火の祭り！

Haha so there was another festival in the area, 'hi no matsuri'; in English: 'The Fire Festival.' And man, they weren't joking about the fire part...

So, we had our midterm that day, so we were free after class (yaaaay freedom!! There was a super long break, it felt nice). A few of us wanted to dress up in yukata, so we spent some time trying to figure it out on our own (I didn't really do anything, because I was wearing easy clothes). John and I switched clothing, so he wore my yukata, and I wore his ....man-clothes? (haha I don't know the word in Japanese).


We're so awesome. From left to right: Courtney, Judy (aka Pan-chan), me, and John

Anyway, we took the train over, and then we just wandered around. There were a lot of interesting food stalls

Curros!! (Spain~!)

some-kanji-I-can't-read Burgers!! (America~!)

And Italian Spabo (?) (what? What is Spabo? Supabo-?)

Group picture!! (but Leif couldn't come because he had no money). I love all of them!! From left to right: Chiu, Courtney, Janelle, Kei (in the front with orange), Victor in the back, Gloria, Stephanie in the front with white, Samantha being enthusiastic in the back, Judy in red, me, and John.

So basically, they had those pillar things like this small one and the tall one behind me lining the middle of the street. It was very hot walking past them, and the smoke and ashes got in our hair and food, but we had a good time. One of the pillars collapsed right as we were walking by, so it created tons of smoke! My eyes watered up like crazy!! It was cool, because something like that has never happened to me before.


We also visited a shrine. Trust me, it was a lot bigger than this.

Sooo that was the fire festival! That was last Wednesday. Then on Thursday (? or Friday), Victor, Janelle, Stephanie, and I went with Victor's host mother to the high school she teaches at (I think...). While riding on the train to get there, it kind of hit me hard how beautiful Japan is. I had the same feeling while the plane landed and I could see the land beneath me, but this time it was more of a feeling like I was so happy to be here, and that I hoped that this place has a spot in my future. I would be glad with working in either America or Japan, but I really feel good living here. Even though my language skills are....doubtful most of the time, I think I belong here.

It was on that train ride that we realized that it was our one-month anniversary of living here. We didn't celebrate, or go out to dinner, or do anything special, really, but a lot of realizations came and hit me that day.

The high school was absolutely amazing. I'm used to it now, but you take off your shoes before entering, as with most other buildings in Japan. It was all indoors, and we just walked around and looked at various classrooms. I had a chance to play a koto, which is a traditional Japanese string instrument. It's long and lies on the floor, and you pluck it. I got to play that 'sakura' song that's pretty famous (if you listen to it, you'd know what I'm talking about). It was so much fun!

Then we walked around some more. We went inside a normal classroom, and this is the view it has:

It's like, WHAT THE HECK THIS HAS TO BE A PRIVATE SCHOOL OR SOMETHING!! A PERFECT VIEW OF MT. FUJI FROM YOUR CLASSROOM??? No. Frikn. Way. It left me stunned how amazing it was. And then I realized, oh crap, I'm going to die. We're climbing that thing in two weeks. Better start writing a will.

And it's funny because the fire festival is the marking of the closing of climbing Mt Fuji; people can only climb it for a short amount of time during the year due to religious reasons. And we're climbing it two weeks after it closes. I don't get it.

Ok! Stuff I still need to talk about, but can't now because I'm going on for too long: our crazy Leif-venture (as Janelle calls it), dinner with Courtney's host family, tomorrow's matsuri and parade, and other stuff...probably


I'm imitating the penguin that got cut off by my arm. Alright, 又 next time!