Festival Time!

Yay weekend! Too bad it’s over….. I’m dang exhausted and I don’t think I’ve eaten as much as I ate today in a very long while. So last night we went to the GionMatsuri!! It was so much fun! Juliana’s older sister and her friend and really her whole family are great! Before that though (I always get ahead of myself in my excitement) we had the family potluck! My family unfortunately couldn't come but it was really fun anyway! Our teachers came and the main office people who help us out. It was a good time. We ate a bunch of food that was great and then we did the performance section. Thien did some cool Vietnamese martial arts kata thing, Jeff played guitar and sang You and Me, I sang Not For the Life of Me and then Christian played guitar while I sang Toire no Kamisama, a really pretty song we learned in Japanese 11 last week. After that, Anna’s homestay mom asked me to go back up and sing Amazing Grace because apparently she’s on a gospel kick or something, so I did that and we finished up the party. From there a bunch of us walked/took the bus to juliana’s house. Miller, Juliana, me, Thien, Gaby, Anna, and Jing I believe it was. So the men went upstairs with juliana’s dad while the girls got dressed up in yukata (summer kimono). Then we went upstairs to finish getting ready, took a bunch of pictures, and went to the festival! It was PACKED. More packed than any event I’ve ever been to anywhere ever. Holy cow it was so full of people. It was amusing however, because people always stared at us for being gaijins. Anna and I were the weirdest because we have light hair I think. It was fun! Then we had dinner and started to make our way back home. Gaby and I live in the same area so we took the same bus, but we had twenty minutes to get to our bus stop which was ten minutes away by foot, so we booked it and got there exactly as the bus was pulling up because it was like eight minutes early!!!!! We must have looked silly running in our yukata. Oh well it was fine.

            Before I talk about going to Osaka today, I would just like to point out that I feel so in place here because everyone is pigeon toed!!!! They all wear too many high heels too often so then they all walk with their feet inward. Bahahahaha.

Alright. Today we went out to breakfast, then took drove to Arashiyama Eki and took a train to another train to… another train? I forget. But we ended up in this huge awesome mall that was eight stories, Osaka clothing/shopping is cheaper than Kyoto, so I bought a pinky ring in this great discount accessories store. When we first got to the mall, we rode in this slow ferris wheel type thing where you can see all of Osaka from, which was reallyyy pretty. Yuki is afraid of heights. She was so funny. Then we shopped around a bit more and took another train to the real reason why we went Osaka: the food. I ate an unhealthy amount of washoku (Japanese food). I don't even know how to describe the place we walked around in. it was packed with people. But according to Yuki, it’s always that packed. I knew Japan had a lot of people in it…. But really. I can’t even imagine what Tokyo would be like. We had okonomiyaki and Yakisoba, then we went to another place and had warm/cool anko and this realllyyyy salty seaweed you’re supposed to eat aferward. It actually made me want to stop eating for the rest of my life. It was way too salty. But not just regular salty, like lawry’s seasoning salt salty. MAZUKATTA. Seriously if I had a choice between not eating for the rest of my life and only eating that for the rest of my life, I’d stop eating. Thinking about it now is making a little bit sick. So I recovered from that (yeah my family definitely thinks I enjoyed it because I just said I was full… why did I do that) and we went to ANOTHER food place where we had… shoot I don't know the name but it was delicious and deep fried. However, the Japanese know how to do deep-fried correctly. It wasn’t too greasy and the breading was small. Then we walked around by this really pretty river where there were small tour boats going around. Then we went home, really. It was a great time. Oh! Yuki bought me a pair of shoes that were only 1000 円　which is SUPER cheap for Japan and comes to about $12. I was going to buy them myself but she said it was a present. I’m not exactly sure what kind of present it was or what it was for, but it was really nice and I was really surprised. So that about concludes the weekend. Might have to go back to the doctor. Sore throat’s still not gone.

Jya~