Sunday 1st February
Had rotary orientation today and it was nothing like our orientations back home and I felt really out of place and uncomfortable, mainly because I didn’t think about it before hand in a lot of ways I wore what is comfortable and warm and the level of formalness that was appropriate for our orientations in Australia and not thinking about the fact that it was a lot more likely to be much more formal here. And the other 2 had obviously thought about this as they were wearing their formal uniforms like what we wore when we arrived. Not only that but even still I completely forgot to take my name badge. And like a lot of rotary things will be this year I was the only female as Japanese Rotary is male only and there are only the 3 of us new in bounders to the district and 8 of us in total with only 3 girls in that mix. I was also fairly disappointed to learn that of the 8 in bounders there are the 3 of us Australians and the other 5 are from us and Canada. So, not nearly as a diverse group of people as we had in D9600 which was something I was looking forward to.
Orientation its self wasn’t at all bad I guess because D9600 had done so much with me before I left Australia I knew many of the rules already. But they went over some of the fine points which relate especially to Japan. And of course the fact that I’m not allowed to wear any jewelry to school, which I’m not entirely happy about having to take my cross off but anyway.
The other thing is I’m still not at all sure who my counselor here is supposed to be and yes I have asked and I have a name on a piece of paper but that is entirely no help to me what so ever at the present point in time.
And so people stop asking me yes there are things I miss about home already, but they aren’t vital things, and I’m enjoying myself here too much for them to really matter. I miss being warm I miss being able to wear the same cloths inside and out and not freeze or be stinking hot in one case. I miss having a fluent conversation about anything even those little petty things that would come up with a customer at work. I miss being hugged. Any of you who know me remotely well know I’m a huggy person and in general the Japanese society isn’t and as I am yet to make good enough friends with any of them or with any of the other exchange students a hug is something I have not received since saying goodbye to my family in Brisbane. So yeah I miss friends and family but I’m forming friendships over here so it’s not the contacts really it’s the intimacy of the contacts that I miss. I know that these things will most likely all seem very trivial to you and if you would have told me 2 weeks ago that a week into my exchange that they are the things I would miss I would have laughed at you. I mean I knew that I would miss friends and family at points thought the year I didn’t really think that it would come this soon but alas it has.
I am happy here I really am and I am very excited about the fact that I start my school life here tomorrow, I have to be at school by 8:15 so I have to leave home at about 7:45 which is a lot earlier than I have been getting up so I should really give myself an early night tonight though I have been saying that for the last couple of days as I keep feeling really bad about getting up so late but with all that I’m doing I am getting really tired.
Monday 2nd February
so I started school today and ahh what to say, it was in most ways a fabulous day I really enjoyed being around people my own age and I felt like I could finally talk in Japanese and not be judged for what I got wrong which seems really weird I know but I think that they can all appreciate how hard it is for me and that I am really trying and that is what they care about not that I may forget the odd particle or put to words around the wrong way in a sentence pattern but it will get there, although I must day I am now doing myself introduction without any thought like it completely fluent I'm not even really thinking as I'm saying it what the English equilievent is just that I'm doing my intro. All the people here think that saying Sharnelle is very difficult so everyone is calling me Nelly, except the few teachers which are doing for me what they do for all the others in my class and calling me by my last name but again they are saying it wrong… ahh when will people learn.
So I'm in year 1 class 2 so basically the equlivent to our grade 10 back home but I'm fine with that. Especially as it is almost the end of the school year and then I will move up to 2nd year with my class. The subjects I had today were history, home ec (which I swear was actually commerce but anyway) and then math’s which was sooo easy but then again its yr 10 and I think the work was stuff we did about half way through yr 11 but regardless it was stuff I had previously done. It was then lunch time. After lunch we had English which I found strange they are learning what I'm gonna call proper English but it’s not exactly what we use that and it’s American English so they spell things strangely. So if I start spelling thing the American way I'm sorry but it’s my schooling over here. This lead to a few interesting convos with the teacher about why they teach that way and not how we actually speak but it was really funny coz she herself can barely speak English just what she teachers.
Um just a few points about my school over here.
· Yes I have a shoe locker because you don’t wear your outside shoes inside and vice-versa we have shoe lockers at the student entrance to the school where you keep your other shoes
· I think it’s very odd that I walked to school watching the sun rise and home watching it set
And I went to school just in time for lessons and stayed about 40min after lessons finished to get a few other things organized.
· Not only are our classes numbered but so are we as the students within those classes. For example I am student 41 within my class
· Yes classes are that big mine with 41 students now that I'm in it
· Unlike in Australia where we the students move around to our different lessons the students have a room which we stay in and the teachers come to us. There are of course some exceptions to this like for home ec today we went to a different room and we will for science and pe lessons.
· The school doesn’t employ cleaners we the student body do it all ourselves. In a special time slot at the end of the day.
· The 3rd graders (seniors ) only have lessons in the morning and spend the afternoon at school doing self study to prepare for their exams
· School is all one building, well 2 but they have built in corridors between them. All the first years study on the 1st floor the 2nd year students on the 3rd floor and the 3rd year students on the second floor
· We eat lunch and spend lunch time in our classroom or in the other classrooms of our grade/ our friends

Friday 23rd September ~ Kamakura

haha yet again my lazyness prevails.

on this day, our last in Japan was a school holiday, what the occassion of i really cant remember, but the school had aranged a bus for us, and our host families to go to kamakura for the day. kamakura is basically the hostorical centre and is famous for its woodworks and carving. it is also the home of the biggest outdoor budda, which you can climb inside of. after going to that temple and the surrounding area, and witnessing a Japanese wedding we were free to wonder the area with our hostfamilies.

we left kamakura on the bus to the airport where we had to get of the bus leaving our host families. for me this was a really difficult time as while with this host family i had struggled alot because of the language barrier and being really homesick especially during the 2 days we wernt at school, where i had no contact with any fluent english speakers but as i said God provided for me and brought me through it and it was a strengthiening experiance that i really felt a few more days in and i would have really started to actually enjoy myself instead of using all my energy just on understanding them and what was going on around me and being so stressed about not comprehending. also at that point of time i didnt believe that i would ever see them again as i didnt see it as a reality for us to contine communication once i had gone home because of the language. but it was something that had to happen, and i was given 2 very long letters written by them when we left, that i had to get mrs forman to read it to me, as it was all in japanese, simple japanese as far as the words go but they still used kanji, that once mrs forman had told me the reading off i could actually understand the most of it.

once checked in we had time in the airport befor we could bored our plane, we had dinner and looked around at a few of the shops befor moving down to the depature lounge and location our gate.

at one point we were rather worried about not getting out of japan that night due to the weather conditions, an oncomming typhoon but we did get out befor it hit and only experiances little turbulance. but i discovered that i do not like overnight flights, i could barly sleep and i hadnt packed much in my hand luggage to keep me entertained as i had though that we would be getting he little screens again, though this was not the case.

its hard to define the diffrence of days here because of the lack of sleeping and a true night but i will finish this log here and put the jounal of arriving home in a seprate blog

Sunday 18th September~ school festival

~my host families house... well the best photo i could get considering the streets are so narrow~

Spent the day today with Mel and きょうこ（Kyouko~ Mel’s host sister） as さち(sachi ~ my host sister) was to busy with her commitments and cant speak much English anyway so communication has been rather fun.
*(this stuff in stars I’m adding coz I haven’t given this day justice)
Please don’t get me wrong I love my host family and I’m glad that they have opened up their home to me, its just the language thing has been hard with them, and I was just really glad to get the chance to be talking to people again, where it wasn’t taking up every ounce of energy in me to understand them, I guess I was really lucky with my Fuji family that they spoke such good English that it made it much easier on me there.

The school festival is kinda like an open day, only not, I’m really not sure it that is the point of it, for potential new student to come and see the school, I some how don’t think so because I don’t remember sing any of them,… all Nichidai student in uniform, but there were lots of games and food stalls set up in the car park, and other activities in the classrooms in side, examples of this are the huge board game. A drama production of snow white? (I was told snow white but I don’t think it was)… that had all the boys cross dressing… what the ?

We had lunch over in the dorms, and then I went back over there again in the afternoon to see Mrs Forman both because it was her birthday but also because I needed her to talk to my host family with me.

Saturday 17th September~ back in Tokyo

We had to leave the hostel at 6:15 so we had breakfast at the train station again today. When we got to Tokyo (新幹線~Shinkansen) station Mrs Forman realised that we had an hour to wait till the guy for Nichidai was coming to meet us, and as the arrangement had been that we would meet him on the platform we could not go out to the main shopping area so we had an hour of sitting around, doing nothing. When いし山先生(Ishiyama sensei ~Mr Ishiyama) finally got there we caught another train (local) to までめ（Medeme） the closest train station to Nichidai. From there we walked to the schools dorms where we were reunited with our bags. Our welcome party wasn’t quiet ready for us so we sat and waited (yet again)… at least this time we had comfy chairs and it was nice and cool. We then went to the school canteen for our welcome party where we met our hosts. Mine speak little English and when it was rime to go home with them I got really homesick.

Monday 12th September ~ Fujimi school, Maroyal visit and shinto falls

We went to school today, we even had our own, named, shoe lockers. After meeting in “our” room we went on a trip to visit the mayor of Fuji, (as in Japan it is the mayors that run the schools and as we are visiting a school in his district that is the socially correct thing to do.) we all received presents from the council (a CD of Japan photos, a set of Fuji post cards and a heap of information booklets of the area.)
After we had finished our duties at the council offices (including being photographed by the newspapers) we headed to some really pretty falls on the side of Mount Fuji. After we had battled to communicate while there…. Not because of language… just because the water fall was so loud I could barely hear Mel when she was standing next to me yelling, we headed off to Jusco … a huge department store… kind of like the Myer centre.
Back at Fujimi (our sister school) we were presented to the school at a special assembly held just for us. There we got given another present … which in fact will be shipped back to grace, as it is to big for us to pack in our suitcases (about shoebox size each) but one was opened to show us what we were receiving, it is a cool bamboo structure that has a well in the middle and two branches on which dragonflies balance.
After school Yui had club again so after i had had a look in hte band club room and played with them for a bit while waiting for Oksan to pick me up she took me shopping and she brought presents for my family and friends she wouldn’t let me pay for anything … in total she spent about 20 000 yen which is about $250 (80 yen per dollar)
Just after I had a shower mum and dad called. It was good to talk to them but made me kinda homesick.