wed & thur

So yesterday nothing exciting happened! I just took a nap after school!

TODAY however...Well, I was busy all morning helping with classes. We did "conversation tables" . This is a fun activity in which the kids are split up into three different teams and then each team goes to three tables set up around the room. I lead one table with a TRUE/FALSE game, Mr.Sypal lead another group with a different game, and Mrs.Sawada (the Japanese teacher that also speaks English) lead the third team with yet a different game. We play the game with a group for fifteen minutes and then switch groups, so that each group plays all three games. *Just a note about Mrs.Sawada. Each OC (oral communication class) is lead by a native English speaker, but there is also a Japanese man or women in each classroom to essentially help "team teach". They sometimes will translate for the kids if they need help understanding a concept. * Anyways after class we had lunch. I ran over to the AM/PM across the street and grabbed a sandwich and Dr.Pepper for lunch. After lunchtime activities (the 30 min period that we play games with kids during their lunch hour) Carly and I had our second Japanese lesson. We learned how to count!!! ichi, ni, san, shi, go-that is 1,2,3,4,5!

At around 5:30 Carly and I headed to Kita-Matsudo station to meet John and Beth. We went into the shopping district in Matsudo and had Mos Burger for dinner. Their french fries were soooo good! They were hot and salty! I love carbs! Um anyways, after that we were on the search for a Gamecube or N64 (cause you can buy one for only about 30$) cause we wanted to play some Mariokart!!! We went to two videogame places but didn't find any Mariokart. SAD! But that's ok, it was still a fun outing! We road home on the bus for something different. Here are some pictures from the bus ride home :)

19 days in

Psalm 19:14, "May the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer."

Today was a bit chilly! The strong winds we had this weekend brought in cold air and rain! It's supposed to start tonight sometime. I just am praying that it stops before I have to go to school tomorrow. It would be different if I didn't have to ride a bike to school in the mornings. In some ways I really miss having a car, but in other ways I don't. I like the fact that with a car I get to places faster and I can drive anywhere, regardless of if it's windy, cold, or raining. On the other hand I really do enjoy the little bit of exercise every morning and I also like not having to pay for car insurance and gas...BTW, gas here is between 5 and 6 dollars!! I think that's part of the reason a lot of people walk and bike here, but there are still quite a few people on the roads. I wonder if the cars here get better gas mileage. They are a lot smaller!

Today I wrote a letter. Actually I wrote three. I felt ambitious!!

This is a really blurry picture-sorry! I couldn't make make my camera take a decent one! Can you see who they are to?....

I'm starting to miss home. I like it here, but I miss hanging out with my friends and doing things with my family. I want a good home cooked meal with American food! Sometimes it seems like the time goes fast here, but sometimes really slow. I'm really excited for Josh to come visit me in a few weeks. He's bringing some stuff from home for me like my play station and some goodies I've been missing like soupatch kids, popcorn, and peanut butter (it's like 5 dollars here!)

Photo Blog

PHOTO BLOG

This was at the chorus festival. They had this huge heart on the wall with these cute little homemade flower decorations that provided a good backdrop for some pictures :)

This is Carly, the other intern in Japan with me!

This isn't the greatest picture, but these are some of the kids singing at the chorus festival.

The gym isn't heated and it was cold outside, so they brought in all these kerosene heaters. During the intermission all the kids were huddled around it. It was so funny!

Ok, so I felt kinda bad, but I totally had to take this picture. I discreetly took this on the train on the way back from Tokyo. It was so funny cause everyone on this bench was sleeping!

These guys on the left here had the "Free Hugs" sign. They were totally hardcore. One girl had chains that ran from her ears to her lips!




These are a bunch of street performers! They wouldn't look at us though, cause we were trying to take their pictures. Then all of a sudden one of them turned around and was trying to take a picture of us! haha














This is some super cool art in Tokyo! I don't even know exactly what it was made of. There were all these little sticks with these little balls of colorful yarn or something stuck in between them. Whatever it's made of I thought it looked pretty sweet.







This is in Harajuku, a part of Tokyo. On this one particular street there were tons of stores and little shops and places to eat too!

Lots and lots of people! It reminded me of New York!

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY-Welcome to Tokyo

Well, Saturday was a pretty crazy day. Carly and I had to get up and go to school at 8:30 for the chorus festival. The junior high consists of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. Then each grade is split up further into four or five groups, labeled ABCDEF. Every group (14 in all) sang two songs. The choirs were accompanied by a student playing the piano and directing. Pretty impressive if I don't say so myself! They turn it into a competition and at the end one group from each grade wins. After the winner was announced all the girls were crying, either because they won, or because they didn't. I was very impressed with the quality of the music from the kids. It was a lot of fun. It lasted until around noon.

Carly and I came home, changed, and ate lunch and decided to head out to Tokyo! Mr.Sypal was going to go with us, but at the last minute he had to go to a funeral. The weather had been beautiful all day, but of course the moment we stepped outside our apartments it got cloudy! On the way to the station it started sprinkling, but decided to go anyways. We made it to the station and got to Tokyo in one piece! It was a bit chilly and getting windy, but we walked around for a few hours. We found some cute little stores and did a lot of window shopping. At this one area it was really cool cause there were all these people doing their own thing. There were a few street performers, some guys drawing and making these sweet pictures, a girl playing the guitar, and then there were these hardcore kids standing around with a sign that said "Free hugs." I decided since it was free and all, I should go for it :)

On the way home it was really frustrating because we couldn't figure out which train to go home on. We finally just went back to the station we came on and found where we needed to be. In Japan there is the "express" train and the "local" train. The local train stops at every stop and takes twice as long as the express trains that only stop at the major ones. About 3/4 of the way home the train stopped and everyone got out. I started to get a little confused and all of a sudden this Japanese woman came to us, speaking English, and told us that we had to get off the train. She went and asked one of the officers what was going on. She came back to us and said that they weren't running the trains any further because the winds made it too dangerous! We were stuck!! We called Mr.Sypal and he advised us to get some dinner and wait it out. We asked our new friend to go with us and the three of us headed to Dennys for dinner. We learned her name was Keiko and was a christian. Pretty much she was a God send!!! Two hours later the winds died down enough that we were able to take a train the rest of the way home!

Sunday-today-I pretty much did nothing! Carly wasn't feeling well after we ate dinner the night before so we we both slept in this morning. I'm so used to getting up at 7am that I kept waking up. I think I finally got out of bed at around 9:30am because I couldn't sleep any longer. I didn't really do anything all day. I showered, did some laundry, made spaghetti for dinner, and practiced my Japanese. I was going to go exploring around the neighborhood, but the wind was super strong and very cold that I didn't feel like being outside! It was a relaxing day though.

For those of you who voted, my sinus medication cost me 1960 yen, so that's almost 20 dollars!!!!

Today was a busy day. All morning I had to help with the English classes-3 straight hours. Then it was lunch and I had this really yummy stew. After that we helped with 3 more periods of English classes and finally it was time to go home. Carly and I were both so worn out that the bike ride home was a slow one. I've mostly just been sitting in my apartment all afternoon/evening watching Prison Break season one online. I went to the vending machine outside our apartment and bought some milk tea. It was really good. It hit the spot!

Wednesday: McDonald's-a taste of home!

Well, today I had a stuffy nose and a sinus headache! I can't rid of this thing! I decided to go to the drug store and get some medicine. Mrs.Wolff told me what to look for. Plus, the pictures are pretty descriptive! Some stuff here is super cheap, other stuff is super expensive. You should leave a comment and tell me how much you think this cost me. I'll let you all know in a day who was the closest!


Today Carly and I decided we had enough fish! We went to the convenience store-Am Pm-and bought a couple sandwiches for lunch. I also got some "pocky." They are long pretzal sticks covered in chocolate! YUM!

For dinner we went down by the Kita-Matsudo train station (about a 10 minute bike ride) and went to McDonalds for dinner. It's pretty much the same menu as in Nebraska, but all in Japanese! Thankfully they had a picture menu. I had the bacon cheeseburger, a coke, fries, and an oreo mcflurry! I finally got my ice cream! haha. It was good, but the cheeseburger had onions. I couldn't help that though, cause I didn't know how to tell them to leave them off! And it also had this weird tasting mayonaise or sauce on it. At first I liked it, but then it got old. I just wanted a regular tasting one! ha! A few things are still the same though-it's still greasy! Here are some pictures from our time at the Japanese McDonalds!

Monday and Tuesday

So Monday John brought Carly and I to a restaurant by the Kita-Matsudo Station. It was called Sakura-which means Cherry Blossom in Japanese. We got "okonomiyaki". I don't know what it means or what was in it, but it was SO good. It kind of resembled an omelet. I do know that John's had cheese and squid in it though. Let me describe this place. First of all it was super small, but very unique and cute. You walk in and there are only 3 booths, and then there's another area with 3 tables, but you have to sit on the floor to eat there. In the middle of the table is this giant griddle and they cook the food right in front of you. On the walls were all these cool old toys! If you look below at my pictures, the first two are a few guys sitting at one of the tables. The woman is the owner of the place. The middle big picture is what was hanging on the wall. And at the bottom John is getting ready to cut the patties or whatever you want to call them. The other one is the finished product.




Today (Wednesday) was pretty fun. At school Carly and I went with Beth (Mrs.Wolff) to the kindergarten. Let me tell you, these kids are ADORABLE! She goes in once a week to teach the kids basic English. We sang a bunch of cute little songs and played the "opposite" game. Beth would stand at the front of the room and tell the kids, "I say hot, you say"..."COLD," they would yell. This went on for about five minutes with front/back, left/right, etc. The kids were actually really good at it considering they were 4 years old. I can't wait to go back next week! Later in the afternoon the whole school had a short memorial service to honor a teacher that had a heart attack just two days ago and died. It was a touching ceremony with all 1,000 students + around 100 teachers in the gym recognizing the man who had been with the school for 30 years.

Monday news

Ok so Monday I felt way better. No migraines. Yay! At school I took pictures of Carly's and my desks in the teacher's office.



The office is pretty much my favorite room, mostly because it's the warmest room in the school. I will try to take some pictures this week of the school itself. It's very nice. The only issue I have with it is that the hallways are not heated, so pretty much the temperature of the outside is the temperature of the hallways = COLD!

This Monday Carly and I went to our second calligraphy class. This time we got to try to paint some things. This is a picture I did. The top one means "now" and the second one means about the equivalent of "once upon a time". It was soooo hard using the ink to paint these. It's such meticulous work. I can't believe they get junior students to work on these!


What else, what else...

Oh, well I'm pretty much over the whole fish/rice/noodle thing. I'm craving American food so much right now. And ICE CREAM. Oh my goodness, I want ice cream! There is some here, but it's very expensive. I think I will probably break down here soon and just get some. lol. Not too far away there is a McDonald's though. Mmmmm, doesn't a strawberry shake sound so good right now? Well, a strawberry shake sounds good all the time I think. haha. Anyways, Carly and I found these little tiny mini pizzas at the 99 yen store the other day, so I had that for dinner. It was actually pretty good. Pop it in the microwave for a couple minutes and then you have dinner!

Sat/Sun

Yesterday (Saturday) Mr.Sypal came to our apartments and the three of us walked to downtown Matsudo. It was a bit breezy, but pretty nice out. On the way there we saw a few interesting things, including a gas station with the pumps suspended in the air! We also walked by this little river with a cute lil bridge and through a shrine (I can't remember if it was Buddhist or Shinto).



For lunch we ate at this yummy ramen place. Ramen here is not like it is in the states. In Japan it's not that stuff that comes from a little packet that you buy from Wal-mart for 50 cents. Here, it is actually good. For 650 yen (so approx. $6.50) this is what I got. Not only were there noodles, but also bamboo, onions, pork and either spinach or seaweed (I can't remember what the green stuff was) on top.


The shop itself was pretty cool. There was seating in an "L" shape with stools and counter space for your food with the chefs cooking right in front of you. Playing in the background was music from the USA. It was funny because they played an interesting variety of music ranging from Foo Fighters, to Justin Timberlake, to Lonestar. It was nice to hear some familiar music and actually understand the language though.


John took this picture. We weren't quite ready for it, but I thought it turned out pretty cool.

The reason we were out and about was to go watch Mrs.Wolff compete in a Japanese speech contest. I thought she was pretty ambitious considering she was the only American that was competing. We stayed through the first round of contestants. Mrs.Wolff did really well and ended up placing in second! After that we came back to the apartments because I was getting another migraine. I slept most of the afternoon. In the evening Carly and I played Phase 10 and Garbage. I love card games!! Then we watched Talladega Nights. I talked to Josh for a little bit on skype and then went to bed.

I woke up today and felt just terrible. My migraine was super bad. Originally Carly and I were going to go find this bilingual church, but we didn't go since I didn't feel good. I slept until about 12:30 and then just laid around and watched Prison Break all day. I tried to do a load of laundry, but when I tried to turn on my washer nothing happened. I couldn't get any of the buttons to work to turn it on, so I resorted to doing a load up in Carly's apartment so I would have clean clothes for Monday morning. It was nice outside so I hung my pants outside. I'm hoping that by taking the whole day off today and not doing anything that tomorrow I will feel better. Please pray that I can get rid of these terrible migraines!!!

I didn't forget yesterday!

I had a horrible migraine all day yesterday, so that's why I didn't get a chance to get on here and update. I'm feeling better though, so hopefully it stays that way. I'm not really sure what triggered the migraine. I think it honestly might be from my neck and back muscles that hurt like none other. My bed is kinda hard!

Anyways, I wanted to inform you all about the bicycles here in Japan.


This is my sweet bike that the school loaned me. And yes it has a basket! Sounds dumb, but seriously that thing comes in handy when you have to go to the grocery store and carry a few bags home. Biking is just so much faster than walking ya know! Anyways, the first picture on the left is a close up of the locks that bikes here use. Instead of messing around with chain and a padlock, there's this lever you pull back that locks the back tire. That way if someone tries to steal it, they can't because it won't move! They would literally have to pick up the bike and carry it away or try to break the lock. In order to ride the bike you just have to insert your key and push the lock open. Easy as one two three :)

Happy Valentines Day!

So today is Valentines Day, a day earlier than in the states. I was a little sad all day because I wished Josh was here, but none the less the day went on. Valentines is celebrated here, but just a little bit differently. In Japan only the girls give chocolates to the boys. It was the cute. A lot of them made little goodies at home and brought them to the school. Mr.Sypal received quite a few, but doesn't really like chocolate so he let Carly and I try some. The kind we had was really good!...To celebrate on my own tonight I bought some coffee flavored cookies with chocolate in the middle. They were definitely interesting.

Today at school we got our first Japanese lesson. I'm really bad at it, but I learned how to say a simple greeting and got this cute little book designed for kids to learn Hiragana.
Isn't it cute :)

After school Mr.Osa took Carly and I on the train to go to the Matsudo City to the town hall. We had to have our picture taken and sign some paperwork to get a new little card like to say we are citizens of the town and OK to be there. On the way back we got to ride home in a TAXI!!!


It was pretty sweet. I had never been in one before. They are expensive though!! Anyways, after that Carly and I decided to try to find the 99 Yen Store. Mr.Sypal had showed us where it was the other night, but that was in the dark, so yeah...Surprisingly enough we found it just fine and got home without getting lost at all! For those of you that know me, you will understand that this is a major accomplishment.

You should always have a flashlight handy

Ok, well today's lesson comes from the above picture, the apartment breaker box. So I was innocently cooking dinner tonight when I decided it would go faster if I cooked the noodles on one burner and the vegetables on the other. As soon as I had everything going the apartment went dark. My only source of light *thankfully* came from my computer screen that was up. I totally freaked out and called Carly to see if she had power. She did, so we figured I just blew the fuse. We called John and he told us to find the breaker box and flip the lever. We didn't have a flashlight so we used the light from my computer to find the box and get the lights back on! YAY!

Tuesday Feb 13

Well, today was the first day that Carly and I went to Matsudo Senshu Jr/Sr High School. Our first task of the day was to navigate to the school by ourselves! We could see it in the distance from our apartments, but we weren't entirely sure on what streets to get there the fastest. To our dismay we turned left when we should have gone straight and although we ended up on the right block, we were faced with a gigantic hill in front of us. We couldn't even bike up it (mostly from lack of physical fitness!), so we resolved to walk our bikes up the hill.

When we got to school we were able to sit in during a calligraphy class. We mostly just listened to the teacher read from the book. He kept coming over to our desks and showing us what page everyone was on and where they were reading. It was a nice gesture despite the fact we didn't know what was being read. We didn't get to do any painting this time, but I think that we will. We will go to that class once a week. After that we had a bit of free time and John showed us around the school. Around 11:30 we got lunch in the cafeteria. For approximately $4.50 we got a really decent lunch of some fried squid and pork I think, some rice, and vegetables. I had a lot of trouble with the chopsticks. I think it may take me a few weeks to get accustomed to it. After our lunch we went to a room and played games with about 15-20 kids while they ate their lunches. We played a little board game where they move their pieces and land on a square. Then they have to read and complete the sentence, in English. I sat with four boys. They were so cute and I was actually surprised at how well they did at the game. Only a few times I had to ask them to repeat themselves...Later in the afternoon Carly and I participated in the English classes. I sat at the front of the room and the kids raised their hands and asked me one question from a list of about 30 that they knew. After I answered their question, I had to ask them a question in return. It was really fun and I think a very good game for them. I was in Mr.Sypal's class for the first half of the class and then Carly and I switched and I went up to Mr.Phlanz's room.

In "Ambition Hall" (the name of the English building) are 2 bulletin boards that are for the interns (1 board each). We have to make a display that tells some things about us, so towards the end of the afternoon we took some time to make posters with our names and printed out some pictures of ourselves, friends, families, and places we've gone. I'm pretty excited to get it all put together in the next day or two.

After school Carly, Mr.Sypal, Mrs.Wolffe, and I went to Saizeriya, a small Italian restaurant. I had a pizza and some Pepsi. It was nice to eat something "normal" and feel for just a minute like I was back home.

Sunday and Monday

Sunday Feb 10

Beth Wolff, another one of the English teachers from the school, took me and Carly around. There is this park by our house that's called (roughly translated) "ForestPark of the 21st Century." It is beautiful. It looks like a tiny little village. It has a lake and houses, but they also grow things like cabbage there (pictured below). There are a few small shops that sell food and ice cream along the walk way and this building that has displays of insects and butterflies with an area that has a bunch of binoculars so you can bird watch.


Beth also took us to a Buddhist temple we found along the way to the train station. It was really neat. Unfortunately I didn't have room on my camera so I couldn't take any pictures of it! Anyways, at the train station we paid 140 yen, which is about $1.40, to ride the train to this shopping area in Matsudo City. It was pretty cool. In one shop it's an imitation of an open market. While there we decided to try some ice cream. I had heard about Green Tea ice cream, so I tried some of that. It wasn't sweet enough for my taste, but certainly wasn't bad.

For lunch we went to this Indian restaurant. I had some chicken curry and dipped this enormous piece of bread into. It was very good. I also had a blueberry lassie. I guess it was made from yogurt. Yummy!

Monday Feb 11

Carly and I decided to explore on our own today. Normally we would have to go to the school on Mondays, but today is the founding day of Matsudo Senshu Jr/High School, so we had the day off. We ran to the supermarket to get some items for this week. It was definitely interesting trying to decipher things. I ended up getting an apple and kiwi for fruit and some frozen vegetables and this shrimp/rice mix. I'm not very good at cooking, so we'll see what I come up with this week! haha.

After our shopping trip we went back to the train station and rode back to the shopping Center. I found this adorable Helly Kitty store and bought some stickers for my cousin and I will admit, one for myself. Haha! I didn't have lunch before the trip so we went to Mos Burger for lunch!

1st and 2nd days in Japan

Continuation of Thursday Feb 7/Friday Feb. 8, 2008

At the airport Carly and I got our first experience with high tech toilets. There are lots of buttons as you can see!

John Sypal and Mr.Gomi met me and Carly at the airport. They had a cute little sign with our names so we knew who they were! We loaded our luggage into the school van and drove to Matsudo. It was about a 2 hour drive, but that was nothing compared to the plane ride. I was kinda freaked out cause they drive on the left side of the road. It was weird. Anyways, they took us to the grocery store and we bought just a few basic items to get us started. Then they took us to our apartments and showed us how everything works. Here is a video of my apartment so you can see what it looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL0M2yD7ImU

Here are some pictures also :)




Saturday Feb. 9

John said he'd come pick us up at 8:00am to head to the school to meet everyone. The school year starts in April here, so they were having an orientation meeting for the new students and their families. When we had arrived the night before I had plugged in my clock, set it, and turned on the alarm. What I didn't know was that the current runs different here, so it made my clock run slow. John arrived at my door at 8:00am, but my clock said it was still 6 so I was still in bed!! I got ready in record speed (about 10 minutes) and we all three (John, Carly, and myself) headed to Matsudo Senshu Junior High School. It was about a 10 minute walk. After we arrived we changed into our "indoor shoes" and went to the office where our desks were. The teachers had a short meeting in which Carly and I introduced ourselves. I think I said something along the lines of "Hi my name is Jenna. I'm 20 years old and from Nebraska. Thank you so much for having us here. I'm really excited to get to know you all." After that we went to the gym and greeted all the new students and parents coming in. We only stayed for a few minutes of the meeting in which the chorus says "A whole new World" (the song from Aladdin). It was pretty sweet sounding in Japanese. After that we got a tour of the school, which is pretty impressive. Later in the afternoon the school fed us lunch. We had rice and fried shrimp, pork, and squid. The squid was actually my favorite!! Shortly after we came back to the apartments. I organized and put stuff away. Then Carly and I watched the first episode of LOST on dvd before heading to bed about 9pm. Jet lag is not fun!