I LOVE HOLIDAYS :D

ヘロー！！　ミンアゲンキ？

At the moment im on spring break, and i sound so American when i say that too. But still, im enjoying not waking up at 6 oclock for school each day!!

firstly i was asked what 'kanji' was by my trusty grandad last week when i mentioned it in the other post. Kanji are those weird symbols/characters that Japanese and Chinese write in. E.g. 誕生日学校場所公園貸借登　if you force yourself to study them and remember them (like im trying) its not so difficult. Anyway....

Last week Monday and Tuesday, they were just normal school days, nothing much happene. But on Wednesday the holidays started and schol finished at about 12ish. After school i went to my friends house with a few other people and we just chilled at his place before i left to go home, it was good. I showed them the scrapbook i made for the first time (because up until now i hadnt showed any friends, only host family and teachers, basically adults in general) and even though i was embarassed they really loved it so that was a relief!

Thursday i did nothing but stay at home and do homework, the people i wantd to hang out with were busy so i kind of had nothing to do but it was fine.
Friday morning i went andn had a Japanese lesson with my tutor at Starbucks (as usual) and stayed there for a few hours.
Friday and Saturday night i went out to dinner with my host family, yes 2 nights ina row. It was because im changing families this Saturday (3rd) so it was a kind of farewell thing.

Sunday i met up with a girl from Thailand who was an AFS exchange student in 2008. She came back in February to continue studying and staying here until May. She goes to my school and because she doesnt like speaking in English we have japanese conversations. We hung out for most of the day, took purikura (those cool photo things) ate at 3 different places and walked around shopping areas, it was a good day.

Monday i went to the hairdressers (first time!!) with Minami, (girl who did an exchange in Australia remember?) and i got a different cut, and colour.



Everyone likes it so thats good. I kind of let the hairdresser do what she wanted and it turns out Japanese Hairdressers know their stuff!! Then i told Minami to cut her hair, and she was like "umm....ok then" so she got her hair cut after me by the same lady. I really like that lady she had skill. But anyway, Minami's hair was probably almost halfway down to her back, and she had it cut really short, into a bob (not touching her shoudlers) it looked good.

THEN we went and had some cake at a cake shop where you watch through a glass room of these ladies cooking so many cakes!



Took some purikura aswell of course! Its pretty much something every teenager does when they hang out with their friends in Japan, almost like tradition...



Tuesday i went to another lesson with my tutor at Starbucks. Because of the holidays i had 2 lessons a week rather than one. Then after the lesson i met up with a girl from Australia, who is completely Japanese, but Enlgish was her first language. And she graduated last year like me but living in Sapporo this year working. Shes not an exchange student though. Her name is Ellen. We bought some really cheap Japanese music (im talking 3 CDs for roughly $12.50!) and took purikura, ate at a REALLY nice Japanese restaurant and went to a supermarket. FUN day!

Now the thing with Japanese music is, i dont like it. At all. It either all pretty much sounds the same or there is no beat/rythym that you can enjoy. So Ellen forced me to buy music and try it out (she recommened CDs for me) i took them home, listened to them expecting it to be really good! But ALL of it was c**p. I was so let down because i had high expectations for these. I dont think im meant to be a Japanese music person. But its ok because i have my awesome english music to listen to. And everywhere in Japan (eg shops, restaurants, on the radio, etc) are ALWAYS, i mean ALWAYS playing the latest english songs! Japanese love English music and some even prefer it over Japanese music. I may or may not have told you that before i cant remember...

This is a purikura i took with Ellen, we dressed up as Manga characters!



Wednesday (Today) i went to Ai's house for the afternoon. Her family is also hosting the American Rotary exchange student, so pretty much all of us exchange students went over there today, it was good. AND!!! guess what?! it was unexpected, BUT, the host dad showed took me into the traditional room in the house and showed me a real samurai outfit on display! There was the helmet, sword and everything! AND THEN he told me he was going to put it on me!!!! so as the other exchange students watched, he dressed me up as a samurai it was SO COOL!!!!!!!!! i have heaps of photos but theyre are not on the computer yet so i will show you next time. But seriously it felt amazing to be in a samurais fighting gear, i felt unstoppable! haha
He gave me the sword aswell, i loved it! And suprising, it wasnt that heavy...either that, or i just got strong...

Tomorrow its an American girls birthday so we are all getting together and celrbrating it western style! Should be good. And its 12:20 in the morning at the moment so maybe i should go to bed, its technically Thursday, but ive been going to bed really late everyday in the holidays like i would in Australia, im young, its what we do.

I have to mention a few things...
First, thankyou nan and granadad for sending me an easter card, my family didnt understand what easter was so i had to explain it to them. But thank you very much!
And BIG thanks to mum for sending me HEAPS of creme eggs in the mail!! my favourite kind of easter chocolate!! yum

Oh and also, how do you like the new look of my blog?? i was bored a few days ago so messed about with the settings and made it look alot better!

ok im going to do some studying then go to bed! Goodnight, おやすみ～！！

Niseko Adventure~!!!

Firstly, allow me to fix an error in my previous post. When i was talking about moving house i meant to say April, not August, incase you got confused. so thats less than 2 weeks (i move on the 3rd). Anyway....

Saturday morning i got up early (yes, early on a Saturday) at about 6:30 so that we could go to Sapporo station where i met up with all the other exchange students, including the Japanese students leaving for their exchange in July (the outbounders). From there we got on a bus and travelled for about and hour and a half to 2 hours to get to Niseko. The bus ride was fun too! Considering it was full of young people so ofcourse we made it fun!
in case you dont know, Niseko is the best place in Japan for skiing/snowboarding, etc. Its a nice little town but very cold and windy! We got there at about lunch time(ish) and everyone went to their rooms and put their bags and stuff inside, then straight away we all got ready for the slopes! it was about 5 minutes walk away from the lodge we stayed at.



All of us inbounder crowd wanted to do snowboarding, including a couple who had never tried it before. Me and 3 girls from Canada, America and Finland and the Finnish girls hostdad went up on the lift together to the very top!! soo cold and the wind was really strong - PLUS you could hardly see 5 metres infront of you it was so misty (i think thats the word for it)
i actually like the fact that i picked up skiing/snowboarding easy and so i had alot of fun going down the hills!! ofcourse we all stacked it a few times but thats natural! At one point i stopped with my friend to have a break as our legs started to get cramped from the board and my face was facing the bottom of the hill and i was looking up at the top of the hill, i leant back a bit too far and did a flip down the hill, then did another one!! i couldnt stop i just kept flipping it was soooo funny!!! i didnt hurt myself though, it was snowing all day so the slopes were nice and soft - perfect conditions!



We came back at about 5 oclock (time went so quick) and had dinner together. Then we went back and all went to the same room having fun, listening to music, and eating ALOT of junk food thanks to one girl who stocked her bag up at the convenience store before we left.
The Japanese and female inbounders went to onsen after that. As you all know im so not into that, i stayed in the hotel with Minami (i mentioned her in the other post, her name means 'South' remember) and when they got back we went for a walk through the town. Originally our plan was to do karaoke but we didnt make it in time so we bought some hot coffees/hot chocolates from a vending machine and coincidentally fireworks started!! we could see that they were being let off from the skii hills and we were all pretty close to them, it was really good!

Back at the hotel we all planned to stay up all night....i think we made it to about 2:30/3ish before everyone gave up and went to sleep.
The next morning however (sunday), i was the only person who wasnt woken up so i missed breakfast. What a good start. So i got my friends to walk with me to a convenience store and bought my own breakfast. It was mildly healthy :)

Everyone packed up and we left at about 10:30ish and went back home to Sapporo. We all started out strong at the start of the bus ride but in the end everyone was sleeping. I got home and crashed on my bed and slept for another 2 hours aswell!

Today (monday) is a holiday and its meant to signify the start of Spring, even though its almost April. But it was snowing yet again today! im beginning to think it wont stop....
Also, Spring break starts Thursday and tomorrow and Wednesday i only go to school for 2 periods. Im pretty much already on holidays!
I dont know what i will do on spring break yet (apart from moving families), but it goes for about 2 weeks and i go back to school April 8th.

Ok so that was my awesome weekend ina nutshell - alot of fun and laughter.

Ok now for my photos which i have put on photobucket, its the first time ive used it and have no idea how to attach it to my blog, SO, i will list the URLs for you to click on. So far i have a Winter folder and a Spring folder, even though the spring folder looks like the winter folder due tot he snow hahaha

winter pictures - http://s939.photobucket.com/albums/ad234/dylanmahoney_2010/Winter/

spring pictures (so far) - http://s939.photobucket.com/albums/ad234/dylanmahoney_2010/Spring/

Japanese wont get the better of me!

OK firstly i wuld like to say i have migrated to blogspot because bugbitten sent me an email saying it would have to start paying soon.....here i was thinking it was free.
so now all my blogs will be here, and its a better layout as well so i like it...but its my first one on blogspot so my profile is a bit empty at the moment..
Anyway..

Ive been quite busy actually the last couple weeks. Like literally im doing homework as im typing this. All for a good cause though!

Every day finishes early at school until spring break so im definately enjoying that. but i get home and all i do is work on my japanese stuff.....it is SOOO much fun...
I dont know what it is but Japanese school life is so exhausting for us students i get home and just collapse on my bed/ground. But its alright i manage.

Last weekend i just did study on Saturday, but went to a livehouse with the Canadaian exchange student - it was actually really good! it cost 15 dollars to get in and there were several different bands playing. the 3rd band to play were actually really interesting! im talking like, they could become famous one day! so after they finished me and Rachael (Candian girl) went out the back to meet them. We could do so because were foreign, foreigners can do anything here, i love it! and so yeah we spoke to them and bought their CD and got photos with them. the lead singer wanted a photo of us on his phone so we felt special. Then we got a free badge from them with their band design on it and it made our night!!
Sunday i went to my friends house, her name is Minami and in english it means 'South' haha dont know if ive told you that yet or not. she also went on exchange in Australia a couple years ago so her english is pretty much perfect! BuT anyway all the exchange students went there because she is leaving soon to go to the south (hahaha south) for university. She a really good friend of ours so we are going to miss her heaps! We made a funny video of song parodys and also went to karaoke so had a great day Sunday. People are ALWAYS going to karaoke and ive learned to expect it if im invited to hang out somewhere.

This week i had a exhaustion-related breakdown from Japanese. I didnt know it was such a difficult language because it order to get fluent, it really is difficult!! ive asked a few of my friends (who are japanese, including minami) and they say even for them as japanese people its difficult!!!! but i got over it and now i just remind myself that i will eventually get there. Its still tough but it will be worth it in the end. But i am making good progress as i got 97.5% on my japanese test which included things like grammar, sentence patterns, kanji and an essay. i pretty much would have gotten 100% but i made a couple silly errors with my kanji because i wasnt thinking properly, but oh well.

This weekend i am going to Niseko (Japans most famous ski place) saturday/sunday and staying there overnight. Its a rotary trip so ill be enjoying the hills with the other exchange students im SOO looking forward to it! Ill be practicing my snowboarding so that i can compete with kali when i get home...(IF i go home)

Also, ive been told im moving host families on the 3rd of August. This is earlier than usual but i dont mind. The next family has 2 dogs so i cant wait!! considering i miss my dog back in australia!! I met the mum at school on Monday and she seems nice...EXCEPT she said she always uses the computer for work and i wont have much of a chance to use it so i will see what happens, i dont know if i can make blogs on my iPhone but i will check it out.

May i add, that blogspot doesnt have a spot for uploading heaps of photos SO to see my photos i will make a thing on a site called photo bucket (you may or may not have heard of it) and there you will be able to see all my photos. basically the bugbitten site wont be in use ever again.

I will make another blog after this weekend and let you know how the trip went, take care!!!!

じゃね～