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 :<