A message from Sensei

Today (July 24) and tomorrow, you are spending time with your host family. I hope you are having a wonderful time together with your family. Ms. Lem and I went out with administrators and teachers of Miyakonojo-nishi High School tonight. They treated us so well, and we had lots of talks. Unfortunately, the next trip in November from Miyakonojo-nishi HS will be the last visit to George Washington High School. Due to numerous difficulties, they needed to review their trip, which I understood totally. However, we all hope that you will continue corresponding with your new friends from Miyakonojo-nishi HS for a long time and maintain a life-time friendship with them.

This morning, I rented a bicycle to visit local tourist attractions in Miyakonojo. On the way to the attractions, I had many opportunities to meet local residents of Miyakonojo. I've never felt so close so warm to meet people like I had today. I believe that people in Miyakonojo have such an open and warm mind. Unlike big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, people here are extremely friendly and kind to others. I do think that you felt the same way with your host family. Please enjoy your time with them and continue your friendship with your host student and his/her family for a long time.

Visiting Miyakonojo became my highlight for this trip. Meeting students and teachers of Miyakonojo-nishi as well as residents of Miyakonojo made me feel so good and proud as Japanese.

Thank you all for giving me this opportunity.

sensei

Tonishi HigH ~

Hey guys. This is Dexter Chen. I have already graduated from George Washington High School so whoever is reading this, enjoy your high school life!

Today is July 23. Sensei woke us up at 7A.M sharp T.T We all went to got ready and packed our stuff. Everyone met up at the lobby around 7:30 and we all screamed "itadakimasu" before we starting eating. They served rice, soup, eggs, some veggie and some meat. I didn't eat much because it was still early.

After breakfast, we all went to our room and got our stuff. We all a mini meeting at the room where we all met before night we stayed at the youth center. After that, we got on the bus and had a 45 ~ mintue ride to the school to meet our host students.

When we arrived, we met the principle and the vice principle and some other staffs of Tonishi. They welcomed us like VIP guests. Their welcomes were really friendly because everyone seemed like they were really eager of meeting us. Then, we all went to this room in second floor and we had our introduction and presentation there. The Wash students sang the song "Lean on Me" while the Tonishi students sang their school songs and the theme song of One Piece. I was really nervous in the beginning, but the butterfly started to disappear when my host students showed me how friendly they were.

After lunch, all the Wash students got to experience what it means to do "souji" at school. I was so amazed when I saw the japanese students cooperating together as they cleaned their homeroom. After souji, our host students showed us around. I can't really tell if Wash is bigger or not because they have many clubs here that we don't have back at Wash.

When we all met up again, all the Wash students went to the calligraphy class and experienced what calligraphy really is. It is actually way harder than it seems. Kanji has never been a problem to me, but when I tried the calligraphy, I felt like I didn't know kanji anymore. It was my first time and it was really fun ^.^

Around 5:30, we all went back to the room on second floor and waited for our host family to come. I can see that everyone had a nervous look on their face (including myself). My mind was blanked the whole time! Good thing my host family is really nice, I was able to go home with them while carrying on easy conversations.

My host family's house is 30 ~ mintues away from Tonishi. They all welcomed with and bow when they saw me entered the house. They showed me my room. Kazuki (my host) took me to his room to chat while the family perpared for dinner! So Far So Good =P

Miyazaki!

We first started our amazing and memorable day by waking up at 6:30 in the morning. Trust me, waking up early is tough for teenagers. After struggling to wake up we headed to Osaka airport to catch the flight to Miyazaki. We landed in Miyazaki airport after almost an hour.

First thing that comes to our mind when we walked out of the airport was "HAWAII!!!!!". The sunny weather, palm trees, and the amazing beach proved me right. We took a mini bus tour around Miyazaki. We first went to the temple near the beach. I cannot recall the name of the temple but i am pretty sure it was a temple where you pray for your love ones. Well, since i don't have a love one, i pray for my family. =)

" Hi CaRmEn & TrAcy!!! (my sisters) I am Cherry!! If you are reading this ~~ then you know that i am having a really fun time in Japan!! Don't worry about me!! I can take care of myself!!I LOVE you guys!!!!" Okay so back to my AWESOME day. We went to this really famous waterfall in Miyazaki. We all wanted to cross the bridge to get a closer look of the waterfall. Unfortunately, due to rainy weathers we cannot go today. *sad face...=(

During break time Toyomi, Liz, Jennifer (LaLa), and I got the famous Angelica Keiske ice cream. *umm.... taste so GoOd!!! (It's a kind or plant ... i think.... well that's what sensei told me) Carmen played safe and got the mango flavor. Michelle, the one always searching for adventures got the shrimp flavor ice cream. You guys should really try it!! It taste so funny that every time i took a bite, I laughed.(yes... i was stealing ice cream from Michelle... yes... yes...) What happened to the other people? Well, Jen, Yuki, and Hadrian went down the long stairs to explore around. I envy them because they still have the energy to walk around under this HOT HOT weather. Dexter??? As always, he wander somewhere that no one knew where he went. (haha)

We arrived at the Miyazaki Youth Camp at around 4 o'clock. We were immediately greeted by the staffs. They gave us an orientation which lasted for about half an hour. (Rules) * So many rules....><''' we have to turn off our lights by 10 and the air conditioners will turn off by itself at 11... *sad face =( but they taught us how to fold futons... so i guess that's alright.

Guys and girls are split into two building...

Ok ... i am in a hurry right now.. i'll finish this later... BYE

Instant Ramen Museum

Hello everyone back in the cold and miserable weather of San Francisco! Tis I, Yuki Fujita reporting from Osaka! Hello Mom… :D! Walking out to the humidity every morning is always a shock after spending a night in a comforting air-conditioned room. I’ve found out the hard way that in Japan during the summer, you sweat in places you never knew you could.

During our train ride to the Instant Ramen Museum, as always more than half of the group was asleep. My mission for the trip was to take a picture of every person while they were napping and I accomplished it all thanks to Steven’s failed resistance.

As we arrived in beautiful Ikeda city, Sensei’s stylish, sweet mother greeted us in the train station with a warm smile. We walked down only a couple of blocks but again, Cherry and I ended up in the back. As we entered the museum, we were greeted with the friendliest welcoming and a cool AC. We waited in line and I was paired up with Jennifer L. (a.k.a. LaLa).

We walked up to the second floor and received an apron and a bandana with the main symbol of Cup Noodles, a cute, cartoon chicken on it. Some looked like factory workers and the others looked like housewives.

We were instructed to combine the flour and oil mixture and mix it thoroughly in a circular motion. Then our instructor told us (all in Japanese with translations from Toyomi) to make a ball with the dough and put pressure onto it to flatten it. Our next step was to put it into a machine 10 times to flatten the dough and I let Jennifer with her muscular arms to do most of the work.

In the meantime we had the chance to design our own cover with markers to make it our own. We then proceeded to flatten the dough more until it was the perfect size and shredded it into noodles and cut them into 20cm strips. After, they took them away to pre-boil and gave us the crumbs to taste. Supa Oishii! They wrapped them up and gave us each our own individual noodles that we made.

We also got to check out the hundreds of different kinds of instant cup noodles they had in their museum and created our own flavored ramen! Yay! Since I am a big fan of noodles, making my own was a dream of mine. With a choice of flavor, toppings and our hand-made cups, makes me water at the mouth just thinking about it. We finished up the day by riding the train back to Osaka while Sensei, his mother, and Hadrian went to Kobe.

After we arrived back at the hotel, some of us tried to watch a scary Japanese movie in the dark on Steven's laptop. It was pretty much a disaster due to the lag on the videos and too many were either afraid or tired. Everyone was exhausted from our trip so most napped while me and Jennifer To had some bonding time. Teehee! :) Anyway, our stomachs started to grumble and craving some delicious Japanese food. Toyomi, both Jennifer's and I went to the populated part of Osaka to shop and grab some Takoyaki. Koodos to the man making it in the freakishly hot weather and still working his tail off and going as quick as I have ever seen.

Random note, I was amazed me most was how many Korean people there were. Okie Dokie then, thanks for reading it even though it will be arriving a couple of days late.

Peace outside guys! Yuki-chan desu!

P.S. I'm sorry but I'm going crazy due to the heat!

NARAAAA!!!!!

HELLO!!!
My name is Toyomi. Today is currently the 8th day of our Japan trip! its been sooo hot and humid, but I still CANNOT get used to it..

Today we first went to Nara, and visited the Todaiji temple. on the way from the station to the temple, we saw SOOO MANY deers, walking around in the park. Liz and I bought some of the deer crackers, and right when she got it, the deers attacked Liz! and one of the deers bit my shirt.. Liz said that she got bitten twice on her stomach area. hahah! Some deers were really aggressive, but some were sooo polite and cute! they bow to you if they want some crackers. haha

The temple was REALLY big! there were three HUGE buddha statues and they were really old. there was a block of wood with a hole in the middle! its told that, if you can go through the hole, you'll have good luck, so cherry tried it, and when she was coming out, sensei said that she looked like sadako, that scary lady from the ring. ahahahaha!


after we went through the temple, Jennifer T, Jennifer L, Yuki, and i ate some SUSHI!! this is the first time we ate sushi in japan during this trip! i think the four of us were eating soba or udon noodles for the most of the time before since jen LOVES soba!!! haha! right after lunch, yuki san and i ate some soft cream!! it was soooooo good. the hot weather makes me crave for some cold ice cream :P

We met up after lunch again, and went to a little buddist museum? called Kohfukuji. It had many sculptures and statues of buddha. some of the statues were freaky looking. there was one with a body of a human, but with a bird face. there was another one with LOTS of arms and faces. they reminded me of spiders.

After we got out of the museum, we went back to our hotel. We had free time since then, and we went to don ki ho-te to go shopping! the hotel is really close to namba. so it was really easy to get there. we stayed in the store for like an hour, and went to a ramen restaurant right next to the store. that place was SUPER good!! even thought that place looked creepy with dragons everywhere ahahah!

tomorrow we are going to KOBE!!!!
hope i get to eat some yummy beef.
we're going to the cup noodle museum! i would like to make my own special cup of noodles for my goooooood friend! yayayay
i hope tomorrow will be another fun day :)

Kyoto~~!!

Hihi everyone! This is Carmen blogging today! Japan's been great so far, good thing there wasn't any rain at all for the whole time we were here.
So we went to Kyoto yesterday and boy was it hot!! Felt like we were literally being grilled in the sun, but the scenery was beautiful so it was all good. It was not as tiring cuz we had this bus take us to all of the places, so we didn't have to walk around as much. We got to go around to many shrines and temples, and my favorite was the garden in Tenryuji Temple in Arashiyama. The nice weather added to the beauty of the garden. We also got a bit lost looking for the meeting place after we had free time in the last stop we went to haha. And when we thought we were in the right place, turns out we were close, but we were on the wrong gate haha. Oh well, at least we all made it in the end.

We got back to the hotel after the tour in Kyoto at around 5:00 PM and just chilled there for a little bit before meeting everyone again for dinner. It was nice because it was the first time during this entire trip that the whole group got together and had dinner together. We went to a restaurant called Chibo and we all had Okonomiyaki for dinner. I've made Okonomiyaki before with JNHS, but that's nothing compared to the ones at Chibo. The waiters make it for us right at the counter and it was just really cool watching them make it. I loved the way they put on the mayonaise for some reason haha, it was really fast. And of course, taste-wise, it was CHO UMAI, MECHA UMAI, MAXIMUM UMAI!! Best Okonomiyaki that I've ever had!

After dinner, we went around the Namba area and shopped for a bit and then went back to the hotel. And today we went to Nara, but I'll let Toyomi-san tell you guys all about that! That's all from me, bye bye!

Osaka!

hey there family and friends from across the country. Hi I`m the other Jennifer, Jennifer L. So currently we are all at Osaka in the Super Hotel. Osaka is definitely different than Tokyo. More green grass in the areas and more thicker fluffier clouds. It feels much more hotter than Tokyo which is so unfortunate because Tokyo was already hot now it feels twice as hot than that. We took the bullet train here. Which mostly I fell asleep on and cramped my neck alot ): But it is nice to be here. Super Hotel is definitely different than NYC. So much more fancier and we get our own rooms and bathrooms! A downside to this hotel is just the elevator which only has one and slowly goes and up and down. So after dropping our bags from last night we went to the aquarium and shopping center. The aquarium was very cool and beautiful. Very different than the aquarium back at SF. We first went to the shopping center. We ate lunch and browsed around. I ate green tea and vanila swirl soft cream (not ice cream but kinda like ice cream but softer haha :D) So good. Shaved ice looked very tempting to eat since Jennifer and Cherry bought it. There was a stage inside the little center which had many different performances such as cheerleading and dancing. After that we headed over to the aquarium and stood in line in the boling hot sun. It was so busy and crowded just maybe because it was a Sunday. Many families were there. I`m thinking everyone had the urge to go near the cold air spitter thing and under the cool tent. Going in the aquarium was like crowded torture. I felt i didnt get to see some of the animals ): because it was so cramped. Later on though i did get to see the animals and fishes. So cool and interesting. There were these huge fishes, huge sea turtles, giant looking hamsters,sharks, these other unbelievable sights of sea animals. You gotta ask your kids to see the pictures ! After that we all went back to the Super Hotel to rest for an hour and went out to eat dinner. Morikawa sensei brought us down to the underground shopping and food areas. Its like a whole new world down there. All in all we were all tired from waking up at 6 we were all tired from waking up at 6 in the morning so we headed back to the hotel. So ending with me now blogging :D Well we miss you all and is happily enjoying the trip right now :D