Fukui Orientation #2

So a little while ago I went to another orientation for the AFS students placed in Fukui prefecture, which this time was held in the capital city of Fukui. It was kinda scary because I actually had to go by myself, like take the train to a connecting city (Tsuruga) and then get on another train, hoping that the one out of six to choose was the right one. It's about 2.5-3 hours to Fukui City from where I live; thankfully, though, I made it there and back in one piece. Lol.

And here are the pictures from the orientation itself:


The Fukui chapter helpers during lunchtime. We all got pre-made obentos for lunch, which was quite yummy. ^^



The Tremendous Trio. Lol. It was really cool to see them both again, we've really become quite good friends through these orientations. :3 We're standing in front of the entrance to a garden/ancient mansion thing in Fukui City...



Tobias nervously laughing in front of said entrance. Something was clearly funny, but I can't remember what, haha.



Gettin' our tickets to go see the garden/ancient mansion thing.



This is me and Pop, the Thai part of our trio. I have no backwards-photography skills whatsoever, so this turned out ever so slightly...out of focus.



So this is a picture from inside the mansion thingy, which is built pretty much right on a pond/lake. Literally, if you were to step right outside this window, you'd step into the lake. It was super cool.



Inside the mansion. It was super cool in there.



Here's a view from round the back. This is like, right next to the lake in the back, there was a really pretty rock garden, along with some flowers and such.



And this is us preparing for the tea ceremony. :D It was soooo cool, we got served tea in tiny cups and little treats...



And of course it was served to us by Japanese women in kimonos. So pretty. :D



Look at this. LOOK AT THIS. ISN'T IT COOL?!?!? :D These are little bean treats in the shape of roses...:3



All of us with the tea ceremony ladies.



This is a golden Koi, a sort of decorative type of fish. It gives new meaning to the term "goldfish". Hahahaha....:/ Sorry.



The back of the mansion. Like I said, you'd be stepping into the lake.



Another one of us.



I took this picture because I really liked the contrast of the green and red maple...I thought it would make a nice shot. :D



And THIS...this is us in super fancy ancient Japanese dress in the Fukui History Museum. They let us try on kimonos, and for Tobias, ancient Japanese...men wear. Haha.



Another one of us, with all the helpers...Haha, we were all super excited to be wearing these :P



This is us posing with a statue of a stoic-looking Japanese man...I have no idea who he is, but he looked cool and important, so we posed for a picture :P



Here is...um, Tobias...haha...holding an ice cream. You would not believe how long it took us to find a place to get ice cream. You'd think, it's a fairly big city, there should be plenty of places to get ice cream, right? ...WRONG. We walked around this mall thing for like, half an hour, and Pop even made an attempt at using her Japanese skill to ask one of the mall guards where an ice cream store was. He wasn't much help, incidentally.



But eventually, we did find a little gelato shop that was fairly inexpensive, and we satisfied our ice cream craving...



...And we were definitely excited about it.



This is what we did after ice cream...We went and took purikura. For those of you who don't know, purikura is this Japanese thing where you go into a room full of these box-like contraptions which you enter with your friends, and you pose in funny poses and it takes a picture of you. Then you decorate them with different backgrounds and different little pictures and stuff, and it's all very cutesy and fluffy. Haha, it was really fun. Those two girls up there are actually random girls from Tobias' school who we ran into right outside the purikura shop, so they decided to take pictures with us.



And THIS...is an Anpanman cake. Anpanman is a Japanese cartoon character for little kids, and this was just too cute I had to take a picture. :P

And that concludes the photos from the Fukui trip. I need to take more pictures, I've been meaning to take my camera places but I just end up forgetting. :P I'll try to remember more, haha...

Bye for now!!

Golden Week and more

In Japan, there is a period of time known as Golden Week, lasting from May 1st to May 5th. Golden Week is actually a string of holidays that, because they are so close together, were just mashed into one week-long break. So Golden Week is a time for either traveling to see family or just lounging at home with one's family (what I'm doing), and overall just enjoying time off. Here are some pictures from Golden Week adventures and of previous adventures that I didn't upload into my prior entries.



...So that whole Golden Week thing I just talked about, forget that for a second. This was a week or so before Golden Week, when my schoolmates and I hiked a huge mountain in the neighboring city of Tsuruga. This is the view from near the top; it was ridiculously difficult to climb. Everyone was dead by the end.



...Not really. Here's a picture of just a few of us at the top of the mountain. It was super ridiculously cold up there, there was snow! We were actually one of the last groups to reach the top, some of the super athletic kids (i.e. the baseball, Kendo, and track and field boys) reached the top, ate lunch, and were already on their way back down while we were still trying to get up there.



Next up are pictures of the orientation for AFS kids who were placed in Fukui. There are three of us, a German boy named Tobias, a Thai girl named Pop, and me. And this is where we had our orientation, at the Mikata Youth Center, which is like, ten minutes from where I live. :D



And here is Tobias showing off his piano skills. He can play the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. Which is pretty awesome.



Here he is again, this time falling off of a building. The little steppy thing was too low, so we kind of had to hoist ourselves up onto the actual concrete part...



...As evidenced here by Pop.



Here we have a picture of the view from the top of a mountain that our little orientation group decided to take a drive on. It was super pretty and the weather was really clear so you could see EVERYTHING.



So this is us with a giant beetle. Lol, it was a good photo opportunity so we decided to take it.



From left to right: Non-chan (a boy who actually goes to my school and is super nice), me, Tobias, Pop, and the woman who is the president of our Chapter. Behind us all is either Tobias' or Pop's LP.



Here we are again. Up there in front is my LP, Kohori-san, and she's really cool. :3



And THIS is us in front of a 2000-year old tree. Yup, 2000 years old. We all touched it, and were just like, "whoa..."

That concludes the orientation pictures, and now we return to Golden Week. :D



A picture of my Okaasan doin' kitcheny things. It's funny, I never get a full-on picture of her, it's always the back of her. She also runs away squealing whenever I bring out my camera, so that could be a contributing factor. :)



XD...ok ok, let me explain...
So this was taken when we went to a church convention thingy that was again in Kyoto, and there was a huge flea market where everyone from the church brought their stuff to sell. And actually, there was some pretty good stuff to be had. I didn't actually get anything, I mostly just ate the food that people were selling. :)
So these two guys were in charge of Bingo (the Japanese LOVE Bingo), and were going with the Mario theme. Hence, they are dressed up as Mario and Princess Peach.



A picture of part of the flea market. There were TONS of people there, it was super fun. :D



My Bingo card. Sadly, I always seem to get the card that never has any of the numbers called. But it was fun anyway.



And these two are dancers who performed for us at said flea market. They were both really good, everyone went nuts when they came on the stage, haha.



...Heh.



WORK IT. Haha, the little admirers down at the bottom were soo cute. :)



A picture of the top of the church. It's actually really big, this is just the part with the banner on it. Which I can't read. Yet.



A picture of a Kyoto street intersection taken out of the bus as we were leaving the flea market. You can see the window reflection, haha.



A rice paddy. I realized that I didn't have any pictures of rice paddies yet, so here you go. They're everywhere right now, and sometimes you can see the farmers wading about planting rice n stuff.



This is the view out of my bedroom window. Sometimes I kind of just want to jump out and go frolick in that grass. Looks like it would be fun.

So that's all for now, I'm actually not all that active with my camera, which needs to change. :/ I'll try to bring it to Kendo practice one day, so that you guys can see what that looks like, cuz it's mind-blowingly awesome. :3 Also, I'll try to take more pictures of my family and friends (ones in which you can actually see their faces, hahaha).



Obligatory cute cherry blossom photo. Bye for now!