Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!!
Before I get started with this post I would like to inform you that my Christmas is not that exciting. Ill be sitting around the house today doing nothing. Well, I'm having sushi for dinner, I guess that's interesting? And I guess its still Christmas eve for y'all over there? Mind boggling. Anyways, time to start.
Exciting things that have happened to me since my last post:
I went to Harajuku!!! Finally!! Harajuku is in Tokyo, and it was awesome. Its this really crowded rather narrow street filled with stores and food and booths selling all sorts of things related to Japanese pop culture. My favorite thing was the melon pan key chains with faces. They were sooooo cute!! And scented like the real thing! But I didn't buy one. I was short on money. And after my friend and I wandered around Harajuku for several hours, we then, of course, did karaoke and purikura. We also got matching bracelets. An altogether awesome day. There was also a lot of foreigners there, probably the most that i have seen since coming here. It was so funny. I don't know why, I think it was the expressions on their faces that was so hilarious. Sort of surprised and confused and excited, all at the same time. I'm not explaining it well, but trust me, it was funny.
I also had yet another AFS meet. It was sort of an event organized for the jenesys section of AFSers, and we normal AFSers just got to tag along. The Jenesys program is just a two week home stay and its free. Which I thought was so not fair. Anyways, most of the jenesys peeps were Australian so I had the refreshing change of speaking to a native English speaker. No matter how good someone might be at English, if its not their native language there are bound to be things and expressions that they don`t understand, so I'm always careful to speak in simple English. But I didn't have to do that with the Australians, which was nice. I also met some people from orientation. It was so nostalgic. OH! Something weird. Apparently Australians don't realize they have accents! I was talking to them about America and i mentioned that they'd fit in right away because of their accents(I mean, c`mon, who DOESN'T love an Australian or British accent?)and they got all surprised and kept saying how they didn't have an accent. Weird, I know. Okay, so for what we actually did. We went and met a sumo wrestler and all got our pics taken with him. Which took all of 20 minutes. And then we went and looked at bonsai trees. Then we had a traditional Japanese lunch(yum!). And then we went and looked at a traditional Japanese doll museum. See, the Japanese have a boy festival and a girl festival once a year, and on the day, the family takes out a collection of dolls. The dolls are uber fancy and expensive, and there is one set in each family for the boys and one for the girls. I want a set. They were so gorgeous. I also want a bonsai tree and a kimono, just in case anybody cared. But all three are ridiculously high priced. A good Bonsai tree is about 2,000 dollars, kimono is 4,000 dollars, and a doll set is 3,000 dollars. I probably wont be getting any of them anytime soon.
My next exciting thing was a Christmas party. We ate pumpkin curry and played cards and went shopping and did purikura(we actually managed to fit 9 people in there) and it was a wonderful, low key Christmas party. So I guess it weren't that exciting, but still really fun.
Now here are some slightly more mundane events and observations.
So I took the Japanese proficiency test like two weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure i failed. Oh well. But I met a friend there, quite randomly. Cindy, from Germany. Have I already told you this? Cant remember. I was surprised by how few Americans there were, i mean, there were SOME, but the majority were Chinese and Hispanic. And a few Indians. And a few Africans. You know, its really rather cool that I can meet so many people from all around the world on a regular basis and its perfectly normal. Its the best thing about AFS. The worst is that they give you homework to do, even though you payed for the program. I have to write an essay about my experience IN JAPANESE. I have been studying Japanese all of three and a half months, and they want me to write an essay. I don't even know what i would say in English. If I say any of my true feelings, ill end up insulting someone, but i hate being cheesy and false. And they JUST gave it to me and they want it on the 9th of January. Darn them. BUT my Japanese is definitely improving so maybe ill be able to pull it off. I still have more things to *talk* about but my brain is fried. Laters.
Emily

WA ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Ive decided to shock you all by posting another post just a few days after the last!! Also, I have a feeling that the last post was of pretty low quality, so this is a sort of compensation. Anyways, today I took the Level 4 Japanese level proficiency test. I think I did pretty well considering that Ive only been studying Japanese for three months. Oh! I also met a friend there! It was really quite random. I hadn't known that she was taking the test in the same test as me. The person I met was.......Cindy, from Germany. Shes really nice. She has instilled within me a strong desire to go to Germany. Before I started on this little excursion, it had never even occurred to me to go to Germany. I guess I had some subconscious dislike, triggered by history lessons and period movies. Which I know isn't fair, but i didn't do it on purpose. But now I really want to go to Germany. All the people Ive met from there are really funny and nice etc. And from what they said, the country itself sounds awesome. Anyways, back to the test. So I had to get up really early for it(and on a Sunday, no less!! oh, the indignity....) and I was exhausted and then, typical of Japanese people, they had to stretch a 2 hour testing period into a 4 hour one by all of the ridiculously long breaks. Most Japanese people seem to be that way, they go really slow, and then they go really fast to make up for the time they lost. Its like that for driving, and talking, and how they schedule their day. BUT this is just my observation and it is entirely possible that I could be completely off my bonkers and they are, in fact, entirely normal.
So I should have had the next few days off for testing, but I somehow got roped into going to school Monday for flower arranging and going on some sort of trip thingy with my teacher Tuesday. I really need to learn how to say no..... Speaking of learning how to say no, my host niece and nephew came over recently to play. I ended up spending an entire day with them because i cant say no to little kids. I don't think I've ever been able to say no to them, which is why I'm not the best babysitter. Depressing. But ANYWAYS fun things are coming up! I'm meeting so-chan this weekend for shopping and the next day is an afs meet, and then next weekend a friend is having a Christmas party and i may be able to sleepover at their house! The Japanese people don't usually have sleepovers, I guess its an American thing. And after the party I have two random days of school and then its winter break!!!!!! Yay!!!! Anyways I'm typing this when I'm supposed to be taking a bath(have I told you that the Japanese people take baths every night? Crazyness!!) so Ill just spellcheck this to get rid of all those nasty little misspellings which seem to have become more and more frequent and then Ill post this and then Ill get off!!
Night!!
Emily
ps I forgot to tell you that my host parents have put up a fake Christmas tree in honor of Christmas and its not half bad. Which also reminds me that daisy will be getting all of the angel ornaments this Christmas! Dang. I guess it doesn't really matter.....and now I've been on way longer than i should`ve so laters!!!

Hello everyone. It's been a while. I've been crazy busy and whenever I've had free time I've been studying like mad for a major Japanese test I have this Sunday. I'll probably fail:) Oh well. There are more important things in life than good grades. So I wrote a list of things I want to talk about because I knew I'd forget something, but then I went and lost the list! So typical. Let me try to remember what I've been doing, and what's coming up. Umm. Well, I had to give a speech in front of my class. Wait, no, I don't want to think about that. Let's just say that I'd rather be a hermit for the rest of my life than have to give another speech. But afterwards both the boys and girls in my class played dodgeball together, and that improved my mood greatly. It was soooo funny. At first I was all serious until I realized that even if I was standing right next to a guy on the other team who had the ball they still wouldn't try to hit me. So I stopped trying to avoid them and just stood there. I later discovered that if I stood there and smiled everyone would pass me the ball, even if they were on the opposite team. Needless to say, my team won. But seriously, it was so funny, I kept cracking up and actualy missed catching the ball sometimes. :) Yup. That was my exciting dodgeball experience. Another school (not experience) thingy that I find amusing is the music they play during lunch. It's so random. (I just sort of quoted a tv show, did anyone get it?) For instance, today they played Backstreet Boys and music from the Nutcracker, as well as a traditional Japanese song. It's always such a weird mix of music.  Something that's really big in Japan is one day group travel. You pay a set amount of money and travel in a group. It's like a field trip for grown ups. Anyways, I'm telling you this because I went on one with my host parents last weekend. Which is why I didn't blog. I really couldn't see the appeal of it. It's the kind of thing that I find most annoying. I sat in a bus filled with people, and we drove hours to get to this little waterfall and to see "autumn colors" and then went and had dinner at an airport. An airpost, for cryin' out loud. But what really annoyed me was how scheduled it was. The bathroom breaks, snack breaks, everything was scheduled to a minute level. I felt like I was in preschool again. They even had a designated "nap time" in which they "recommended" that we should sleep. Yargh. But I ended up getting a "Doraemon" keychain, so it's all good.  So students at my school are testing this week, and instead of me getting any time off,  I have to ride the train for an hour to get to school, have one Japanese lesson, and then ride the train for an hour and a half back. It'll be like that Thursday, Friday, and Monday. I don't really mind, except I was planning to finally hang out with some friends those days and now I can't. Boooo. OK, now I need to discuss something positive. I have an AFS meeting next Sunday. Yup. Can't really embellish on that, I don't know any details. Oh, and winter break starts on the 23rd!!! That'll be nice. And then New Year's, which is going to be so much fun. Hrm, nothing else to talk about. My life here really isn't that exciting. Anyways, I'm going to school for an hour tomorrow, so I have to go to bed. Laters.