Notice anything different? Why, yes. I have been to Japan.

After landing, I was pumped to see me some snow! This is the first snow I've seen in years. Yeah...kind of lame. It was all dirty and stuff. There was very little snow around. I felt deflated when I saw that.

But as we drove, the snow got deeper...

...and deeper...

...and deeper...

Until the fences began dissapearing beneath flurries of white and a smile began appearing across my face.

After driving for a while, we found ourseles at the Lake Sikotsu Ice Festival! It was on a big ol' lake. And it was FREEZING

There were lots of cool sculptures. That one on the sides was kind of a temple thing.

And this slide was fun. And wet.

But the coolest part was passing this really tall wall of ice, into this passage...

And finding this at the end. Those are icicles on pine trees. It was really pretty.

Shivering, I made my way back to the bus to find some of the guys enjoying ice cream.

Later we went to the Otaru Snow Light Path. It was very pretty, but we were all so cold it didn't last long.

The next day, it was time to go on a snowshoe adventure! I've never been a big fan of Snowshoeing, but it was pretty fun.

Then we did some sightseeing and went to the hotel. The hotel had an Onsen - a public bath! We were all excited, but we didn't go in the real bath since you're requiered to go naked. So, we went to the swimming pool instead. There were big slides and everything!

On Tuesday we went to experiance Ainu culture. Ainu are, like, a tribe. This guy on the right was really funny. He kept saying things really really fast and switching languages randomly.

These are the traditional tattoos of the Ainu. Why so serious?

Then we all made instruments. They kind of 'boing boing' when you pull on the string.

And so our time in the northern island was over.

Good bye Hokkiado...

And hello Tokyo!

Tokyo is the most bizzare city I've ever been in. There were all these interestingly shaped buildings and bridges. It was hard to get pictures because the windows kept fogging up.

First we went to a temple.

Then we went to Harajuku! I was super excited about Harajuku since that's the center of modern fashion. My favorite style that I'm getting into was born here. Unfortunatley, there weren't really any kids there in fashionable clothes because it was a school day. But I went to one of the cheap Lolita shops with the hope of getting this one really cute jumperskirt that I wanted online. When I got there, I discovered why the price was so cheap. It was horrible quality.

Then we went to Akihabara. Which was epic. There were walls upon walls upon walls upon walls upon walls of video games. It was intense! We spent a long time there.

The next day we went to Disneysea! It was AWESOME! I haven't been to Disneyland since I was very small. Wow, so that's what a theme park was supposed to be like. Everything was such high quality.

At 2, when we were supposed to meet, some of the Freshman were like, "We're tired. We want to go back to Harajuku and go shopping!" So, the teachers were like "Okay, then let's leave at 3." We were like, "wat?" It had taken that long to get through two rides because the lines were so long. We faught hard. Finally, they let us stay and sent the other kids with a different teacher. We stayed until the park closed down. It was amazing! There was one part where we went to a show. Of course, it was in Japanese. So they gave us these little mechanical things that were translation devices! They were like subtitles we could hold with us! I love Disney!

And that was the end of our Japanese adventures. It was awesome!

Random things that I didn't mention earlier!

Okay, I have to tell the the most painful part of the trip. We'll call him M. I swear there's something wrong with that kid. He asks so many questions. Stupid questions. Over and over again. Here are some excerpts from our conversations:

M: Have you ever seen this much snow before?
Me: Yep
M: Does it snow where you're from?
Me: Yep
M: Does it snow a lot?
Me: Yep
M: Is it cold?
Me: Yep
M: How much does it snow?
Me: About this much.
M: Does it snow every year?
Me: Yep
M: I've never seen this much snow before.
Me: hm...
M: Have you ever seen this much snow before?

(We had this conversation multiple times)



M: Why are you in Impromptu?
Me: ...I'm not.
M: You're not in Impromptu?
Me: No
M: Why aren't you in Impromptu?
Me: I don't know
M: Did you try to be in Impromptu?
Me: No
M: If you could be in Impromptu right now, would you?



Wess: So, what do you guys like to think about when you're bored?
Me: Okay, imagine this room were to flip upside down right now. What would you grab onto? (curtosy of Sierra)
Wess: Oh, that's awesome! Uh...I would grab onto this.
Me: Yeah, I think that would be the best choice in this situation. How about you M?
M: That can't happen.
Me: ...what?
M: If the earth were to flip around, gravity wouldn't change. We wouldn't even notice it!
Me: ...okay. But if gravity were to switch.
M: It can't.
Wess: ...We know it can't. But if it could.
M: Well, is the gravity coming from the core of the earth or the sky?
Me: It doesn't matter. Hypothetically speaking, if gravity were to switch, what would you grab onto?
M: What about the birds?
Wess: Birds?
M: What would happen to the birds?
Me: ...I don't know. They'd perch on the bottom of a tree branch or something. At any rate, they'd do better than you would. So what would you grab onto?
M: But gravity can't switch.

(This conversation went on for over ten minutes. We timed it)


Pictures!

They had vending machines with toys in them!

We had to dress in Yukatas one night. I felt like such a tourist.

These heat packs were amazing!

They had a Famicom in the hotel! But the controller was really small.

The Chocolate Factory!

We spent a lot of time in arcades.

This volcano is about fifty years old. It was a field and then one day it just erupted.

Everything in Japan is cute. Everything.

This is a bit hard to read. The sun was in an unfortunate place. It says:

NO!! smorking

NO!! (I'm not sure what that one says...)

NO!! tout

NO!! shoplifting!

The train was exciting.

Seven eleven and McDonalds



Japanese style room. We even slept on futons!



These arrows were odd. They were about every five feet and lit up. They just pointed to the road. Like, what? Is it supposed to be telling you where the road is?



We went to a car show.

There's so much randomness in this picture I didn't know what to make of it.

I'm getting worse at this blogging thing. Sorry about that!

Anyway, what shall I blog about first? Well, my sister and her roommate came to Thailand! It's actually kind of really annoying because while I'm at Ms Hanson's useless rehearsals, Whitney, Brian, and Michelle are off on adventures. But that's okay. The time I do get to spend with them is fantastic, so it's worth it!

But, seriously, Ms Hanson is slowly making me lose my mind. I could tell she was planning to put me in the play with the girl who violently throws up all over the stage. I told her, "Ms Hanson, I can't do that. I'm too squeamish" but she was like, "Well, it won't be real vomit" and I was like, "I know. But I'll still probably throw up." She was like, "Just do it anyway". So, I went in the corner and stressed about what the heck I was going to do until Ms Hanson called us to each try the hurling. I just about threw up watching Phoebe and Sierra try. I had to leave go backstage and gather myself. Sierra brought me a water bottle after she was done, which was nice.

Anyway, I ended up with Shea being my husband and Marian and Kelly being the other couple in Life x3. I've never really gotten to act with Marian, so I was pretty excited! At first I had high hopes for the play. It had a pretty funny script. But, in trying to cut for time, Ms Hanson has effectively cut out all the funny lines. There's also no build. So, we're all snacking on Cheeze-its one minute, and freaking out the next. It's weird. Some of the lines don't make sense too. There's one part where Shea and I are talking and I say something and the baby starts crying. Then Shea is like, "Now you've made him cry!" But, I didn't say anything loud. There was build to that in the script, which leads to her shouting before he says that, but she cut that out. There's also a part where we're just kind of talking and Shea's like, "Everybody calm down! We need to keep a sense of proportion!" but, once again, we're not upset when he says that. It's really odd...Hopefully we'll be able to make the characters funny enough without the script.

But, a few weeks ago she told us we would be having no rehearsal on Tuesday. So, with aunts and uncles here we thought that would be a great time to go to the Floating Market. The day before, Ms Hanson changed her mind. We had to be there. So, we changed all our Floating market plans and had to be back at the school by two, so that cut out the second half of the day. In the car, I was panicking we weren't going to go to make it in time. Finally, we got to the school and I raced into the theatre. Ms Hanson wasn't there. 45 minutes later, she walks in and is like, "Sorry, give me five minutes". At this point, I was really annoyed. So, we set up the stage and the Life actors sat backstage while she ran Carnage. And we sat. And we sat. And we sat. Yep, you guessed it. She never rehearsed us. I sat backstage the whole rehearsal. I was pretty mad.

And now it's dream time!

I can't really remember the beginning. It had something to do with Animal Crossing and going to the city. But the city looked a lot like the one in Harvest Moon. Anyway, after that part that I can't remember, there was something about figthing battles for a resistance of some sort. I had these two friends who were with me through two epic battles that I barely remember before we met up with the rest of the resistance. One of my friends was talking to one of the resistance girls about their hats. The resistance girl was like, "I like to put things from battles I've won on my hat!" She had these crystal things on her hat. My friend was like, "That's so cool!" and proceeded to put things on her hat.

Then there was a giant white fuzzy monster in this giant kitchen! It was supposed to be my kitchen, but I was really small. Anyway, we couldn't figure out how to take the monster down and I knew we would have to do it strategicially. I went in there and started pretending to be the monster's friend. I climbed up on his shoulder and pulled out a bag of fruit loops. I fed them to him one by one in his tiny tiny mouth. Eventually, he got dizzy (because, apparently, Fruit Loops make you dizzy) and fell (which was scary because I was tiny and on his shoulder). I ran out to the troops and was like, "Go go go! Now!" They flew in and were ready to attack, but it failed. He was mad and got up and got ready to attack. We all jumped on this little car thing and were running away trying to think of another plan. As I was thinking, Chanele and her sister Brooke were there. They pulled food out of their bags and were discussing it. It looked delicious, but I was worried it would alert the monster. Then I thought of a plan using fluffy orange tabby cats like Pickles. I was worried about using Pickles, because the monster might have seen him in the house, but there was a major lack of fluffy orange tabbys in our resistance. Someone had a white fluffy cat, so I was trying to figure out some way I could sneak that one in there.

Then I woke up.