Last night in the city of the fast and furious

TOKYO.
Bam and I'll be flying away to Taiwan to enjoy some atmospheric night markets. My 3 week long stay in Japan has been absolutely amazing. I stepped out of the hotel this morning to grab a green tea latte from the little cafe across the road. Catherine was feeling for some mocha, so she got one but iced. My parents just had a shot of their regular morning coffee and my sisters shared a nice mug of hot chocolate.

It doesn't feel like we're leaving so soon....
Despite the fact that I've been here for so long to the point that I actually felt 'sick' of the pace of life, I know that I'll definitely miss this place. It's an expensive place to stay but the high-tech, fashion forward traditional country is place that will be sorely missed. I've made so many memories here. On my language exchange, I found out that there was a fan club for me. Haha, there were only 17 members, but still it's a fan club for ME. I met many beautiful people whom I hope I will have the chance to interact with in the future.

My host sister's home room teacher happens to be the strictest teacher in the WHOLE school and is always seen scolding students. Well guess what? When I introduced myself to the class, he smiled. Seriously, that's like an eclipse. He never smiles. The whole class freaked. He then proceeded to tell the class that he was very impressed and that he hoped that by the time he went on a language exchange to New Zealand with a group of students, that he would be capable of speaking at my level of fluency, except in English of course. Well since I heard many bad things about him, I decided that he probably was just a very misunderstood man. I mean come on, he's married to a beautiful actress and has kids and absolutely adores them. He's got to have some heart in him. So every time I saw him, I did this really ecstatic hand wave and practically jumped up and down in glee and continued waving with both hands like a maniac until he would wave (exasperatedly) in return. I sort of understand where this hesitation comes from...I mean, every time I see him, he's in the middle of teaching a class or scolding someone so yeah..

ANYHOW, by the end of my stay, I thought that we became pretty good buddies so I asked if I could take a picture with him. At first he was all like 'むり' (can't, not possible) and then I kept pressing him and he eventually gave in. Oh yeah did I mention the fact that every time I waved to him he couldn't stop himself from smiling? See? He really is a misunderstood guy. Hehehehehehehe, well the photo I took with him is quite special. You see, I convinced him to do double peace signs with me. It was SO funny, all the students walked past and were all gasping and laughing. He did try to lower his hands because he was pretty embarrassed but in the end kept them up for a few pics.

I have so much to update, argh. Alright that's all for tonight.

Japanese Exchange - The First Host Sister

Exchange is interesting. Haha, my host families are absolutely wonderful. They're so loving, kind and understanding, it's too bad that my host sisters are slightly weird....

My first host sister's introduction was somewhat disappointing. There were so many sentences yet the only thing she actually wrote about was the fact that she lived close to the school.
It sorta went down like this: (Note: this is all in Japanese)
1. My name is __________________.
2. I live close to the school.
3. It takes 10 minutes to school by foot.
4. Out of my class, I live the closest to school.
5. You don't need to wake up early because I live close to the school.
6. Because I am not a morning person, it is good that I live close to the school.

Hah. Gee, thanks bro. Nice to know you live close to the school. Any hobbies? Anything?
It's alright though, I did end up finding out her hobbies, though I'm not too sure if it was better for me to find out her hobbies or not. You see, she is a HUGE fan of the Japanese baseball team, Giants. When I say huge, I mean sickeningly HUGE. I was forced to watch the baseball channel for 4 hours at a time because she wouldn't let go of the remote control and it turned out the ONLY channel she had was the baseball channel. I tried to busy myself by looking through her books for Japanese phrases to learn, but it was too hard to concentrate. That T.V. is damn loud. I asked her to lower the volume but even the lowest volume was loud -_-

Well at least I know the names of all the players in the Giants baseball team....

Oh gosh. Purikura. You guys can be the judge of how alien I look in my purikura picture....
I'll post my pictures when I get back to Australia. Right now, my second host sister's laptop isn't liking me too much :<

Burt's Bees Lip Balms

So my friend was being really annoying and decided to put my name down for practically every single item for my school's silent auction. In the end I won five of them but to be honest, I only wanted two. SO, I now have this tin of Burt's Bees lip balms. I heard from my aunt that she loves them and they're so good etc. So I thought, why not? 

I'm guessing I got it for a pretty cheap price because when I checked up on the internet for the prices of each individual lip balm, they were all around about $7.00AUD. Hehe, I got the whole tin of four different lip balms for $14.10AUD. 

So the flavours I have are: Acai berry (rejuvenating), Beeswax (with vitamin E and Peppermint), Mango butter (nourishing) and Pomegranate oil (replenishing). 

ACAI BERRY
Oh. My. Gosh. I tried the Acai berry just then and GUGH, I can't stop licking my lips. They taste so yummy~ I don't know if that defeats the purpose of the lip balm but damn, it goes on really smooth and tastes great. I've always had this fear of using lip balms because most of the ones I've used before. . . tasted utterly disgusting. 

I'll update on the other ones later on and I'll thoroughly review each.
I'm pretty happy with what I've purchased today ≖‿≖

NOTE: I apologise for the bad quality photographs, I haven't been able to find my camera charger so I just used my phone ಥ‿ಥ

Maturity in Teenage Males

Today I went to an all boys high school to participate in the 'Human Relations Day'. It was sort of nice to see so many of my primary school friends there but none of them happened to be placed into my group. The group I was placed in was quite interesting. .  I can't complain because I was one of the group leaders but then again. .. . It would've been nice if I was placed into a group with a more mature set of boys(not quite sure if that even exists). Their immaturity levels proved very alarming and it was hard to hide the disdain spreading across my face. 

The day kicked off with a physical start where we all participated in 'recreational' activities that involved dancing, sack racing, hula hoops etc. It was interesting to say the least. Afterwards we had some snacks to eat (carrot cake and cordial - nightmare combination...I absolutely loathe cordial and I don't enjoy eating cake). Ah well, the day couldn't have gotten much worse. ... or so I thought.

When it came to emotional activities that required thinking (girls asking boys questions and vice versa), the girls came up with what I would call an appropriate set of questions e.g. what do boys expect in a relationship, however to my disappointment, the boys bombarded us with extremely personal questions that I'm sure every girl would've had problems with answering -coughcough- (questions relating to female reproductive organs and how often one 'pleasures' it). 

Hah, I'm tired. Today I learnt a lot about the clockworks of the opposite sex and to be honest, it's quite the turn off. Then again, age plays a huge factor in this and makes me wonder if the bunch of immature boys I was grouped with will ever mature into men who don't value sex over everything in a relationship. 

Accidental Meeting and Father's Day present hunting

Haha! I met my lil' cousin at the zoo. It was really odd because I couldn't recognise him. I was sitting down with my friends eating lunch and I saw a bunch of Year 7's and one of them caught my attention. . and it just so happened that he was my cousin's friend. I approached my cousin after realising it was him. Wow, puberty hits some kids real hard. He's grown so much now. I rarely see him so it was a great chance to talk to him however it was slightly annoying how his friends kept jumping into my family reunion talk. After a while we said our goodbyes with the addition of his friends saying bye as well. . . hah. . what a bunch of weird kids.

After going to the zoo, I headed back with my biology class to the station and we were dismissed. Together with a friend, we went Father's Day present hunting around the city. Hehe, I'm glad I was able to spend time with this particular friend of mine. She's always so helpful and funny in an odd way.  I bought an 'I love dad' cup from typo and a kitchen scale to measure my ingredients properly for baking etc. 

I guess you could say it was a really nice day I had. No school, hanging out with animals, going on an African wild adventure with Jen Fu, meeting my lil' cousin and bought a Father's Day present （-＾〇＾-）

Zoo-ing with the Bio Kids

To the ZOO      (ʘ‿ʘ)

Tomorrow I'm heading out with my biology class to the zoo. 

I can't help but feel depressed about the time I have to get up so I can get to the meeting place at the right time ಥ‿ಥ