Nikkō, school and Yokohama! + I turned 17-years old. D888

Sooooooo, I've been enjoying life over here AND THAT'S WHY I HAVEN'T BEEN UPDATING MY BLOG!!! (<--- That's a lie) But now, I made myself a promise just a minute ago that if I don't update my blog now then I won't get to play Final Fantasy XIII (YES, I finally bought PS3 and I even found the Final Fantasy XIII special edition of it!!!), so I'll write something about Nikkō, maybe about the trip to Yokohama and school starting. Let's start with talking about Nikkō. We left to there 03.04. and returned 04.04. Nikkō is a city up in the mountain area about 2000m above the sea level. We rented a car and went there with okaa-san, otou-san, onee-san, onii-san, obaa-san and ojii-san. (onee-san = big sister, onii-san = big brother, obaa-san = grandmother and ojii-san = grandfather). It takes about 2h 30min from here to Nikkō, if I remember correctly. And to be honest, the driving trip to Nikkō was hell for me, because I had been a little ill and felt like puking after a couple of minutes being in the car. Glad I could sleep. :P We arrived to the ryokan a little bit late.. And oh god... IT SMELT REALLY BAD OVER THERE!!! Well, that was because there were some onsens, and there's some methane coming out from the onsens, so that's the reason it smelt really bad.After that we had dinner. We had too much food as it just kept coming. :D I guess it was a traditional one, because at first we had some sashimi and after that toofu (=tofu), chawanmushi (which I didn't really like as I don't like eggs too much), we also had shabu-shabu etc. But as I was still feeling a little bit weird I didn't have much appetite... 8((

The next day we had to give up the room at 10 am. Before that we had a traditional Japanese breakfast. We gave up our rooms and went to explore Nikkō. During the night we came to Nikkō not much could be seen, because back then it was already really dark and it reminded me of Twin Peaks or something like that. D8 But during the daytime you could see lots of mountains and big lake. We saw some waterfalls and stuff. I heard they have some monkeys there, which I really wanted to see, but sadly didn't see any... :( We went to temples and to some huge waterfall, but it was quite gray, because back then spring hadn't really started over there. Oh, seems like I have already raged you about modernizing Japanese temples, so I think I'll leave that out now. :D But still, I wonder why the hell do we have to pay about 2000 yen to visit a temple area that has some construction going on. And even more, world heritage places have souvenir shops in them... Sometimes I can't understand Japanese people. D8 Well, actually what the monks are thinking.

I was thinking about giving up, but if I write now then I don't have to be writing right away about the trip to Yokohama with my host-sister and her boyfriend. :D + Maybe I should tell you something about my school too. :P

I'll start with talking about school. So as posted earlier my school's name is Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen Makuhari Koukou (koukou = high school). I don't know how many student it has but I guess at least a thousand + the junior high side which is connected to the high school side. My class is 1-I. Yes, I'm with the 1st year students even though I'm actually a 2nd year student in Japan. Anyways, my classmates are really nice and I like them. In my class there are 39 students (I'm included) and home-room teacher of course. In Japanese schools, most of the classes are held in the home-room class, but as I am a Finnish exchange student who sadly doesn't understand traditional Japanese literature, world history, social studies etc. I don't spend every lesson in my home-room class. I should go to library to study Japanese, but if it's a nice weather outside I'll just go to the terrace right next to my home-room class. :D Maybe I should start going to the library more often, because the librarian over there is really nice. Lol, we talked about Moomins and stuff. ::D And yes, I do have a school uniform and I actually like it a lot, except on hot days when it feels like a punishment to wear it...

On the 10th of April we went Yokohama with my host-sister and her boyfriend. At first, we drove a little bit out of the city to this glassmaking place (don't know the right word for it, so for now I'll call it the glassmaking place ::D). Over there we made fuurins (Japanese wind chimes). It was fun and we got to decide the colours and do about half of the work (as it might be a little bit too hard to do them alone for those who are doing something like that for the first time. :P). My fuurin ended up looking a little bit like fugu. ::D

We completed the fuurins and after that went to the central Yokohama, near the ocean to a place called Akarenga. Akarenga is kind of a shopping mall and it seems like it has a long history of enduring world war or something like that. So we went there, walked through shops, ate and walked some more. :D But it was a really cool place, especially the yard between the two buildings of Akarenga. I liked the whole place, but didn't actually buy anything else than a package of Fisherman's Friend that I found from one cloth shop selling sailor themed clothes. I don't really like them but I wanted to see the reactions of my family, and once again okaa-san liked them. She even said she had eaten a different flavor before. And let me tell you, she really is not a typical Japanese person in these kinds of things. Almost everybody over here can't stand salmiakki or Turkinpippuris, but okaa-san likes them. (well otou-san too likes them a little bit, but only a little bit :P) To describe a reaction of feeding a turkinpippuri to a typical Japanese person is to say that they start to shout "まずい！！" (= disgusting) and start squirm or just collapse to the floor and sit there for a while. And some even started to run to the nearest toilet (like a couple girls I gave turkinpippuris). XDD

But hey, I think I have written already enough. I don't have so much special things to tell you anymore, except about my trip to Harajuku, but I'll make a post about that someday (notice the word someday ;D). And next Thursday I'll be going to Purikura and Sweets Paradise with my host-sister and her boyfriend (the same ones I went with to Yokohama), so you'll probably see some more purikura pictures in the near future!! I also turned 17 on the 21st of April, yay. :D OH YEAH, I have to tell about that day too. ::D But now I'm gonna start playing Final Fantasy XIII as a prize for writing this update, byeeeee!! <3

P.S. Comments and questions are always welcomed. ;)