Today I bought a new friend. I went into Whitcoulls looking for a USB drive to replace the one I accidentally broke. I came out with this:

Yes. It is exactly what it looks like. A mouse-shaped USB drive. His cute grey self only becomes slightly macabre when you go to insert him into your computer. You have to pull his head off. You plug him in and his little mousey head sticks out the side of your laptop. Excellent.

He needs a name. Suggestions?!

A few days ago MckMama posted what she referred to as “a post to make your retinas bleed”. I think this might be my turn for one of those! Not so much in terms of length, but in terms of the random mish-mash of topics within it!

On Monday I started teaching another ESOL student. Master 10 is the cousin of a child who has already been studying here, and although he has had some lessons from a Korean English teacher (a Korean person who teaches English to other Koreans) he doesn’t know very much conversational English, and so is much more difficult to teach than the other kids I had!

So far we’ve done lots of vocabulary, and lots of writing practise. I’m not sure how long he’s here for, but it’ll be interesting to see how much progress we make!

Last night I went to visit a musical theatre singing group some of my friends from my theatre company belong to. Amusingly none of them were actually THERE last night, since Monday night’s a rehearsal night for ANOTHER theatre company’s show, and lots of them were at that, but having five students there was actually quite good for me, who’d never sung before. We did a lot of work on breathing and singing technique, and I came away feeling like I’d actually learned something, which is a good start. The next class is on Monday night and I think I’m definitely going to go and actually join. That’s another 101 in 1001 down! Singing lessons!

A few days ago when I went into the kitchen just before I left for work, I heard a hideous noise. A “Grrrrrrrrrr” sort of noise, and then a “BANG!” and then another “Grrrrrrr”. It turns out that it was the fridge. We had this new fridge delivered about a month ago, as the first part of our kitchen renovations. The space where it will eventually fit hasn’t been built yet, so it’s currently sitting on the other side of our dining room. Making threatening sounds. When I tweeted about this, Luke helpfully suggested that it was in fact getting ready to eat me when I least expect it. I hope this is not correct. If I never blog again, you will know what happened. Eek!

Finally, I know I’ve already written about this, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d click here and vote for me in the Divine Caroline Awards! I’d love to see how far I can get!

I was originally going to write one post about each day I was there, but then I realised that would have been 10+ posts, which was a bit much, so I decided to combined just go for it and combined everything into one big epic post to end all posts!

Excuse the rambling writing style of my 16-year-old self!). This is an edited version of the diary I kept when I was there, and all the photographs were taken either by me, by Jenny, or by other friends of ours.

April 8th, 2004 – Osaka

Today was one of the weirdest days of my life! We went on a huge ferris wheel on the top of a department store. J. and I were in an enclosed car with the teachers, which was funny, since Mrs K.’s afraid of heights and we were about 200 metres up! She almost had a heart attack when Ms D. climbed up and sat on the back of the seat to take a photo! She said ‘No, no, no! You’ll upset the balance! Oh kowai desu ne! We all just laughed at her and I was tempted to climb up too, but that might really have upset the balance!

We also discovered our convenience store and went shopping at this awesome place called Ame Mura (American Mall). I bought quite a lot of stuff, including earrings with Big Bird on them and a rubber peanut, which is funny.

There are also some very strange men here. While we were waiting for our teachers to come back to the meeting place at the end of the afternoon, we were approached by two men who kept asking us if we were British or American. One tried to touch A.’s leg and another one stroked my arm as he went past! o.O When the teachers got back, Mrs K. shouted at them to go away, but then realised they didn’t speak English, so she shouted in Japanese instead! Ergh. I hope that was just a one-off incident and we don’t have to experience much more of that!

Tomorrow we’re going to Hiroshima for 6 nights in a homestay! I’m excited but scared too. I’ve no idea what to expect, but it should be fun. We’re also going to Himeji Castle tomorrow. I’ve seen photos of it and it’s touristy looking, but very pretty.

At the moment we’re staying in this weird little hotel with tiny rooms. The bathroom is raised from the floor and for some reason our electricity’s a bit odd. If you touch the door handle of the bathroom and leave one foot on the floor, you get an electric shock! It scared the crap out of me the first time it happened, and J. didn’t believe it really zapped me, until it happened at 1 o’clock in the morning and also made the bedside lamp on her side of the room flick on and off randomly!

Another thing you notice about Japan as soon as you arrive, are all the vending machines! It’s crazy! There’re just rows of them in the street! They sell hot and cold drinks, which is kind of strange. Some also sell alcohol (beer) and cigarettes, which would be unheard of (and probably illegal) back home! Surprisingly hardly any sell food though!? The vending machines are so convenient, I’ll miss them when we leave!

Myself and my lovely blurry edited friends eating okonomiyaki on our first night in Osaka. I was the most tired I have probably ever been in my life, thus the exasperated expression on my face! Also, please note the Big Bird earrings I mentioned earlier!

The giant ferris wheel we went on!

Ame Mura. Please note the large, fake Statue of Liberty on top of the building in the background!

 

April 9th 2004 – Hiroshima

I mt my homestay family today. They’re really nice though, they have two cats, a black one called Yu and big tabby called Go. At least I think that’s what their names are. Yu is friendly, and jumped onto my lap as soon as I sat down on the sofa, meowing loudly to get my attention, but Go seems to be more of an outside cat.

Today we went to Himeiji Castle, which is awesome, I took almost a whole roll of film!

Himeiji Castle with cherry blossoms out everywhere.

Looking out over the city from the top of the castle.

 

April 10 2004 – Hiroshima

Today A. and I went bowling and shopping with some of her friends and their homestay students which was fun. We also went to this big yellow department store called "Loft" and saw various other people we knew!

NO PHOTOS TODAY, SADLY. :(

 

April 11 2004 – Hiroshima

Today we went to Kintaikyu Bridge (at least I think that’s why it’s called) which was cool. Kintaikyu’s a huge bridge with five arches. As a souvenir they gave me this box of little Hello Kitty figurines holding fruit and this pack of postcards with Kintaikyu on them. I’m not going to post them home though, I’m keeping them so I can stick them on my wall in my room!

Then we went out for lunch, and had yakitori (chicken kebabs). Tonight we had a BBQ with her cousins, which was fun. N. is 18 and A. is 16. Their English was pretty good, and I discovered N. likes Donald Duck! They gave me presents too, a cute fan and this other strange thing which looked like sheets of paper with monkeys on it, I still don’t know exactly what it is!

The beautiful entrance to the school my host sister and her friends attended. MUCH prettier than my school in NZ!

 

April 12 2004 – Hiroshima

More normal today, since our group was back together. We went to the Mazda car factory and museum, which was actually a lot more interesting than we thought it was going to be!

The one (really bad!) photo I found on my laptop of this day. It was taken at the car factory.

 

April 13 2004 – Hiroshima

Today we went to Miyajima Island, which was amazing! There are deer there, which were really friendly and cute! J., S. and I bought lucky charms for school success, which had better work since we’re in the I.B Programme this year! I did a lot of other traditional shopping today too. J. bought an ocarina, which is a very loud, shrill instrument! She knows it’s annoying too, which is probably at least part of the reason she bought it!

Miyajima Island is probably my favourite place so far.

Famous Torii gate near Miyajima Island (Itsukushima Shrine).

One of the cute little deer that were everywhere on the island. They followed you around hoping for food.

View from the top of Mount Misen, which we went up via gondola.

 

April 14 2004 – Hiroshima

The Peace Park was weird. It made me so sad, but the peace cranes were awesome, we made over 1000 and added them to the huge number already there. The Children’s Peace Monument, was exactly like I imagined, it was like having deja vu!

It was all made so much more real by the museum. The first part was a little boring and touristy, but then they showed you things that were genuine. I’d heard about the watch stopped at 8:15 and the ‘shadow’ of someone who just dissolved, but this wasn’t the same as actually seeing them in reality. It isn’t possible to explain how it makes you feel.

We saw the A-dome too, which was one of the few buildings left standing. It had huge black crows nesting on it, which made it all the weirder!

One of the girls in our group, S., holding the 1000 cranes we made before we left New Zealand. We were astounded by how many were already there!

Children’s Peace Monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Photograph taken while walking from the Peace Monument down towards the museum. The curved structure in the middle of the photo is the Memorial Cenotaph.

The Atomic Bomb Dome. Probably one of the best photos of the whole trip, taken by my friend J. This is my most vivid memory of Hiroshima, even more so than the people I knew.

 

April 15 2004 – Hiroshima

Yay! My homestay is over! I DID enjoy it, but I’m also glad it’s finished. I’m intending to at least try and stay in touch with A. and her family, but I’m not sure, it’ll depend on whether or not they reply, I don’t really mind either way.

Kyoto is lovely, Ms D. told us before we arrived that this is her favourite part of Japan. I can already see why and I’ve only been here a few hours! This is the most traditional place we’re going, we’re staying in a ryokan (traditional inn), which is interesting. We’d only been there 5 minutes when chaos broke out! S., B., D.and S. are in a big room together and one of their side windows had a metal grill on the outside. I say HAD because it fell out! I stood there and watched the thing fall out onto the ground below! Nobody was even near it! E. had to go and get the owner and try to explain, which was nearly impossible because he didn’t understand English! She said ‘Mado! Mado!’ (window) and pointed to the hole where it used to be. Eventually he caught on and fixed it, but the incidents didn’t end there!

There’s a pond in the courtyard with these GIANT carp in it. When everyone went down to look at the grill, C. noticed one of the fish had got out of the water and was flopping around on the ground! The poor owner must have thought these New Zealanders were extremely strange! I think the fish survived, if it didn’t die from the shock of everything going on around it!

Today we did a lot of shopping, mostly in 100¥ shops. 100¥ is about NZ$1.40 and there’s some cool stuff in them, not just junk like in our $2 shops in NZ.

Kyoto station. I wonder who cleans all those windows!?

Don’t remember which day we visited Kinkakuji but I think it was today!

 

Friday April 16 2004

Today we went to a temple called Kiyomizudera, It was very cool. Another favourite place, I think. There were 3 fountains where, if you drink our of them, they bring you love, wealth and beauty. This sounded good to us, so when J. and I were there, Ms D. came over with her camera. I hid behind one of the big stone pillars so she couldn’t see me. I stood there for awhile until I thought she’d just taken a photo anyway and left. As I stuck my head out to see if she’d gone, I saw a camera flash! I was like ‘Great. Now she doesn’t just have a photo of me, she has a silly photo of me!’ Oh well, could have been worse, at least I didn’t fall into the fountain!

There were lots of little traditional shops at Kiyomizudera. It’s hard to describe since there’s nothing like it in NZ. You come out of the main temple and go down this really steep hill and there are shops the whole way down, which is cool. Then, eventually, if you haven’t got lost, you go down a side street and end up at this other little shrine, which is where our group met up again.

Then we went to Gion and saw geisha, which was amazing. They weren’t very happy about us taking photos of them though, they ran away! Oh well, at least we didn’t hide in an alleyway and jump out like the last group did! That was going a little too far. According to Mrs K., a lot of Westerners wrongly believe that geisha are prostitutes because their job is to entertain men. Most geisha are really proud of their traditional job and status, but are embarrassed that people think they’re prostitutes, so they don’t like having their photos taken.

Kiyomizudera – this is a scan of a postcard, not a photograph.

Another one of my favourite photos. I don’t remember where this is, but I love it!

Geisha in Gion.

April 17 2004 – Tokyo

Nara today, which had a really big Buddha and the biggest wooden structure in the world (Todaiji). I took a lot of photos and bought quite a lot of stuff.

It was very funny when we were having lunch because this deer came up to us. Mrs K. doesn’t like deer, so she decided to try and frighten it away, by squirting it with water from her water bottle! Unfortunately for her, the deer didn’t mind and just kept coming! Mrs K. was like ‘Er, this isn’t good. No, go away! Bad deer! Shoo!’ It obviously never occurred to her to like, run towards it waving her arms and shouting or something! Ms Ditfort was very amused and said ‘If that deer chases her, I will laugh so hard!’ It didn’t though. I think it just got bored with watching us and just wandered off! I seem to be allergic to deer, both times I’ve been near them (here and at Miyajima Island), I’ve started sneezing like crazy!

Todaiji, and yes it really was as ginormous as it looks!

 

April 19 2004 – Tokyo

Last night was so funny! We did karaoke, which was awesome! Everyone dressed up and looked thoroughly silly, even the teachers! I now have even more stupid photos of them, which I can’t wait to get developed!

We spend today looking around Tokyo. we saw the Imperial Palace and went shopping in Ginza, which is supposed to be one of the most expensive places in the world. I didn’t buy anything, although S. and B. and I did have McDonalds, just so we could say we had!

Tomorrow we’re going to Kamakura and an even bigger Buddha! Haha! It sounds boring, but it’s great! I love it! You get to see stuff that’s completely different to anything in New Zealand. Going home will be so weird now, after having seen this whole other world! How often in NZ do you see deer wondering round?

The bridge to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo

 

April 20 2004 – Tokyo

The Big Buddha was very…BIG! It was cool because you could go up and sit inside it.

There were also cute little squirrels, which was awesome because I’d never actually seen them before! One stole my toffee apple, which was extremely funny! I was sitting there holding it and talking to someone and I didn’t notice this little thing sneaking closer and closer until it was sitting right by my hand and reaching over to take it! In the end I had to let it, because everyone was taking photos, not just our group, but lots of other tourists as well!

Kamakura Buddha

The cute squirrel…with a guest appearance by my hand and arm!

 

April 21 2004 – Tokyo

Today was our major shopping day. Not very much to write about though. S., L. and I went looking for fake Louis Vuitton stuff, which is apparently everywhere if you know where to look. We didn’t find much, but S. and I bought socks, and L. bought a key ring, so it wasn’t an entirely pointless expedition. We also went to the Tokyo museum, which was, surprisingly, a lot less boring than I expected.

I don’t want to go home, but I also do. I love Japan, but I couldn’t live here forever. It’s just too big and scary and impersonal, there are so many people here, it’s unbelievable! I can see why some people do fall in love with Japan, particularly Kyoto, because I have, but it’s just so big! It’s weird because Tokyo seems to be never ending, but it never really hits you just how big it is, because we only see a little bit at a time, so we don’t realise just how much more there is that we haven’t seen!

Tomorrow we’re going to Disneyland!

Some giant carp in the lake.

The view form the window of the youth hostel.

 

April 22 2004 – Tokyo

Disneyland was so much fun! Even the whole day wasn’t enough! It was easily my favourite part of the trip! There’s a hilarious picture of a group of us on Splash Mountain and there’s some random guy behind us holding onto his glasses, which looks extremely odd! It took us a really long time to work out what he was doing!

We also had photos with lots of Disney people. There’s one of me sneaking up behind Eeyore and pulling his tail, which should end up rather funny, and one of me with the White Rabbit, which was so funny because it was so short! I was like ‘Argh! I have to have a photo with the giant rabbit!’ He’s like a life size cuddly toy!

Mickey as the Sourceror’s Apprentice

Our group on Splash Mountain. Note the strange man behind me.

Disney castle!

Giant Mickey Mouse waffles! Please note my awesome purple sparkly hat, which I still wear now!

 Here endeth my MAMMOTH post! I’ll be amazed if anybody actually read all of this! Whoa.