In the middle of Ichikawa, Chiba

Sorry, but this is not gonna be such a long post as I am tired as hell. D88

So I left on the 15th of March and arrived to Tokyo with the other exchange students from Finland on the 16th day. After our lovely 17 hour long trip we went by the bus to Tokyo to some Olympic Center in Shibuya (I guess). There we spent five days with the other exchange students, made the bonds stronger between the Finnish people and got new friends from all over the world. The time went actually really quick there and the food was good (during the lunch and dinner we had like 5-7 different choices) AND everytime we had something with RICE (unless you ate noodles D8). I did a little bit of calculating and noticed that I ate 690g of rice every single day over there in the orientation. :: D Back to business = the orientation. So I kinda just noticed that we were probably the craziest ones there... (Bulbasaur vs. Charizard, pics coming possibly later ;D) AND one of the noisiest ones, during the daytime... But yeah, I had a really hard time during the last two nights when I was trying to sleep and the Asian dudes next door we're making too much noise so I really wanted to kick the wall, but I didn't... 8(

Today was the day when we we're introduced to our host families and started to live our normal life over here. It was the time to say goodbye to all the new friends and nervously introduce yourself in front of the room full of host-families. So I went to the front and said everything that was supposed to say and then my area representative came forward and picked me up. After waiting for a while we walked to the nearest train station and went to Shinjuku! At there we were supposed to eat food, but as we didn't have much time to spend we went to this cake/coffee/sandwich cafe. Oh god I love Japanese cafes like that, they are so cool and elegant!! Even the bathroom was gorgeous, playing classical music and stuff... I really love these kinds of things in Japan! ;)

After that we went by a train/metro to this one place (can't remember the name of the place) and the trip took probably like 30-40 minutes and I was SO tired I almost fell asleep there. :P After arriving there I meet my temporary host-mum, who's a doctor and that's why she wasn't able to come over there. Then we went by a car to my school and this one teacher talked about things in Japanese and English (!!!!). After that I had to try my school uniform, which took quite a bit of time in the end.. Seems like I can take it back to Finland as they're getting me my own school uniform, because my exchange organization is paying for it.

After school we went by a car with my host-mum to a super market to buy some food (Oh god, I love Japanese super markets... They are WONDERFUL I don't know why, but they are!!) and there we had these huge peaces of samples, which turned out to be quite good after looking a little bit... dubious. So, after buying the ingredients we head to my host-family's house, which is located in Chiba, Ichikawa City. After driving around Ichikawa we arrive here and then I notice that the house looks like... (wait for the surprise) JUST LIKE A CASTLE!! It really looks like that and from inside this is just like a mansion. I was honestly surprised. So, about the family: Mom (a doctor), dad (a doctor), sister (studying to become a doctor), brother (trying to get into a med. school) and a sister (a fitness instructor). The family seems really really nice and they can speak English, especially my host-dad who was on exchange in U.S about 36 years ago. :D

Umm... I'm getting really tired here (I don't want to fall asleep on my laptop) even though it's not even 11 p.m. yet. But at least this turned out to be a little bit longer than I was thinking of writing. I'll add some pics later, ENJOY!!! <3

P.S. They already have proper strawberries here and yummmmm, those strawberries were really good. And it was about +19 celsius degrees around here today. ;)