Love Parade

Okay...so if I had to condense these last 3 or 4 days into a Sentence...
"Japan is fucking awesome."

Okay...mentally prepare yourself for a long and poorly written blog, okay?

Okay...GO!

Seriously...My Japanese sucks, but even so I have no shortage of friends here! From the first moment I met Yui, I already felt at home, and everyone else has been the same. Moments after meeting my friend Hana we had linked arms and were laughing at silly things like me completely slaughtering the japanese language =)
But seriously... I already know as many people here as I do at Linfield, and school hasn't even started yet. And the other difference? The people I meet are genuinely completely kind and selfless. It's mind boggling! Me and my friend Amy spent the train ride home explaining dead baby jokes to some of our Chinese friends, it was freaking hilarious!

Okay.... lets try and add some structure to this blog!

Maybe a timeling?
We'll start with the morning I left!

My dad and I met my sister for Coffee at 7am in Woodinville, went home, finished packing, and went to the airport. For various reasons, saying goodbye to my parents was very hard. Then I had a 10.5 hour plane ride to Korea, the two women I sat next to were super awesome... we talked for 6 hours! The other 4 hours I watched 'The Invention of Lying' and....that Ellen Page movie about roller-skaters.

Side Note- It's really hard not to type in Japanese...

Anyway, I had about 2 hours in Korea, then I was on my way to the country of dream, Nihon!

We got to the airport, and then had to go through customs, and then get our bags, so by the time I actually went to where I was supposed to meet my Tutor (Yui-chan) It was over an hour after I asked her to meet us. But you'd never think it was an inconvenience! Her and her had been waiting for a long time, and they had to drive for an hour and a half to get there, and 2 hours back because of traffic, plus there were a whole bunch of tolls to pay, buuuuut they just seemed super happy that I was in Japan! Yui has awesome taste in music, I was treated to a bunch of my favorite J-pop, spice girls, backstreet boys, Utada Hikaru... it was fantastic. And Late? Did I mention that? On my clock it was about 5am when we arrived, and I'd bee up since 6:30am, taihen,ne?

So we went to her friends house who had offered to let Dan, Yui and I stay there for the night because otherwise we'd have to pay for a hotel. They were two other exchange students who Yui had met last semester, and it was awesome. We didn't go to bed till after 9am on that pesky internal clock, but only 1:30am really. Then I was woken up at 10am by a traveling Tofu Salesman. What I mean by that is that he rides around on a bike with a Giant basket of Tofu. He Rides around tokyo selling this product by screaming how "Oishii" -delicious- it is and playing a strange instrument that sounds like a cat in heat. Then about half an hour later, the ice cream man came by! Oh wait.. that's the garbage man who's truck plays a song that sounds like the ice cream song and says how much it loves eating garbage.

Okay- so then Yui took me all the way across Tokyo to my dorm (that's an hour and a half train ride by the way)

Gah...it's getting hard to write >_< I'm tiiiiired =(


At the dorm I met my RA's and all the new international students. Instant love. <3
I can't even express how much I adore these people. Across language barriers and everything, they genuinely care, and are wonderful wonderful people, it's amazing.

Okay...continuing... so I got a tour of the area around my dorm. And then Yuka took me out to go shopping and buy things like shampoo, and body soap. I set up my room, took a shower talked with student who got here last semester, studied Kanji and eventually went to bed.

The next morning I had breakfast with some friends and the RA's, then we had orientation at 10 AM at Aoyama, which is about an hour commute from the dorm. After Orientation I got to spend some time with Yui before the...dun dun duuuuun...Placement test of pure evil!
After that horrific event, all the international students, Tutors, and regular Aoyama Students went to the hanami park. Which was amazingly beautiful and definitely fun. IYui put it together, and I was super happy that she is my tutor. At the hanami, I talked to a whole bunch of Japanese Students and tried some Japanese snacks. Circumstances led to me staying after most people had left, and was the only female international student still there! I didn't know how to get home! >_< Fumi, who I had met only a couple hours before, stayed until I was ready to leave just to make sure I got back to my dorm safely. Soooooo Nice =)

If you know me, you know that I feel really bad when people get me things, or go out of their way to help me! But here, it is so important, because without these people...I'd totally lost. Okay... I got back to my dorm and hung out with students then caught up on facebook (kinda) and went to bed.

Then I Got up for breakfast, went to Orientation day 2, Went to Karaoke with a big group of people. Okay, at Karaoke I sang Bad Romance, and it was ridiculous how much of a hit it was. First of all-singing isn't really my strong point, but I'm a theater kid, so I have fun with it =) Everyone else got into it too, and it was a massive bonding moment! From that song on everyone was laughing and having a good time- thank you Steven <3

I had so many amazing bonding experiences last night!

At dinner, Me and Hana caught each others eyes and just started laughing, and couldn't stop for aaagggggessss...for no reason. It was great =)

That brings me to today!
It was fantastic! I went to Shibuya with 5 girls from my dorm, and we met a bunch of other students and spent the day going to an amazing restaurant, where I had the best and cutest deserts ever, looking around Shibuya a little bit, and once again, going Karaoke! This time was totally different, but also super fun- it was a smaller group, and Jimi talked to me a lot about the music and stuff, it was great! I sang a whole bunch of songs I'd never heard before, and they were fantastic. I talked to new people, and had a grand old time introducing some of my chinese friends to dead baby jokes =) That was awesome.... and me and Amy talking about strategies to hit on Japanese boys. That was so ridiculous! But so much fun =)

By the way, I think that I have the best Tutor ever, Yui is fantastic, and I feel amazingly lucky that she's my tutor. Like I said, from the first time I saw her at the airport, I felt at home in Japan. Sorry, that's one of the random things I had to say in this blog!

I wish I could give shout outs to everyone that deserves them...but That's waaaay too much to write.

Okay... so there's a basic itinerary! I love Japan sooooooo much!
But I still love all of you! AND miss you!

Next time I'll work on writing better, okay!? okay!