic wandered the park and studied, seems to be about the norm when I'm not at school.
So we went to the onsen. And it was awesome. An onsen is a public bath. This particular onsen that we went to is the most famous in all of Japan. So very fancy. The first bath that okasan and I took was on the 7th floor, and the showers were in there own little door less cubicles but still they provided some sort of privacy. The bath itself was then outside. And what a beautiful view that provided us with looking out to the Sea of Japan and it was about the time of sunset to, very nice.
We had dinner…. Onsen style which meant we wore our yukata’s (I think that’s the right word) to dinner, the cotton kimono like outfit that you wear to and from the baths. Otosan had ordered me a western style meal for which I was very grateful, not because I don’t like the Japanese food, what they ate looked very nice (apart from the sashimi ) but because as part of my western style meal I got some roast pork and a steak. Meat of that sort is rare here and I have been missing it a lot.

After dinner we took another bath, this time in the main bathhouse, this area had 3 baths, the inside one was so hot and steamy that you could barely see a thing, which in a way is good yes, but when you can’t even see where the edge of the bath is to get in and out it’s not so cool, this area also had 2 outdoor baths, one was fairly small and was a herbal bath, very relaxing, the other was fairly big and just nice and relaxing, and there was a very shallow bay that was next to this that was really cool, to cool down when necessary.
The following morning I took another bath up on the 7th floor which was amazing, because while I was up there it started to snow. Almost as surreal as the day in my first week when it snowed at Himi beach, but this was more special to me, as one of the things I had really wanted to do was go to an outdoor onsen in the snow, of course it would have been nicer with more snow, but I'm certainly not complaining.
Breakfast there was an interesting buffee, interesting in that it was a mix of the standard western style buffee breakfasts but also the traditional Japanese breakfast so quiet a mix of things.
We had to leave the onsen by 8:30 because of Otosan’s work. So home again I went for a wander before lunch, and then studied and slept in the Avro, before going back to the department store to pick up my school uniform, (we had taken it there on Monday afternoon for some alterations as they hadn’t quiet made it right, and my skirt was now way to big on me as I think they allowed for the norm of exchange students and putting weight on where as I have lost it.

Thursday 12th March and Friday 13th March
School this morning and we had our photos taken, no class ones like in Australia, just individual ones. But I was surprised at how quickly they got everyone through.
Spent Thursday afternoon sorting through all my stuff, and deciding what I will give to my next host family as presents, because I move in just over 2 weeks, but in that time I have a lot of days where I have band 9-5 or I am away on the rotary tour, so I knew if I had to get anything else organized with them that I had to do it this week before I get really busy again. The main thing was to frame an aboriginal painting I brought with. But I also sorted out all the souvenir stuff I have collected into one place and generally reorganized my stuff within my room.
Friday saw us having another round of cake at school due to the fact that it was the closest school day to white day, the returning of valentines presents and my understanding of thins had been that the boys who had received gifts had to return the favor on this day but it seemed to be a day of giving all round, even by the girls, to people they didn’t give to on valentine’s day or that they felt they hadn’t given enough to as the present they received had been better. I'm not really sure don’t entirely understand this but it was interesting to observe none the less. The Avro was band.


Saturday 14th March

Ok so today I finally saw Ayumi (past exchange students to my sponsor club and to my school). I traveled to Kanazawa to see her that is where she lives and is the capital of Ishikawa prefecture, the other prefecture of my rotary district here. I should probably mention that I haven’t seen here in 8 months, since she finished her exchange.
So I met her at the train station, we wandered around there for a bit and then caught a bus to the Kanazawa castle park. And went into the castle, we didn’t actually spend all that much time in the park because the weather was horrible, really rainy, snowed a bit and extremely windy to, at one point we were going to go to one part of the park but the steps to get there were like a waterfall so we decided that probably wasn’t the best idea.
After the castle we went to the art museum. This is a very modern building and had some very interesting pieces of art.
After that we went to Mister donuts for lunch (they do proper meals don’t worry we didn’t just eat donuts :p) and then to Karaoke for almost 4 hours until it was time that I had to head back home.
Only a short entry but seriously one of the best days over here so far.

Sunday 15th March

So my host brother “came for the weekend” but he hadn’t got her yet when I went to bed at 9:30 last night, and he only just got up before I had to leave for school and had left already when I got home, so technically I have met him but yeah never actually talked to him. Today I had band 9-5, we had an hour lunch break in there which was very fun, a lot of people went and ate lunch I the centre grassed area of the school, I think they are crazy coz its way to cold, I stayed in the band room along with most of the saxophone section we ate lunch and played Uno, but they have weird different rules here. I still one the first round and came 3rd the next time, coz I'm awesome like that.