November 27th (already???) Sky Tree, Aquarium and Christmas Market!

Last Sunday Taka and I went to the Tokyo Sky Tree together! We met up at Shin-Yokohama and had to take various trains to get to the tower. It took us over an hour! At the Sky Tree we had to buy tickets because we didn't reserve any in advance so it meant waiting for another 20-30 minutes in line. We got through pretty quickly though and soon we were in the elevator driving up to the 350m level. The view was great! I was so impressed by Tokyo's size! The city is just so big, houses and skyscrapers everywhere. And we could see the Tokyo Tower as well! On a lower level was some kind of glass floor and people were standing in line to step on like 2 square metres of glass. It was over so quickly! Taka was just:"That's it????" 

Back on the ground Ffoor was the souvenir shop. Since everything is now decorated in Christmas themes, the shop also had some Christmas goods. We even found German Stollen ! But for such a high price! 2,315 Yen + tax! That's about 18EUR and the Stollen wasn't even that big! Another souvenir was a pack of mega pocky, but they didn't really differ in size from normal ones? They were just thicker. By that time it was lunch time and we were really hungry so we went and looked for a restaurant. We actually found one in European and German style! Taka and I shared a pan with Currywurst and ordered some orange juice...As we wanted to pay (half-half) we noticed that one glass of juice costs 500 Yen!? We were so perplexed! Even now, two days later, we still can't get over the (I quote Taka) "fXcking orange juice" . Our next stop was an aquarium. We saw some crazy stuff. Gigantic fish, scary morays and Pineapple Sea Cucumbers (That's the actual name). In the outside part were penguins! So cute! As we exited the aquarium the sun had begun to set and we had an amazing view over the sea that was not far from our position. The last 'big' stop was at Roppongi. There we went to a German Christmas Market! With German food! AHHH! I had a Leberkässemmel (*sob*) (on the menu they wrote Käsebrot XD) and Taka tried a German Bretzel  for the first time. At the Christmas Market were many foreigners and I did catch some German in between. 

Our final destination was Shibuya because we absolutely had to take some Purikura ! Since the train got delayed we actually walked all the way from Roppongi to Shibuya! It took us about 30 minutes but we had a lot of fun during our hike. Shibuya was busy as ever even at like 8pm but I guess that was to be expected. By night the district is even more impressive than at daytime. The numerous neon signs and lights shine so brightly! The Purikura turned out ...somehow? XD Taka and I had no idea what we were doing so yeah ':D. 

In the end we went back to the station after taking the pictures and got to Shin-Yokohama at 8.50pm and I arrived at home at 9.40pm. This day was absolutely fantastic!

(BUT now many people in school think we are dating and it's just hella annoying (-_-) Taka is constantly asked if we are a couple and people I know ask me the same. We are both tired of hearing this, there is nothing between us! WE. ARE. JUST.FRIENDS!!!)

Pictures are in the gallery

November 19th? I made a great friend!!!!!

A short, cute story of friendship that I want to share with you. It started last week. On Monday, the 19th of November, I received a follow request on Instagram from someone. I checked out their profile and figured they must be from my school, since other people I know follow that person as well. So I accepted and followed back. Some time later I got  a message from said person through the DM function and surprised to even get one I answered back. He introduced himself as Taka (I won't write his full name) and he is in the 3rd year of High School. He confessed that until that day he didn't know I was the school's Exchange student! I have been at that school since September and he literally has never seen me or even known that I exist! HOW??? Anyway, Taka and I texted each other a lot that evening (about 4 hours lmao) and we met on Wednesday for the first time (He actually saw me on Tuesday in the school's cafeteria but was too shy to talk to me because I was there with Nene!). He tapped me on the shoulder and I was like "OHHHH" and yeah, then we ate lunch together. On that day I had to finish up a powerpoint presentation for one of my classes. I had to use the school's computerroom since my own kind of doesn't have PP right now. And guess what. Taka came to the computerroom (I told him where I was) and he actually stayed with me there from about 3.30pm until 7.15pm!!! After I finally finished up we walked to the station together. And the next day I had club activities and he really waited again for me, so that we can walk home together! Now we made it a regular thing, going to school together in the morning, eat lunch together and after school walk back to the station. He is one of the nicest and cutest (platonic meaning!) persons I have ever met and I am happy that I can call him my friend!

November 3rd

Just a short post about a current event today. 

We currently celebrate our School festival! 文化祭 in Japanese (literal translation: Culture Festival). This is a really big thing in Japanese schools. We had two and a half days off, from Wednesday afternoon until Friday evening to prepare the classroom. The planning goes way back to September, though. Those days were really fun and I "bonded" (shout out to my sister) more with my classmates more. Like yesterday for example. Two girls, Koha and Natsumi, and one of my closer friends, Nene, invited me to first take bathroom-mirror-selfies with them, then we took a selfmade ball made out of a looot of tape and paper and played with it outside. We had so much fun and the language barrier was like  not existing. We were outside until almost 6.30 pm and it was already dark night (The sun sets pretty early here? Like it's getting dark at 4.50pm). 

So today was the first of two days of the bunkasai. We met up at 8.15am, the Home Room teacher gave us last instructions and then everyone went to the gym for the morning introduction of the principle. Apparently it was some special anniversary so my school invited some people from their partner Schools in China, Mexiko and America. They all held presentations at the morning assembly. The Chinese were only talking in English, but with such a weird voice, it just sounded fake. They were bragging a lot, too. I get it, your school is the best. The Mexicans' speach was the best from all  three of them. They spoke almost only in Japanese but with many varied choices of words which made it very fluent. The American speach was...something. They had a horrible accent and used the same words over and over again. 

One of the Mexican students actually stayed with one of my classmates as a host student. His name is Sebastián. Yesterday he came into our classroom and all the girls were swooning over him because he is "very handsome and cool". Meh.

 The festival started at 11 am today and everyone was nervous and excited. Oh, right I didn't say what our program was. Simply put, we sold pizza. Three different toppings. Since we couldn't (weren't allowed to?) make it ourselves, we went to Domino's, bought their pizza and sold it. Is this legal?... Together with Nene I sat outside and managed the finances. Nene did the talking, I did the money. It worked pretty well. Later on when my first shift was over guess who came one hour later than to the agreed time! Marion! I invited her to come (I also went to her festival but that's for another blog post) and she came together with two of her friends. They also got a ticket but from a classmate of mine, Yurina! Such a small world. I introduced Marion to some of my classmates and they were so shy! XD

Some time later Terui, the instrucor from JAC, showed up and she actually brought Eva with her!? She was changing host families today and tagged along with Terui. The day was full of coincidences. Terui went ahead to go on her own and after my second shift was over, Marion, her friends, Eva, Yurina and I went to explore the festival. It must have been quite a show, us three foreigners, two totally unknown to the other students. 

We went to the haunted house of class 1-4 where some friends of mine are. While waiting Eva and I caught up on some events in our Japanese life. The haunted house was pretty funny and I did get some small shocks but it was mostly funny. Marion and one of her friends went in and her friend was so terrified after the experience! Marion said, the girl clung to her arm like her life depends on it and screamed the whole time. 

We walked around after that and ate something. Later we went out to the school's court. And suddenly it was already 20 minutes to 3, the festival slowly coming to an end. BUT not before everyone took pictures with each other. I swear, the whole place was just one big selfie-convention. We met Terui and I introduced her to two of my teachers. My friend Mariko found me and I introduced her to my friends. She was really hyped and even asked Marion for her LINE-contact. 

After my friends went home, Yurina and I went up to the classroom. There was another selfie-convention, mini sized. Everyone took pictures with each other and we had some Group pictures. Some people even took selfies with our Home Room teacher! 

This day was absolutely great and I am excited what will come tomorrow!