Monday 27th
Happy birthday daddy!!!!
Went to school today even though I still dint feel 100% but anyways, however I didn’t go to the band rehersal which was on this afternoon. Felt a little better this arvo though so I went to the shops and bought a frame for my next host families present, as I couldn’t see when else I would manage to fit that in. so then I came home and framed that as well as genrally started rearranging my things and sorting out all the presents for my next host family.

Tuesday 28th – えんそく
So today I had school trip, it was really really fun, but also nothing like what I expected a Japanese school excursion to be like. For starters we got to wear free dress , and I must say there were some interesting but very cool fashion senses among my classmates. Where we went was about a 2 hour bus ride away, and we spent the time on the way up there singing karaoke. Yes that’s right they have karaoke on the bus! The TV screens the mics everything, its pretty cool.
Where we went was a place called bokka no sato, but other than that I really don’t know what to call it or how to explain what it was. There were farm animals; sheep goats horses and cows, and you could milk the cows and ride the horses ( at a ridiculous cost may I add) and then a lot of hany craft opportunities, making cool shapes out out bread…. I made a turtle, but you could also make pizzas flower reaths, pressed flower keyholders (key rings… they call them key holders here), candles or ocarinas. There were also massive fields of flowers, and said as it is to say I didn’t really appreciate them as much as I should have with the imesnse amount of places I have been reciety purley to look at the flowers, that seems to be what I do these days when im not at band, and im not at all joking, I haven’t written about half the time, I have been taking somewhere to look at flowers because quite frankly I think we would all get board of it.
Oh at bokka no sato I found a あいうえお　 (aiueo – in hiragana) stamp set like I saw at the first onsen I went to and had since regretted not buying so of course I grabed them instantly here, and turns out they were half the price I would have payed for them at the onsen so I guess it was really a good thing I didn’t buy them there. I also got some over souviners there for my blazer.
There were many photos taken here, me and my 4 friends, then one of me and each of them individually, then all of us on this wooden horse thing, and then another teacher walked past (our computer 1 teacher) and so we had to have photos with him as well. And so on, but it was good fun, I swear the 5 of us spent half the day taking photos of each other.
Also they thought that my sunglasses that clip on to my regular glasses absolutely amazing, but I guess they don’t really have that sort of thing here, as far as I have seen most people don’t have sunglasses, I think I have seen one Japanese person wear them in my whole time here. One of the girls in my class said she thought they were only for when you go skiing! I guess you would really need them then! But I thought there was a great need for them a lot of the time especially when I first got here and there was white snow everywhere it has quiet a nice was of reflecting into your eyes very painfully.
I slept the bus ride home as did many of my classmates. After that it was back home briefly where I had what I believe will have been my last play time with yua and riyoma (my host niece and nephew) and then I headed to Toyama, for our rotary get together overnight stay and then bus “hike”.
This was the first time I actually caught the train to Toyama, and I was amazed at how quick It was, being about 15 minutes where as I swear any time I have been driven to Toyama it takes about 30. I met 6 of the other 7 exchange students from the district as well as my first host dad at the train station in toyama (the other students decided not to come on this trip) and after a quick stop of at our hotel we went out for dinner.
It was then back to the hotel and free time, not at all surprisingly the 3 of us aussies and our adopted aussies Geoff went off from the others…. As it always was on our last trip as well. Seeing as Josh actually lives in toyama we though he would be able to kinda show us around a bit but he was hopeless as ! we wandered past the already closed CIC building (kinda of department store I believe… I went there with Riley on my very first weekend in Japan.) but then we decided to go to the other side of the station mainly coz we believed Josh’s bull when he said that side is much more lively! But we then found out way to the park that I went to a while ago with my host parents (on our first flower viewing day) and although it didn’t have the sakura anymore it was just as pretty by night. Got some really cool photos which will go up along with all the other photos ive been promising when I find a computer with the capability to do so.
We then headed back to the hotel stoping brefly in the passageways under the train station to watch some hip hop dancers just in time for our 10pm curfew. However that is by no means where our night ended, as we sat in the loby playing a card game “murder” for several hours in which I “died” several times, the most remembered ways being by paper cuts from birthday cards, another being malled to death by a chewed up popstick. In all a great very fun night was had by all.

Wednesday 29th
So after a night of much fun and very little sleep we were up and out of the hotel just after 8 as our bus “hike” started at 8:30. The first stop for the day was the robot museum which quite frankly I was disappointed with it was by the makers of the robots so there wasn’t really any overly intresting ones, robots that “fought” but the weapons never even touched, ones that solved rubics cubes, another that spelling out the companies name with these little squares you placed on the converbelt in front of it , and 2 intertactive ones, one of which you controlled th mouse and had to run away fromt eh robot which was a cat. The other was like DDR where it had pads for your hands and feet and the robot copied what you did… if you were really slow, so that was somewhat disapointeing, though it was fun watching one fo the guys trying to beat it.
After that we headed up to Gokayama and made soba ( a type of noodle) which we then ate for lunch aling side of tempura veggies and some other stuff. ( not much to say here but photos will come at a later date)
We then went to a different part of gokayama to the gassho style houses where we had tea which had been made over a campfire, now I love campfires and when I saw that one realized how much I had missed them, but where they are inside a building that has practically no ventailation there are kinda annoying. This house had 4 stories to it, we went up to the 3rd, but it was very rickety… I wonder how it passes work place health and safety regulations but they don’t seem to have them in japan. It was an intresting place none the less, we then wandered the rest of this little village for a while, I had an intresting conversation with one of the other students about how they don’t think we have choice over anything as its all decided by science, im not going to say anymore on the matter because I don’t really understand it(… if your reading this and want to explain it more, email me and ill edit this) and then we were told to go into another of the houses where we saw a traditional dance. Which I videod … which will also go up when I have the capabilities to do so.
It was then off to yet another part of gokayama where we saw more of the houses and a cool water fall, and the adopted aussies decided to climb a stone wall just for the heck of it which got some very strange looks from the Japanese people passing us by.
Back on the bus and we went up a different mountain where the road was literally built on the side of a cliff several years ago but now that cliff is starting to erode away, quiet scary, and this was all for a 10 minute stop at one fo the few places that have sakura still, and yes they are pretty but there is only so much sakura you can see befor you start getting sick of it.
They then decided that they were going to drop the kanazawa students and myself off at the closest train staion as were were almost in ishikawa prefecture anyway, and ti was the same distance from there to takaoka as from toyama to takaoka for me, so basically it made more sence than us travling back to toyama on the bus only to turn around and travel back in the direction we had just come from. And home it was.

Thursday 30th
School today, on Tuesdays timetable but my jap lesson was still on at the normal time for a Thursday which made things a little confusing but we got there. And then band after school, for me until 6 because that’s the latest my hosts will let me stay, the others I believe stayed until 8.
So home and dinner, and then out to the pre festival festations. The festival itself will be on tomortow while we are at school, but tonight I got to go and see all the portable shrine thingys that will be involved in the festival and get lots of stamps( like ink ones … not postal ones) in the process. I also managed to pick up the towns 400th year postage stamps in the process which is good coz I had been meaning to buy them)

Friday 1st
School Wednesdays timetable today, this is coz next week we only have Thursday and Friday at school so we will have done a week of lessons over 2 weeks… well that’s what I figure anyway. And then band after school.

Saturday 2nd , Sunday 3rd
Band , although tonight (Sunday night) we went out for dinner at the same chineese restaurant I had previously been to with this family, sadly enough we sat in exactally the same seats and had the same meal, apart from my desert, because tonight I had mango icecream rather than (anun dofu … ousund like onion tofu….. which is a milk pudding thing with fruit.)
Also at band today I met another of my cousins of my next family… the elder sister of the one who was in my ichi-nen class (first grade)

Monday 4th
Band again, today we were rehersing in the gym, I think that was to get us used to the biggerspace and the acustics that go along with that, and then after we had don’t sufficient rehersal we took everything over to bunka hall… which is literally across the road from school.