August 20, 2010 aka. Last Day IN Japan :(

Today was definitely one of the hardest days I have ever had to go through. Even like compared to break ups and stuff. These kids mean more to me than everything. Blitz this morning when we were doing songs that had our names in it, we did our real names instead of our Disney names. It was so weird, and It was all I could do to not start bawling like a baby in the middle of the songs. The kids like let out a huge gasp as we were each revealing our names. Lol. It was pretty adorable. Nikolas just had a bad day in general. I had gone to the center really early to finish our cardboard/ducttape boat, and when he got there he was already crying and nothing had even happened. He was just like I’m so tired. Blah blah blah. At least I didn’t get like a false last image of how awful he actually was lol. Gosh I love that kid so much. When we went to the theater for blitz he tried to hide under the boat tink and I built so he could sleep. Dumb kid. Speaking off building the boat, it was pretty awesome looking. But I came like really really early to finish it. We usually leave our barracks at like seven thirty and arrive at 50 after or so. I got there at like 7, so it was like almost an hour early. I was going to skype and stuff for a while, but no one was on. Oh well, it was good to try and finish it. I wore my hair down today, because my kids have literally been asking me for the entire year to do that. They wanted to as they said “make sure” I was the real Jasmine. So cute! But Paige was so happy I did it, she was playing with my hair for a while and like wouldn’t stop touching it. The kids were so rowdy today even though we told them like a zillion times it was our last day and they should be extra nice to us. I think they were probably just like too hyper with us leaving and all to be very good, which it’s odd how that works I think. But after clubs, during which we had the kids make memory books from the summer, we went to the indoor pool in ranger gym to race the boats all the classes had made. Have to say that ours and Room 5’s looked the most legit, which it makes sense that room 5’s looked so awesome because Ms. Dori has done lots of those boats before. I was the one that ended up in the boat, and it was definitely like scary getting into it, because I didn’t know if it was going to float. But it did thank goodness, and I was able to stay upright. But as soon as we actually started racing and had to paddle it was like impossible to keep the boat upright. We made it small so it would just fit me, but it just wasn’t happening. So hard to keep balance and that’s what did us in. We did super awesome with the waterproof par t though. I ended up dragging the boat behind me for a while as I swam because I just couldn’t figure out how to get back into the boat. My class was still cheering though so whatever. They loved it still. I have to say, it was still pretty fun even though it was insanity lol. After our failed attempt at boat racing The same counselors did a jumping off the diving board competition. I ended up doing a belly flop to win that. Darn my fricken competitive spirit. I just couldn’t help it. Had like the worst head ache ever afterwards. But still fun. The kids loved it, and I just wanted to go all out on my last day with them. When we got back to the center and after we ate lunch we passed out the awards for the kids. Last night Tink and I made fake awards for the kids. Like Nikolas was “Biggest Sports Fan” because he always wears sports stuff, and Robert was “Next American Idol” since he is always singing. They loved it and were all clapping for eachother. I started bawling when I gave Nikolas his. I told him how incredibly much I loved him and pulled him aside for a little bit to talk to him. The whole group, well the girls, all started crying and Nikolas was the most adorable thing ever. He went and one by one grabbed everyone who was crying a tissue with this look of pouty sadness on his face, and then started crying himself. I read them Oh The Places You’ll Go, and got myself to stop crying. But after I finished the book, Nikolas’s dad came and picked him up early. I completely lost it and started crying hysterically. But Sarah, who is one of the workers at the Youth Center, broke my camera and offered to buy me a new one, and she saw Nikolas and his dad as they were leaving. I guess the dad didn’t know it was our last day, so he brought Nikolas back and gave me their address and got mine. He invited me over for dinner too, but we are leaving at like six tomorrow morning to go to the airport. Its like, um, you had the entire summer to do that! Why wait to invite me until I can’t come! Oh well. It was nice to hear from the dad too how much I’ve meant to my Nikolas. Gosh. I feel like I am legit leaving my child by leaving him behind and most likely never seeing him again. But after that, I think the rest of the kids weren’t quite as hard to say goodbye to. Jaquin was probably second hardest. His mom came in during closing and asked to get a picture of me with Jaquin. She says he talks about me all the time and was so excited to finally get to sit next to me yesterday. Jaquin sat next to me on the field trip on the bus yesterday, and it was fricken adorable. He wanted me to put my arm around him the whole time and he ended up falling asleep on me. I let him use my jacket as like a pillow, and he ended up slobbering all over it. It was kind of gross, but so adorable. I felt so blessed that the two kids who meant the absolute world to me had parents that came up to me and shared with me what an impact I’ve made in their child’s life. Closing was so emotional. I bawled like crazy hard the entire time, and there were lots of other girls and counselors crying too. Not as many boys lol. But Sara pulled me aside and this little six year old girl was like, “You are the nicest teacher I’ve ever met in my life. I love you.” I was sobbing. I promised her I would see her again someday and gave her my address. I really hope I’m able to make good on that promise, cuz I definitely wasn’t just saying that. Ms. Sarah, who broke my camera, was like, Ms. Jasmine, you have to come back next year. There are quite a few kids that are traumatized by you leaving. Stuff like that just means so much to me. At the very end after we were saying our goodbyes and leaving Desteni’s mom gave Tink and I these fricken sweet like tea sets with a Japanese tea pot and cups and stuff. So awesome. Although it is heavy and I had to rearrange absolutely everything in my bag to even fit it in there. I told Thara’s mom when she picked Thara up and was saying thank you and goodbye about the time when she was witnessing to Nilanie and how blessed I was to see it. She almost was like crying and wanted to get a picture with me after that. She said she does devotions with Thara every night. It was just so sweet and I feel like by telling the mom that I was able to bless her. After our tearful goodbyes we walked back to our rooms and got ready to go to dinner. Sarah and Jessica prepared this like huge dinner for us and it was really sweet. Although I was so tired from crying that I wasn’t really wanting to stay long. Then we came back to the barracks and did our counselor awards and stuff. The directors and PC gave us like silly awards and mine was Most Likely to Have the “Best Life EVER!”. I did not even realize that I said “Best….Ever” Or “Cutest…..Ever” so often. They said it was adorable, but now I feel a little self conscious about it. I just get so excited about things that I exaggerate a little. Lol. Then we all went around in a circle and said warm fuzzies about people. That was nice because it helped us wrap up the summer and share memories about eachother. Plus Ryan’s slide show brought out even more tears sigh. I think I’m out of them now. But now I’m in my room and its four in the morning. I’m finishing packing and writing this blog and getting ready to go. I figure staying up all night and then sleeping on the plane will help me adjust since I am arriving in Portland at 9ish am on sat Washington time. But then I have to stay up that whole day on the stupid layover. Oh Well. It was pretty much the perfect last day through all the tears and everything!!!! Goodbye Japan. God has blessed me so much this summer, and it is overwhelming to think about how much this trip has impacted my life. I am so glad I chose to write everyday about my experiences and I hope my blogs have been entertaining or enlightening to whoever read them. God Bless, and I’ll see you in the good ol’ USA!

August 19, 2010

Well today was the last field trip day ever for Camp Adventure Atsugi this summer. I can’t really say that this is part of the summer that I’m going to really miss as much as the others. It is pretty lame. They thought it was going to rain, so we got sent to an aquarium. When we got there one of my kids, Justin, who is like pretty lame anyways, got really sick and threw up a couple of times. It was gross, but I felt sorry for the poor kid, because he didn’t look that good. At least it was like a legitimate reason that he was upset and crying, and not like his other fricken fits this summer. But I am definitely going to miss that kid. The rest of the field trip was lame. My kids were absolutely insane this week. Ah my kids. The aquarium was lame and there wasn’t much to do, plus Justin was so sick, so it was just like eh, lets go home. Not worth it. We didn’t have any sound on our bus, so that was kind of lame. Although watching Cars without sound is just as lame as watching cars with sound I have to say. I’m not going to be able to watch that show for a while this summer lol. All in all though, pretty ok time. Tomorrow is going to be so hard.

August 18, 2010 aka Dessert Fest

Today was a really good day. I had so much fun with my kids, although most of the day was spent rehearsing for Dessert Fest. Tink and I also started construction for our boat today. On Friday, every room is going to put our boats into the water and the counselors are going to paddle the boats. That will be really interesting, so we’ll see how that goes. Lol. I am probably going to end up sinking our boat or something, but ya never know. I did really good the whole day not crying also. We didn’t do closing, since we were rehearsing, so that probably had something to do with how good I did not crying. Today was our very last day at the pool. It is so incredibly weird. Although the pool is a hassle two times a week, I have loved taking the kids there. They are just so cute. Today I played with them all as much as possible and took some pictures. End of an era as Mr. Prince Charming would say. After work that day we all scurried and got ready for dessert fest, which started at six. Dessert Fest is where all of the parents of our kids come bearing awesome desserts and watch the kids perform songs and skits they learned throughout the summer. It was so incredibly awesome. Our kids in our room 2 performed Peanut Butter Recees Cup and the Chewing Gum Skit. They did such a good job, and I was so proud. But Sara, who was the main part in the Chewing Gum Skit unfortunately got there like two minutes after we had started and so we had replaced her. The poor thing was like bawling and couldn’t even do the rest of the skit. We got her added to another room’s skit, but I felt so bad. At the end of dessert fest, all the kids lined up onto the stage and we sang The World’s Greatest. It was so cute when all the kids were doing the sign language to it, but the stupid cd kept skipping. That’s the first time I’ve had to do that acappella since we had to turn off the cd eventually. After everything, all the parents, kids, and us watched a slide show of our summer. I started bawling during it. I’m going to miss my kids so much. After the slide show while everyone was getting dessert, Nikolas’s mom pulled me aside and told me how much I meant to Nikolas. How he talks about me all the time and always wants me to come over and be with him, and how much he is going to miss me. She thanked me for meaning so much to him this summer and asked if I was going to come back to this site next summer. I told her no, but I said how much I loved having Nikolas in class and how much I would miss him. I completely lost it after that and had to leave the room. I love him so much, and hearing that from his mom meant more to me than I can say. Out of all the kids, Nikolas is the one that has meant the most to me this summer, so to know for sure that I have impacted him that much made me bawl. I want to keep him and take him with me, and it absolutely kills me to know that I will never ever see him again. Maybe one day I will look him up on facebook or something. I say his full name so many times a day its not like any amount of time passing is going to make me forget it lol. The magnitude of the fact that I will really never see them again is like too much for me to think about. I just love Nikolas and Jaquin ( and others) so much.

August 17, 2010

Today was a really good day. We don’t have as many kids this week, which is nice. Like seven less than our average last week. It is kind of nice, but I miss the ones that aren’t there. It is still weird without Aaron, but at least I still have my Nikolas and Jaquin. Nikolas today was kissing my arm. I have no idea why, but it was the most adorable thing ever. I love that kid so much, like more than I can express. I would adopt him in one second if I could. Kids like him and Jaquin make me want my own kid so bad. Now I know, the best way to get over a broken heart is to fall in love with some kids. Although my heart is just gunna be broken all over again when I have to leave them. Especially Nikolas and Jaquin. Today was our second to last swimming day, which was weird. Gosh, sigh. So close to leaving my adorable kids. I notice myself holding their hands a little tighter, and hugging them a little bit longer. Because I know I’m never going to be able to again.

August 16, 2010 aka last monday

Well today was the last Monday of Japan. Very sad. Although in all it was a very good day. Today I cried two times, which is better than I did on Friday, although both times I cried longer than last week. I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m a basket case, but I can’t help it for reals. I don’t like it cuz I feel lame. Lol. Oh well. Just who I am. The first time was when they tried moving two of my kids into another room for the week, which doesn’t make sense since they’ve been with us the entire time. So I lost it for quite a while. Thankfully Kenga and Buzz helped me out and got them back into my room. The next time I cried was when we were doing closing and Mr. Buzz came up and did a song, and it was friends and he said how much he enjoying becoming friends with all of us counselors. I completely lost it, and all the kids from the other rooms were like is she really crying. Yep. The rest of the day we were preparing for dessert fest and talking about building our cardboard boat. Good times. Imma miss these kids.

August 15, 2010 aka last sunday of Japan aka BEACH

Today was my very last weekend day in Japan, since next Saturday we are all flying back home. I am getting really emotional thinking about this right now, just so ya’ll know. I mean this is my very first last day of this week. Today was my very last Sunday in Japan. I don’t know. I’m excited to see my family again, but this whole preparing to leave and knowing I’m going to leave thing just plain sucks. Like hardcore. Gosh. Lol, I’m crying while I’m writing this. Anyways, today us girls spent the day at Atami beach. I was worried this morning because it didn’t look nice out outside, but it turned out to be a beautiful day! Atami beach was like two hours away, but it was the closest white sand beach to where we were, so it was totally worth it. It was so nice to just lay out on the beach, cool off in the water, and then lay in the sun. That was the first time I’ve been able to do that since spring break in Hawaii, which was like forever ago! It was so relaxing, and the absolute perfect way to end my summer in Japan. I had so much fun with everyone. It was really cute on the beach that a lot of the Japanese people brought tents to the beach so that they wouldn’t get out in the sun too much and tan. I didn’t know before I came here that in both the Japanese and Chinese culture it is more beautiful to be whiter. I guess being tan is a sign of being the lower working classes who are out in the fields and stuff. Interesting. When we were done we walked off the Sotetsu line for the last time and walked back through the entrance of our gates for the first time. It was very sad. But altogether an incredibly amazing day!!!!!!!!!

August 14, 2010 aka Exploring Yokohama for the last time

So, today was the start of the last weekend in Japan. SAD !!!!! I can't believe that this was the second last day I had to ride the trains and subways, and to see all the sights and stuff. Craziness times like a zillion. Although my pocketbook is definitely smiling and ready to kick me back to America. Lol. Today Julie and I headed to Yokohama and explored a little bit. We first went to the Ramen Museum, which ended up being in Shin- Yokohama, so despite earlier vows to never return after the backwards train incident, I went back if only to experience more of the awesomeness that is Ramen. This museum was pretty awesome, and the whole inside of it was themed to like Tokyo in the 1950's or something, and so the whole thing looked like an old city, and they even had like traditional candy and toy shops set up on the street looking thing with all of the ramen restaurants. We unfortunately didn't end up trying any of the ramen mostly because the wait was like fricken an hour at each restaurant. Way too much time. The history of Ramen was cool too although we just had to gather it from the pictures and dates since the actual writing was in Japanese. Interestingly, cup of noodles was introduced the same year that we went to the moon, so pretty much that was the coolest year ever. After the museum, we went to the Kirin brewery in Yokohama called Kirin Beer Village. It was pretty much plain awesome. We got a free tour and then got to see how all the beer was brewed and made. The other best part of it is that we got two free drinks at the end. Me, being the responsible person I am got alcohol-free beer and juice as my two drinks. Not really in the mood for a beer, just wanted the taste. We looked around the Yokohama station mall before heading back home, but everything was too expensive. At least none of our trains went backwards while we were traveling today. Every time the train stopped and even like one person got off Julie and I grew very anxious. When we got back to the Sagamino station, we went to the 100 yen store inside this building on the way home. I only got a couple of things, since I've already finished souvenier shopping, but I couldn't help but buy this printed toilet paper. Its blue and has flowers on it. You can't get that anywhere in the states, and I can't wait to see the looks on peoples' faces when they walk into my bathroom in the duplex. Or even just Bethy and Livy's faces ha ha. We then walked to the Bonodori festival on base, which is like the annual festival including both the NAF people and the Japanese in the town. It was so incredibly awesome because there was traditional music and dancing , Which is something I had not yet gotten to experience. There were people up on stage leading the crowd in different dances while the traditional singing and drumming was going on. Just plain awesome. I danced for a while and felt immersed in the culture. Plus I got to eat a hot dog. Holla! I tried Julie's Okonomiyaki (which is like a Japanese pizza / pancake with all kinds of stuff inside), but it was nasty. Glad I didn't get any to try meself. Tomorrow is the beach, that should be fun.

August 13, 2010

Today was pretty good. Except for the fact that it was Aaron’s last day. It was really sad. I cried a total of four times today, and that was only over like one kid leaving. Just shows what a mess I am going to be the entire week next week. At one point we gave aaron a shirt that we all signed, and when we gave it to him, Tink and I each told him something about him that we had enjoyed. Like I said I liked how respectful he was all the time. Tink and I were crying, four of our girls started crying, and they were like snot crying and wouldn’t stop no matter what. It was kind of like ah. I guess I was put in the right class. We all gunna be teary eyed next week. I spent most of last night packing. It was sad, but its good to get that out of the way. Little upset over our phone situation as of yet, but stuff happens I guess. Learned a lot about chilling and going with the flow this summer. There are much worse things in the world than someone monopolizing a shared phone. Peace!!!!

August 12, 2010

Today was a pretty good day despite like the crappiest field trip ever. It was really interesting. We left for the field trip at the normal time, which was like 8:45. Unfortunately, unlike every other week, this one I was in Yokohama rather than Tokyo or something. The trip to get there only took like 45 mins. It was kind of unfortunate, because one of the best part of field trip days is the bus ride in basic silence while the kids are watching a movie. Oh well. At least it wasn’t like an 8 minute bus ride or anything like the kinders had. So we got there around like nine thirty or a little before. Unfortunately the amusement park, Cosmo World, didn’t open til 11. Definitely think they should have thought that one out a little bit more. I think that the center doesn’t always think through everything before they planned the field trip. So we ended up eating snack in this like mall thing. After we finally got to the park we were going around, and our fricken kids were too small to ride literally like everything. Even the log ride here. So we ended up going to this like mirror maze thing. Bad idea. The kids ended up like getting ahead of me and lost, and then some of them were freaking out and crying. Plus, our tickets we had were only good for a certain amount of rides and so they took some of them away. It was just weird. Then we went to this carousel, but it started raining when we got there. Like really hard. They wouldn’t let us take the kids to go souvenier shopping anywhere so our kids were whining, and then we had to wait around for the busses to come for like 20 mins. It was just like bad. I was so incredibly cold. We got back to the center around like threeish, so we had an hour to kill time before closing time. I found out that one of my kids was autistic and we were never informed. Karin, who was new this week, has something that I can’t pronounce, but basically it is that she has autistic tendencies and needed to be spoken to more gently and stuff. Of course they could have fricken told us that at the beginning of the week!!!! Anyways, I guess we found out because her dad called concerned because I had hurt her feelings the day before when I yelled at her. I was thinking back and couldn’t even think of what the incident could have been. So I pulled her aside and apologized for hurting her feelings and asked her what she thought had happened. It was something like we were all at swimming getting lined up and I had raised my voice to get all the kids in line. Apparently she had an ant on her bag and she is really scared of bugs and it made her sad that I was “yelling” at her while she was afraid. Of course it was me out of all the counselors that this happened to, when my comments on my evaluations always have to do with not being harsh and vocal enough. Lol. I’m actually glad that it ended up being me and not someone who actually yells or something and is more intimidating or this poor little girl might have liked crapped her pants or something. After that she was my buddy for the day and she wanted to hold my hand and talk with me. That was really sweet. I just felt sad for scaring the poor girl when I know I’m like the least angry/yelly person here at camp lol. Oh, another cool thing that happened during camp was that I played connect four with some of the kids. The best was playing it with Ryu. That kid like legit beat me four times in a row. I just couldn’t figure out how to beat him. I don’t know how the heck he did it, but like everytime I tried my hardest and he just had like four different lines that he could win and he would trap me. I don’t know how that happened. He is six!!!! Really good day. I am going to miss my Niki. Today when we were first walking to the center he sticks his head out of the door and yells, “Ms. Jasnim, I Thoooooouuuuuught it was your last day” really loudly. It was fricken hilarious the way he said it because the word thought was dragged out for like an hour. Lauren and I were basically on the floor laughing. Awesome.

August 11, 2010

Today was pretty much an amazing day! During the actual day, there wasn’t that much that happened, but it was after work that was amazing. After we got done with everything for the day we booked it back to our rooms and changed as fast as we could. The baseball game started at 6, but we didn’t end up getting there until like 6:45, which isn’t bad because baseball games take quite a while. We had to take the train and then the subway, which isn’t that bad, but one of the trains pulled the whole stop and get off to transfer again. Oh well. At least we didn’t stay on this time and the train would have started going backwards. Lol. When we finally got to the stadium we had to walk around for a little bit to find out where the seats we needed were at. We ended up paying 2200 yen for our seats, which I don’t think is that bad. We got to our seats, and right away the team, called the Yokohama Baystars, were like all scoring runs! It was just the most awesome thing ever!!!! The best thing probably about the Japanese baseball games in general is that the fans are way more into it than they are in America. Not to say that Americans don’t love their baseball. But here it reminds me more of the college games and stuff. The team had like drummers to keep the rhythm of the cheers, and then they had section leaders with whistles that would starts the cheer or song. During the entire inning that the team was playing the crowd was cheering. I absolutely loved it, although it made me miss college quite a bit. At the game, there was this really drunk girl in front of us who had like seven beer cups all stacked up and drinking another one. She was fricken hilarious. She kept talking about how some Japanese anime characters are so dangerous, and then how drunk she was. She also said something about how she was more dangerous when she was drunk. It was pretty much very entertaining. After the game was over and we won by like 2 runs, the guys that were behind us gave us some of their little baseball hitting noise maker things. It was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! Imma miss Japan.

August 10, 2010

Omg! I found out that this is Aaron’s last week. I’m going to miss that kid so incredibly much. He is one of my favorites. He just has the best manurisms and stuff. It is hilarious. He gets so frustrated all the time and so easily, but it is like a quiet frustration. And he is obsessed with being a dude and cars and stuff. So incredibly cute. Today was pretty awesome. We only got up to 25, but we didn’t have to move anyone because it wasn’t til basically we were ready to leave. Also this week there were these like 2 people from America who are traveling all over the world and helping to put together The Princess and the Pea. I don’t think they knew what they were getting into when they came to Atsugi because there is no way the two of them can control the 40 plus kids that signed up for it, but their funeral. Buzz doesn’t even think most of the kids are going to end up showing up on Saturday at the performance, and I don’t doubt that at all. But anyways, the rest of the day was really good. We ended up only going swimming for like 20 mins because some kid pooped in the pool before we got there. Nasty. How did the lifeguards not notice that? We thought it was a leaf or something and let the kids in, but it definitely wasn’t. The rest of the day we watched Most Valuable Primate 2, which was a weird little kids movie, but they ate it up. It was really cute. My cold defiantely came back with a vengeance and it is making me sad. Ah! So sick!

August 9, 2010

Today was a pretty good day. There were a crap ton of kids in our room today, twenty six to be exact, which put us two over ratio. Sadly that meant that some of our kids had to be moved to a different room after a while. It was kind of sad since this is our second to last week with them. The other sad part was that they took away some of the really awesome and nice kids and left all the misbehaving ones with us, so even the lower numbers didn’t make it any less crazy in our room. We got keith back this week, which sucks. Out of all the kids we’ve had out of all the weeks, I really don’t like this kid the most. He is just mean to the other kids and he doesn’t listen at all. The best thing was at the end of the day we were invited to dinner at Paige’s house again. It was stinking awesome!!!!! I loved it so much. Her mom made us tacos and enchiladas! Cloe’s mom was there too, and Cloe is a sweet girl so that was really cool. It seems like every time I am really missing home cooked food, something like this happens to make it all better!!! Paige is so cute. She always wants to sit by me and she tries to get Buzz and I together since she wants both of us to stay forever. So incredibly cute! I’m gunna miss that girl so much.

August 6-8, 2010 aka Hiroshima, Kobe, and Kyoto!!!!

So this weekend is definitely competing for the coolest one in Japan yet! Hiroshima, Kobe, and Kyoto all in one weekend is like one of the most intense things ever possible! A lot, but totally amazing. Friday was a pretty good day, the kids were a little bit crazy, but really what else is new with them. I don't really know that anything was extremely different. At the end of the day instead of pie the counselor we did throw flour on the counselor, which I liked way better. It was Chris's (who it was his first week and he's William's little brother from the kinder room) and Chandler's last week. It was so incredibly sad, and even though chandler and I have had our ups and downs I started to cry a little and I'm really going to miss that kid. So since it was their last week I chose both of them to do the flour the counselor and they did me, which I was kind of honored by. So I had flour all up in my hair and eye lashes and eyebrows and all over my clothes. Sure smelt a lot less horrid than the rotting milk smell. It even made me like wanna bake something. So after camp was over Julie and I booked it home because we had to leave about an hour later in order to get to our bus on time. We finished packing, took a shower, and then got Kelly and were ready to go. I had planned everything out that we were going to do the night before, so it was pretty awesome to say the least. I also got a package from my mommy on Friday, which was amazing because I miss them so much. It was a card and then the book that is in Dispicable Me about the three little kittens. It made me cry at the end because it is about your mommy being in your heart even when you are away. Awe. I can't believe I will get to see my family in 2 weeks. So anyways, we grab out stuff and start walking. I had to run to single sailor office to print stuff off, course I forgot the flash drive so I had to run back to my room then run back to the office again and actually print the stuff off. But that wasn't that bad except that I was instantly all sticky and sweaty. All good though. After that we went to the ATM and then took a cab to the Sagamino station. (didn't want to be all nasty on the all night bus trip) When we finally got to the Shinjuku station, which was near our boarding area, we had to walk like all over the place trying to find where to board the bus and we didn't know where we were going, so we ended up taking another cab to find it . It is a good thing we did because it was way out of the way and we never would have gotten to it before check in closed for our bus. We were literally running to where it was and all the Japanese people were like looking at us all funny as we are run / waddling trying not to let the stuff fall out of our backpacks and stuff. We ended up getting there like right before check in closed and we printed off our tickets. It was much different than the Shinagawa station because it was smaller and check in was easier. We somehow didn't all end up on the same bus either which was weird. Julie and I were on bus B, but Kelly was on bus A. We were like what the heck. Julie and I didn't even book our tickets at the same time and Kelly and I did. Kind of frustrating, but it was all set to arrive at the same time still, so whatever. So Julie and I boarded our bus and got our seats and stuff and the bus was packed. There were only 2 empty seats in the end, and one of them ended up next to me. Julie and I figured that someone had bought the tickets and they were just like late or forgot or something like that. So she ended up moving next to me which was nice. I was planning on passing the heck out but unfortunately for some reason I couldn't fall asleep. At least from what I can remember. I know for the first while I was inbetween a state of awake and asleep, but it really sucked when they would like stop at rest stops and turn the lights on and stuff. Don't remember that the last bus I took cuz I was sleeping the whole time. But near the end I slept more . Of the 12 hour bus ride, I probably slept completely a total of like six hours. Which I guess is livable considering.
Julie and I arrived the next day at the Hiroshima station around nine, which was an hour after we were supposed to have arrived so we weren't the happiest campers, but we still had all day there so whatever. But no Kelly! It was sad. We were really worried. The rest of the group wouldn't let us take our phone, even though we were traveling half way across the country and they were just going to Tokyo, so we couldn't get in touch with her. We ended up finding a pay phone and calling her a couple of times. At least we got ahold of her and stuff. She ended up arriving finally like 2 hours later, which was insane. So by the time we were all prepared and ready to go it was like 11:30. We have no idea what her bus driver was doing but he must have been on some sort of drug or something and was just like going the wrong way or something. Her bus only left like 20 mins after our . Have no idea what happened, but anyways she got there and was safe, which was the most important thing of all. We first headed to Peace Memorial Park, which was the main thing to do in Hiroshima. We bought a day pass that let us use all the street cars and the ferry for the day. It was only like 8 dollars, so that wasn't bad at all. We got to peace Memorial Park and it was crazy. The first thing we saw was the A bomb building, Which is like the famous building that was almost directly hit by the bomb, but the shell of it is still standing. I don't know how that is possible, but it is pretty much awesome. We took tons and tons of pictures, but it didn't feel right smiling in them, so we just stood there somberly. Such a sad environment. Especially since we were visiting on the day after the 65th anniversary of the bombing, which I didn't realize when we had actually booked the trip. The Children's Peace Memorial was sad too. Later in the museum we read the story about it and it was this girl who had survived the bombing, but later gotten leukemia from the radiation. She folded 1000 paper cranes and wished to live (it is an old legend) but it didn't work of course and she died. Now in Hiroshima, paper cranes are like the symbol for hope and prayers going up to the hurting or sick. There were thousands and thousands of strings of paper cranes put onto every memorial in the park, and there are tons of them. The Children's Peace Memorial was put up and fundraised by the classmates of that girl who died to remember her and those like her. It is a beautiful memorial, but it was really sad. The museum was probably the saddest part I think. There were pictures of the aftermath, left behind things and clothing that were charred, etc. The most interesting thing was the part about why Hiroshima was chosen as a target and why the other targets were as well. I found it all very sad. At the end of the museum, we were able to sign our names in this log book and write down our thoughts about the experience. I said I pray that we all remember Hiroshima and never let it happen again, no matter what the supposed reason. So incredibly sad that it happened. After peace memorial park, we went to Miyajima, which is this island that has a floating shrine. It was stinking awesome. The street car ride to the ferry took a while, but the ferry was so tight. It was neat getting closer and closer to the torri gate floating in the water. The deer on the island were tame like the deer in Nara. Have to say that tame deer aren't nearly as exciting the second time of seeing them as the first. But it was still pretty cool. Except for the deer that were like chasing me everywhere. Not cool. Literally two deer were like following me no matter where I turned and wouldn't leave me alone. Julie documented it on camera lol. It was quite a walk to get to the place where the shrine was, but we made it eventually. We had just missed low tide, when we would actually be able to walk to the floating torre gate, but we could get really close, which was amazing! It was absolutely beautiful with the gate and then the distant mountains and the city in the background. Very worth the ferry ride over. After that we went over to the Hiroshima Castle . It was quite a ways from where we were, but our goal was to make it there by sunset. We were like sprinting over to the castle, and just made it in time. I thought that the castle was absolutely gorgeous. It was much more authentic looking than Osaka castle, and it was all wooden and rustic looking and stuff. Woot!!!! Those were the main things to hit in Hiroshima, so we went back to Peace Memorial park to see it at night, and there was like this peace concert to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the bombing. We sat on the edge of the wall next to the river and watched some of the concert. It was really cool. They gave everyone glow in the dark stuff to wave during the concert . When we first got there, this older Japanese guy started talking to us about the concert and where we were from and stuff. He gave us our glow in the dark bracelets. It was really funny. Julie right after she got hers accidentally flicked it into the water, and we could just see it floating in the dark water below. The dude gave us another one, which was super nice. There was a like jr. High or high school orchestra playing when we got there and they played popular songs like It's a Small World. After them this like semi popular boy band got up and was singing. They sang amazing grace, and then some traditional Japanese songs. It was really neat to see everyone singing these traditional songs. There was also this like glow in the dark stuff that was running through tubes all over the place. Absolutely beautiful. On our way to the bus station to freshen up before we left, we ran into Kaylee and Lauren from our camp, who were traveling in Hiroshima that weekend too. It is crazy that in such a big city we ended up running into eachother. That seemed to happen a lot this summer lol. But they were nice enough to let us use their hotel room to freshen up. That night at around ten thirty we boarded another overnight bus from Hiroshima to Osaka the next day. The best part about this was that we were all on the same bus and that this bus actually left and arrived when it said it was going to unlike the one the night before.
That night I passed the heck out the entire night, which was much needed. The bus ride was only like six and a half hours though, so still not too much sleep. We arrived at Osaka at around five, got ready for the day, and then boarded a train to Kobe. Kobe was pretty cool. We got there before anyone was out on the town and really before anything was really open, but we got to the port which is like the main thing to see in Kobe. Kobe is like a city that was completely destroyed by this horrible earthquake a long time ago, and it is famous basically for being rebuilt. The port tower was really cool looking and the Martime Museum looked stinking awesome next to it. The ground had tons of trash all over the place there because the night before there had been a festival. It was crazy that we were there so early that that stuff hadn't even been cleaned up completely yet. After that we walked around and tried to find the Hyogo Buddha that is in Kobe. We ended up finding it, and although it was closed we took some pretty cool pictures through the gate. At that point we split up and Julie and Kelly continued exploring and I went to meet up with Keika and her mother to go to the Open Bible church that is in Kobe. It was a little scary venturing out on my own (which we are not technically supposed to do), but it wasn't bad. I met them in front of the Mr. Donuts in front of the Suma Station in Kobe. They were extremely nice, and Keika's mother ended up dropping us off at the church. Keika is like 33 or something, but she just happened to be home visiting for the weekend. ( she lives in Tokyo). She was such a great help to me at church. She introduced me to all of Tammy's friends and I was able to meet like the pastor and some other members of the church who spoke some English. They gave me like a boutenier for being a guest and had me fill out a guest card. It was really nice when they introduced me during the service and all like greeted me and stuff. I loved it. The worship was really cool because I knew quite a few of the songs that had been translated from English to Japanese. It was such a blessing to see that even in different cultures and stuff the worship is the same. Well I mean not like the same that's not what I mean. The heart of it is the same. Like people's hear t and intentions for worship. The message, from what I gathered with the verses and Keika's help, was about witnessing and having faith and patience. It is much harder for the Japanese people to get converted to Christianity I guess because 1, Christianity is such a minority here, and two, I guess Japanese people don't talk about that kind of stuff. Faith I mean, like they would in say America. It was nice of the pastor to try and throw in some English phrases when he could to help me out. I liked talking with the pastor afterwards too because he said to say hi to Monte and Norm LeLaCheur and stuff. That was really cool. It made the world seem even that much smaller and connected. After church I met up with the other girls at another station and we headed to Kyoto.
When we got to Kyoto, we met one of Kelly's friends who had studied abroad in Iowa the previous year. Her name is Saschio, and she brought along two of her other friends. It was really nice having them, one, because they spoke Japanese , And two, because they were from around that area and helped us get around. First we went to the Fushimi-Inari shrine, which is in English, the thousand torri gates. It was amazing. Literally rows and rows and rows of these torri gates everywhere. Like a tunnel of them. It was absolutely amazing to see. After that we went to the thousand warrior temple, which was called Susangendo Temple. It is like this really really long building with a Indian Buddha in the middle, and on either side of it were 500 warrior statues that were like guarding it. These warriors just kept going and going in the building. It was sooo cool. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed, although I bought some postcards and took a picture of the postcard so I could show it to whoever reads this. It was just amazing. At the front of each one of the ten rows of warrior was this like statue of a different god. They all looked really weird, but it was pretty awesome. The next temple we went to was the golden temple, but that one was all the way on the other side of Kyoto. Unfortuantely, unlike Nara and Nikko and places like that, Kyoto did not have the lovely set up where everything worth seeing was all in the same convenient location and easily accessible. We had to take a taxi to get to the Golden temple in time before it closed, and it was like 9 dollars each. Sheesh. Kyoto was definitely the most expensive of any of my cities in Japan. Plus like every temple we went into cost between like 500 and 600 yen. They must rake in so fricken much money at these places. The golden temple was definitely worth all the money and hastle to get to though. It was absolutely amazing! Legitimately 20 kilograms of gold on this fricken huge temple thing that was like floating in the water. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, and I'm so glad I got to experience that. Plus the grounds for this temple were gorgeous! Itw as like garden after garden and lakes and ponds. Also, there was this tree / bush thing that was cut to look like a traditional Japanese boat. Very cool. After that we had time for one more temple, so we went to this famous rock zen garden one. I'm pretty sure it was called Ryiojini or something like that. It was really neat to see. The zen garden was this rock garden that was raked all cool and stuff. It had fifteen huge rocks in it , Since 15 is supposed to be the luckiest or most holy number in Japanese culture or something. There was also this beautiful fountain hand washing coin looking thing there. It was just plain awesome. The last thing we had time to do before our time in Kyoto came to an end was the Gion district. The Gion district is famous because of the geishas and Meikos. A meiko is the same thing as a geisha, except that geisha is older than 20 years old, and meiko is older than 20 years old . I was so hoping we would see one, but it didn 'T happen. Oh well. It just gives me one more reason to come back to Japan right! The Gion district was just beautiful in its own right though. Everything was very authentic like Japanese architecture and stuff. Absolutely gorgeous. I loved Kyoto. It was Julie's birthday that day, and we were going to take her out to dinner for okonomiyaki, but we weren't able to because we ran out of time. Instead Kelly and I snuck off to one of the mini marts and bought her some snack foods. Julie loves food, and so we knew there is nothing she would want more on her ride home than some snacks lol. Once we said goodbye to our Japanese friends and boarded the fricken expensive bullet train home, we snuck up to Julie and sang her happy birthday and gave her the stuff we got her. She was so embarrassed because everyone was all quiet and we were being a little loud, but I think she really appreciated it . The bullet train home was absolutely amazing. It got us to Shin-Yokahama in like 2 hours, Which is way less than the 8 hour bus ride it would have taken to get there from Tokyo. Just shows how fast this thing is. It kind of reminded me of the inside of an airplane because of how there were seats and then an aisle. Then there would be like a stewardess that walked through and offered snacks and drinks (although unfortunately unlike a plane that was not free). I passed out like for more than an hour though. I was so tired from the long weekend. When we got to Shin-Yokohama, we boarded a train to Yokohama, and then were going to transfer to go back to Sagamino. Unfortunately, when we were one stop away from Yokohama our train stopped. Everyone got off and we thought it was just another stop before we would keep going, but the train legitimately started going backwards. We were like staring out of the window in shock. Like what the heck! !!!! It didn't say on the thing that it was the end of the line and we had to transfer again, it just said that we were going straight to Yokohama! Couldn't believe it. At least we made it eventually , Although it was much later than originally planned. Once we got to the Sagamino station and were going to walk to base it started to downpour hardcore, so once again we took a cab. On the walk, well should I say run, home from the gate, we were soaked to the bone and dripping water. All in all, very very unforgettable amazing weekend!!!!

August 5, 2010

Today was a pretty good day except for the fact that I woke up extremely sick! It was pretty much horrible lol. I woke up at four in the morning and had one of the worst sore throats ever! I couldn’t believe it. Bleh. I think maybe that’s why I was a little sensitive and ultra tired this last week now is cuz I was getting sick. So when my alarm went off I dragged myself outta bed and threw my hair up and tried not to look like I was dying, cuz that’s sure how I felt. I sounded like a man as well because my voice was all groggy and deep. I know attractive right? Well anyways, it was still an ok day. The field trip was pretty cool. We went to this like Paddington Bear amusement park and it had this really cool like lift thing that went up to this ferris wheel on a hill. It had some absolutely gorgeous views! It was so incredibly hot though. I thought I was going to melt off the face of the earth. Also Justin threw one of the worst fits I’ve like ever seen, and in my room that’s really saying something. During lunch, which was right before we went to explore the amusement park we told all the kids to grab water and carry it with them since it was so crazy hot outside. He of course like either didn’t get the memo, didn’t notice everyone else with their water bottles, or just plain dropped his and said he didn’t take one. All very possible. But anyways he starts screaming when we are in line for a ride and some of the kids are getting on. “I’m thirsty.” Where’s your water? “I don’t have any. You won’t give me water!” Well we don’t have bottles with us, we told you to get one. We’ll take you to a drinking fountain after this ride. “I’m thirsty!!!!!!!!!!!” It was insane and he starts screaming bloody murder and pounding his feet on the ground and rolling in the dirt. We were like we can’t take you now because we can’t leave the kids that are on the ride. Finally after like 5 mins of screaming we take one of the water bottles from another kid and waterfall dump it in his mouth. We give him quite a bit to drink and then give the water bottle back to the kid. He starts screaming again! “Why don’t you give me water! I’m just thirstyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!” Gosh. I could have like kicked that kid, but not really. All the Japanese people were looking at us in either amusement or disgust. Finally the kids were done with the ride and we made him drink water for like ever, but I didn’t let him go on any more rides that day. I was sick, and he didn’t deserve to after screaming and throwing a crazy person fit like that. Sheesh.

August 4, 2010

It was a pretty good day today. The kinders went on a field trip today, but they left behind one of their problem children, Ellie, behind because she is not allowed on field trips anymore. So guess who’s room she joined! Mine woot. :p. She is aweful in the kinder room and throws fits all the time I guess. Like really bad fits where she shuts down completely. She was a complete angel in our room, and I was like wow. What an adorable child. She like followed me around and offered to help me all the time and stuff. It was crazy. At the pool she started to throw a fit because she missed her mom, which is what it usually is about I guess, but I was able to calm her down which was nice. I was kind of proud of myself since she is supposed to go so crazy. At the end of the day I let her go up for closing because she had been so good. After closing however lo and behold I find out that she had stolen two Bakugon toys (which are the dumbest little toys ever that she doesn’t even like) from a little boy named James in the kinder room before she had come into our room. She had them hidden in her little black purse thing. I felt so deceived! Lol. What an adorably evil little child. Oh well. Good day.

August 3, 2010

So today was pretty awesome. Besides the fact that one of our kids has an absolutely insane mother. So we usually give our kids the choice between a penny, prize, or a ticket when they have like helped clean, been quiet and respectful, or won a game. It gives them some insentive and they enjoy it a lot. Well one girl, Nilanie, got two pennies for something or other. I guess today her mom freaked out at Ryan for like ever about how it was horrible that we would try and pay the kids to clean, and that we were horrible people for doing that. I mean come on. It was a freaking penny. Its not like the parents don’t give these kids ten dollars a week for doing absolutely nothing to buy souveniers at the amusement parks. What harm is a penny or two? Especially since on bases in different countries they don’t have pennies. That’s why we do stuff like that. To these kids pennies are more than just pennies because they don’t have them. Anyways, she also freaked out at him about the adopt a counselor program, which is where parents can choose to invite a counselor over and “adopt” them, have them over for dinner, etc. She called us freeloaders and stuff. Ya freeloaders. We freaking watch their kids all day long as volunteers and we are freeloaders. Although she looked like the meanest person ever and I’m not fond of Nilanie anyways, so it wasn’t the biggest deal. And of course Nilanie had to be the first person out of all of our weeks in my room to have an accident today. Gosh. That kid. She didn’t tell us she had to go to the bathroom and didn’t tell us she had an accident after it happened. We noticed it when she tried to go up and get seconds at lunch. When we asked her she tried to lie about it at first and then was like, I just forgot. Grrrr. Then on the walk back from the pool she almost had another accident. Maybe her mom should try to give Nilanie some incentives or something to help her learn how to know when to use the bathroom!!!!!!! Besides that though, the day was amazing. My kids are so cute. Even Robert when he’s being bad is one of my favorite kids now. Like yesterday he was spitting on kids three different times. I was like Robert, you can’t do that dude. We’ve talked about this. He said, “ I just keep forgetting not to.” So Ryan said, “Do you spit on people at home?” He replied, “Well sometimes I do.” With this adorable smile. And in his ridiculously deep voice. Gosh that kid. His reasoning for everything is just so cute. And Paige. She is so touchy. She keeps like rubbing my back and kissing me on the arm and stuff. Still tries to call me Mama, and I have to stop her. The other day at closing when we were all in a circle she was next to Murray and she starting giving him a shoulder rub. I was like Paige! Boundaries! That girl! Ha ha. I love my kids. Nikolas today when we asked him to do stuff would just reply, Alright. So cute. Finally breaking him down even though he throws fits still. Gosh, I love my kids so much. I don’t know what I’m gunna do without them when I leave….

August 2, 2010

Today was a pretty good day. The first part especially went really well. I did have a little meltdown in the middle of it where I was crying and stuff. I just felt like I wasn’t doing anything right, and it didn’t help that the SAC staff was falling asleep in the library so I basically felt like I was in charge of 40+ kids. It is trying. But it was reassuring when Angie came up to me, (she visited our base today. Again, she is like the head of all the Japan Camp Adventures) and she said she had heard good things about me and that she appreciated me. I felt like very honored I guess that she saught me out to say that. She also said she would like for me to continue doing camp and think about being a director, which would be incredible. So I hope that ends up happening, especially now that I have the approval of someone higher up. But the day got amazing after that and our group just got done recording my rendition of the Brady Bunch theme song for our final presentation thing we are making. I will definitely end up crying when I see that slide show. But good day. Excited for tomorrow.

July 30-August1, 2010 aka: TOKYO!!!!!!!

So where to start. This is going to be a really really long blog because I have three whole days to cover. That is the longest yet, but I just couldn't write before I left on Friday. Friday with the kids was pretty good . They were pretty under control and I didn't have to raise my voice as much. My watch that I fixed for a second time is definitely not waterproof now, Don't know if I said that already. So it isn't broken , But there is condensation all up in it that won't go away and it makes the screen really hard to see. I keep forgetting to take it off and not get it wet, so hopefully I can find some rice or something and make that go away. I'm in Japan for goodness sakes so that shouldn't be that hard. But we'll see. The rest of Friday was pretty good. We revealed the Safari themed stage we decorated the night before to the kids and they like freaked out because they thought it was so cool. Our kids also voted for who they thought the best counselor was. Only a handful of my kids picked me, but I'm totally fine with that. I'm the iron hand in our classroom, so they liked Ms. Tink a little more. Especially since we got the papers for voting right after I had finished talking sternly to basically all of the kids. But I know they love me still. Nikolas put me, which made me smile , And so did Jaquin, who is my other favorite. I am going to miss these kids when I leave. My fricken backpack I bought is so huge, I don't see why I can't just take a couple of them with me when I go. But anyways. My favorite is this one kid in room 3 named Canan is probably one of the worst kids at camp. He doesn't listen and is defiant and thinks he's too cool for everything. Well on his paper he put me as his favorite counselor and then in the space where you can write reason he just drew a picture of me and him playing together. And this is like this tough ten year old kid. I thought it was the most adorable thing ever. It made me tear up a little. Even if I am only making a difference in a few of these kids' lives my whole trip in Japan is worth it. Unfortunately this day during the pie your counselor Ryu from room 5 got picked. I knew he was going to pick me to pie because he has been saying that literally from day 1. So his name got drawn and he stands up and points his finger at me and yells, Ms. Jasmine! I was like awe crap. So I got pied and it was all nasty hot outside and it started to smell so bad. But I had to rush home and take a shower. Julie and I left like 45 mins after work to head to Tokyo and find our hostel.
It was kind of scary going off with just the two of us, not because I feel unsafe at all in Tokyo, but because we are the two worst people at camp with direction! I am worse than her though because I just suck at everything related to directions. But I had everything written down on two pieces of paper that we needed to know for the weekend and we had our maps and stuff, so it wasn't that bad. We finally got to the Asakusa station, which was right near our Hostel. Asakusa is a district in the upper part of Tokyo. We get off at the station and kind of follow where I drew in our hotel on the map, and then just kept walking straight trying to figure out where it was. The signs were all in Kangi, so we didn't know how we were going to tell which one was ours. But as we were walking by one of the buildings we noticed there were like four or five backpackers standing in the lobby. So we went in , Since we figure that was probably our hotel. It definitely was which was nice. When we gave them our reservation number we got our deposit back in cash and then we had to pay for the hostel using a vending machine. Gosh, Japan is so cool. They have vending machines for absolutely everything. But anyways we paid at the vending machine. Then we had to take off our shoes and put them in this shoe locker thing at the front. You put in 100 yen deposit and then at the end your coin popped back out when you put their slipper things back in. Very cool. After we did that we turned in our locker key and got our room key. Right when we were checking in we met these two guys from England who were backpacking. They said they had been backpacking for like two months. That is so intense. That would be such an absolutely amazing experience. Can you imagine intensely traveling for that long of a time period? Although I'd imagine their bags would be so intensely heavy. Craziness. So after we checked in we went to the sixth floor, which was an all girls floor. That was kind of nice because unlike the other floors there was a padlock thing where we had to punch in a number to get in. Same with the women's public bath. It made me feel a lot safer. We open the door and start to walk to our "rooms." It was a capsule hotel !!!!! That was one of the things on my to do list, so I was very excited to see that all the rooms were little capsules. So as you are walking down the hall you have the two sides of the hall of course, but then each wall had two rows of capsules: an upper and a lower capsule along each wall. Julie and I were all the way at the very end, and she was right above me. It was really small looking from the outside, and you couldn't stand up all the way. But it actually wasn't that bad once you got inside of it, and it was pretty roomy. It was just for sleeping anyways, so who needs rooms you can stand up in when the capsule ones are like 30 dollars cheaper ? I have seen capsules on like the travel channel and stuff, but I have never seen them in person, so it was so awesome to get to stay in one !!!!! It was Japanese style bedding again, so cushy mat things on the floor with the beany pillows and blankets on top. Although poor Julie didn't realize that the blankets were under the pillow so she slept the first night without blankets. That would have been a really ghetto place if they didn't even offer us blankets! In each of the capsule rooms there were little locker things since the room key wasn't for our actual room, it was for this. The "doors" to our rooms were little slidey things. But I smooshed all my stuff into it and we headed out to explore Asakusa at night. Everything in Japan closes so early, so we weren't able to do too too much, but it was really cool to get to see a little bit of the city at night. While we were exploring we came across this little restaurant that had gyoza for 100 yen. Those are the potsticker things I've had at a few of the other restaurants we've been to in Japan, and they are my favorite thing I've eaten. I couldn't believe they were so cheap because everywhere else we've been they've been like four dollars. We didn't really know where we were going most of the time. We just kept going down different side streets and remembering where we turned. Asakusa wasn't as big as some of the other districts in Tokyo we've been to so it wasn't bad. We also found this really awesome market where everything was extremely cheap! The coffee drinks were like 55 cents, which is insane! The other cool part about this market is that a lot of their stuff was Wal- Mart brand. Ya know, the Great Value? It was neat. I don't even think they have wal-marts here, but they get their stuff from the same company. I'm actually surprised they don't have wal-marts here. They have Starbucks on like every other street literally. Insanity. Then we also found a Lawson's that was everything 100 yen. So really cheap food. I packed a lot of peanut butter tortilla sandwiches and granola bars though so I was ok for the most part. That night after we were all finished we found our way back to the hostel and went up to get ready for the night. I think I kind of mentioned earlier that there were public bathrooms again. There was no way I could go like two full days without showering when there was one so readily available, so I just sucked it up and did it. It really wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be at all. Just kind of like eh. I guess I've really experienced the full Japan now. Sleeping on floor mats, a capsule, and public bathrooms. I slept so comfortably that night. Didn't even mind the thin floor mat.
The next morning we got up at like eight, which is crazy sleeping in for us, and it was much needed. After we got ready we rented a locker at the hostel for 200 yen for the whole day, which is like nothing. We can 'T keep the stuff in the capsule during the day even if you are staying multiple days because you re check in every day and pay per night. So it wasn't that bad though. I felt safer with the locker anyways. So after we did that we all headed out to see everything in Asakusa. We went to the Sensoji Temple which is the oldest temple in Tokyo, and the Asakusajinja Shrine, which is another shrine lol. The cool thing about this place is that we have passed by it before when we went on one of our field trips and didn't know we'd get a chance to go back and actually see everything. On the way to the temple is Nakamise street, which is this really famous huge shopping street that is really old. It has tons of like traditional stuff plus lots of new crap and it leads right up to the shrine. We really enjoyed that. At the temple we both paid 100 yen and got our fortunes. How we did it was shake this like little round box thing and then a stick would come out with the number of the box you were supposed to open. After you open the box you take out one of the sheets of paper and that is your fortune. Julie got a bad fortune, which was really funny, and I got a good fortune. Mine said, "bad fortune in the past will change to be ggood, just like the crescent grows to be full , Your luck will grow to be good to the full. From the palace in the clouds, wealth and treasure will come to you. Make haste in doing whatever you want. The sooner the better. * Your wish will be realized. You should be righteous. * The person you are waiting for will come soon. "So idk. Thought it was cool. Although some of the translation is a little bit off, which it always seems to be lol. I didn't know they actually had like legit bad fortunes lol. Poor Julie. After we did that we got off at the Shinagawa station on the metro and decided to walk around the Shiodome area. That area has a ton of huge skyscrapers including the Shiodome Tower, Shiodome Media Tower, Tokyo Shiodome Building. It was odd that they all had basically the same name though. But they were extremely impressive skyscrapers and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them. After that we just kept walking and walking as we headed towards the station that I had written down which placed us near our theater to see the Lion King. It was a pretty far walk, but saved us quite a bit on traveling fare and we got to see a lot of the city we hadn't seen before, so that was really cool. Finally we found the station like an hour and a half later. It was called Hamamatsucho station. We followed the directions I printed offline and found our theater! It was called the Four Seasons Shiki Theater, and our musical was in the Spring Theater. We walked up and knew we were heading to the right place because we could see the theater with a large picture of a lion on the side . After we picked up our tickets we went out exploring a little more and found this like port thing called Takeshiba Pier. It had this huge mast thing attached to the ground, so when you are in the distance it looks like a huge ship. We felt kind of duped, but the view of the city from the pier was awesome. We still had about an hour before we needed to meet up with Frankie and get to our seats, so we ended up falling asleep on a bench. It was a really relaxing thing since we had been walking for the entire day. Around four forty we headed back to the theater and found Frankie and took our seats. We were literally in the very last row in the entire theater in the balcony, but hey we paid thirty dollars so whatever. The only thing about the seats that sucked just a little bit was when the Pride Rock thing got too high it cut off just the top of the people's heads. But it was still a great view. I absolutely loved it. I was incredibly impressed with the woman who played Rafiki and stuff. I wasn't bothered at all that the people playing the characters didn't have the traditional African sound or look. (That was something Frankie was worried about.) It was just plain awesome. Most of the characters had bomb voices, and the little kid who played cimba was awesome! It was interesting that they pronounced his name Shimba though instead of Cimba. Everything else was basically the same sounding. I loved hearing all my favorite Lion King songs in Japanese and recognizing what was going on even though I couldn't understand it. The costuming was so incredible. I've never seen the Lion King on stage before, so it was a real treat. Unfortunately, like at Cats, none of their merchandise was in Kangi so I didn't get a shirt that I could have gotten at any production of the Lion King. I really thought it would be not in English on the merchandise because all the signs and stuff for it weren 't. But oh well. Probably good that I didn't spend any more money considering that I still had the rest of the weekend to go. Oh and of course I got in trouble for taking a picture of the stage. Every single time. Gosh. I am just the least sneaky person ever I guess. But I had taken like four when the lady came up and made me show her my picture and delete it. At least she didn't know I had more than one so I still have them. I wish I could figure out how to make the screen dark so It wouldn't light up when I take pictures. After the musical was over we walked to rainbow bridge, which is a suspension bridge that connects Odaiba and Shinbaura. It was absolutely beautiful all lit up and stuff. In fact the entire city was just absolutely gorgeous! I loved walking through at night. After that we walked to the Tokyo Tower at night and ended up passing the Zojiji Temple to an ending festival. There were lanterns everywhere and it was awesome. The Tokyo Tower is beautiful at night also, and the pictures with the temple in the background are awesome. After we were done we headed back to Asakusa to find some food, but I was tired so after we all checked in Frankie and Julie went to dinner and I just went to the market we had been to the day before to get something small to eat and go to bed. At the market I got a pack of three doughnuts for 88 cents. The doughnuts here are awesome. Very different from American doughnuts though. They are less overly sweet and are more bready with a hint of sweet. It is perfect. Just like the Apple Tea I've had is just the right amount of sweet, but not too overly sweet. Not that I don't enjoy my sweets. I just think they should be done tactfully sometimes like this was.
We got up the next morning at like seven thirty and left around eight. We headed right to Shibuya to see the sights there and then to head to Harajuku to see stuff and go shopping. We figured it was ok to shop as much as we did because it would be our last big like shopping weekend since the next two weekends (which are our last ones) we are traveling and going further and don't want to carry stuff. In Shibuya right after you get off the train there is the Shibuya dog, which ended up being a lot smaller than we thought it would be. A little bit lame. But then there is the huge Times Squareish crossing where people are just hustling across the street and all the billboards and stuff in the background. Very cool. We went up to the second floor of the Starbucks that was on that street and took pictures of the crossing. After that we started heading towards the Meiji Jingu shrine and Yoyogi park, which is right next to Harajuku. We ended up going the wrong way just a little and ended up on the opposite side of Takeshita Dori street that we wanted, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Takeshita Dori is the main street of Harajuku that we had been down before with all the shopping and the people in ridiculous clothes and such. It is just awesome in general. Right before we got there we found Forever 21 and H & M Japan style. It was awesome. Forever 21 was just ok, but H & M had some really awesome things. I got two dresses and an awesome jacket for like 2200 yen. Bomb! One of the dresses I got Frankie especially approved of because it looks just awesome. It is going to look so hot with the black heels I got the other day. Then we hit the actual Takeshita Dori street and Julie and I just went a little nuts. I mean what girl doesn't like a shopping spree. Even if it is a controlled and limited one. I quite a bit more, but it is all good stuff. We visited the 100 yen store along the street because it is the biggest one in Tokyo. It was like three floors and it had tons of costumes and more stuff than has been at the other ones. Although I have done most of my souvenir shopping so I didn 'T have to get that much. I did find this awesome like feather mask thing that I will use if the music department actually does end up having a masquerade like we've been talking about. Definitely planning on helping to plan that one. But The 390 and 500 yen stores we found were also super awesome. At one of the stores I got my brother an awesome shirt that I hope he will appreciate. Oh translations. Some of them are just so comical. I don't know why it is the style here to have everything on clothing written in English. Just like how in their J-Pop songs the artists throw in random English words or phrases. It is just the hip thing to do here. Frankie ended up peacing out part way through and going home, but Julie and I just stayed and stayed. Around two we headed to the shrine, which was in Yoyogi park area. The shrine was pretty cool, and it was surrounded by thousands and thousands of trees. The best part about this shrine in particular is that on Sundays traditional weddings are held there. We watched one for a little while and got to snap some pictures of it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and awesome. Once we finished with everything in Harajuku we headed back to the station and caught the train to Yokohama. That night in Yokohama there was an intense fireworks festival called the Kanagawa Shimbun Fireworks Festival. We didn't exactly know where to go since I ended up losing the piece of paper that I had everything written down in sometime during the day. Or it just got eaten by my backpack, which is entirely possible. I fit everything I had bought throughout the weekend into my absolutely massive backpack, and it looked like the backpack the backpackers we had seen during the weekend had been carrying around. Like all intense like. I think it probably weighed more than I do, or at least as much as a couple of my kids. Anyways, we didn't know where we were going so once we got off in Yokohama we just followed all the people in Kimonos and ended up taking the Minomatinori subway to Rinku Park, which is where everyone was heading to watch them. It was really cool because it was right next to the bay in Yokohama and very close to the fireworks. We got there around four thirty and it was already extremely crowded. (The show didn't start until sevenish) I ended up leaving Julie at our spot a couple of times and trying to find water . There were people selling it for like four dollars amongst all the store things that were set up, but I tried to find a vending machine instead. Sadly everything except the lame stuff was all sold out so I had to just buy a couple of little drinks. As I was walking to find the drinks I ended up walking into the actual park, (we were just on the outskirts) and there were literally millions of people all over the place. I've never seen it this crowded. It is so different from American like fireworks shows on the 4th. Instead of blankets, everyone brings tarps to sit on, which I guess is actually smarter because you won't get it like dirty. But people came super early to tape off spots and then just left them there til the show started. That would not fly in the USA. If you are reserving a spot for people there better be someone there watching it, or outta luck. Anyways after trying to find Randi for a while and giving up we just sat and ended up watching the awesome fireworks from our view. It was the most impressive fireworks show I have ever seen by far. They like would do a ten minute round of fireworks, pause, reload, and then set off even more. It was intense! Each round got better and better. Like holy crap, I can't even describe it. Sadly my camera died like two seconds into the fireworks show so Julie took like eight thousand pictures. She just held her camera beside her and kept snapping . So she has like over a thousand pictures on her memory card right now lol. I have never seen purple fireworks either besides this. I can't even describe most of it. Although of course in Japan style there were even cute fireworks. Like they made smiley faces and hearts and other cutesy things ha ha. The best thing was probably the crowd's reactions. They were all literally oohing and aweing during the entire show. It was fricken adorable! The other amazing part was that the boom from the fireworks that were really loud not only hurt my ears, But it echoed from behind us on the buildings. How cool is that. There were two booms for the bigger fireworks. The boom from the explosion, and then the boom from it bouncing back off the tall skyscrapers! We ended up leaving like right before the last round because all of Yokohama and more were there watching the fireworks and the trains were going to be crazy. As we were running back to the station we could see the city at night. It was much more lit up even than Tokyo was the night before, Probably because there were so many people in their apartments and stuff watching the fireworks. The city was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. Amazing!! !!! W e got to the station when many other people did, but before the biggest rush of people, so although we had to stand on the trains at least we actually got on them. We made it back to the Sagamino station finally and as we were walking back to our base there was another festival going on in the park we were passing by. Although definitely did not look as cool as the firework festival was. My back hurt so incredibly bad on that walk back. Can't even describe it. Ah. I had so much fun this weekend, Although I can't believe I only have two weekends left before I leave. Sad. I love Camp Adventure / Japan!