Hakone and Bath-Time Fun

Hey. I'm back. Two days later than I promised, but whatever. No complaining on your part.

So let's see. I already talked a little with my parents and sister about my trip to Hakone, and I'm sorry to say that I don't really feel like writing a ton about it right now. I will post a couple pictures, though, and say a few things about it, so you should feel lucky (whoever you are).



Alright. First off, here's the sign at the station. The station was pretty cool because it was extremely country. Actually, on the second day of the trip I went to a station that was so country that they didn't even have an electronic ticket-taking machine. Instead you just handed the ticket to a guy standing there. That was cool. But since it was so far in the countryside, the stations didn't have heated waiting rooms and the trains didn't come very often, so we spent sufficient time freezing our butts off while waiting for the trains.



One of the train trips was to get us to an outlet mall where we got this view of Mt. Fuji. Cool, right? Speaking of the outlet mall, that was the classiest outlet mall I have ever been to in my life. I mean, at one point I saw Banana Republic and thought it was out of place because the rest of the stores were just that ridiculously expensive. Now that I think about it, I'm going pretty much in order because that was day one. Night one was at a simple Japanese-style hotel, which was pretty cool. Sorry I don't have a picture. Use your imagination or something. Alright, on to day 2.


Yep. We rode a ship that was designed to look like a pirate ship. It was pretty fun, and much nicer than riding the bus, on which I got extremely carsick. Driving along tiny, winding mountain roads on a bus is not fun. But riding on a pirate ship is fun :) After the pirate ship took us on a tour of the lake, we got on a rope way? Is that what you call it in English? Because that's what you call it in Japanese, using English words, so I feel like that's what it should be called in English. But yeah, from the ski-lift type "rope way" as I'm going to stubbornly call it, we had an awesome view of Mt. Fuji again, which was nice.

The second night was a completely pimped-out Japanese and Western hybrid hotel room which completely rocked. I wish I could have stayed there forever. It had two giant HD televisions, its own Japanese-style bath, a giant, classy bathroom, a Japanese-style sitting room... pretty much anything you can think of. Completely awesome. Then the next day we left and came home. All in all a good trip, and a great way to relax after the end of the semester craziness.


There's me not wanting to go home. Haha. But of course, I'm doing pretty well with my host family right now, too! The other day I got to read two of the books that I bought my host kids to them before bed. (On a side note, I remembered how awesome Dr. Seuss is. I mean, I think I enjoyed the books more than the little kids did.) After I finished reading the English books to Jion and Aoi, they took me down to the family bedroom (lol) and picked out a couple Japanese books and read them to me. It was really cute. Jion also told me that I had to stay with their family forever, so I lied and told him okay. He probably doesn't understand how long forever is anyways, and 5 months is pretty much forever anyways, right?

Alright, now for my funny story of the day. I saved it for last to keep you reading. First, background info: there are a bunch of toys in buckets around the bath because the kids like to play with the toys in the bath. They are squirt-guns, ships, etc. Because of this, it takes a lot of convincing to get the children out of the tub... but that doesn't have anything to do with this story. Sorry.

Okay, so yesterday I had just gotten out of the tub and put on my pajamas when Jion came in the bathroom to get his toothbrush. He walked over to the tub area, looked in, then turned and looked at me with a suspicious look in his eyes. I had no idea what he was doing until I noticed that the toys were still all over the bath area. Normally when I take a bath, if there are any toys out I pick them up for the little kids. Because I didn't pick them up this time, he accused me of playing with the toys in the tub. Unsure of how to deny it properly, I decided to play along and asked him how he knew. He told me he noticed that I had moved some of the toys, which I didn't, but I agreed. He seemed pleased to know that I also liked playing with the toys in the tub. He then told me it was okay for me to use them, so that's a plus.

And again today after I took me a bath he told me he knew that I played with the toys, and I told him to keep it a secret. I've honestly never giggled to myself so much in my life.

Well, that's all for tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Probably not. But soon!

I flew ANA... it was awesome.

And I'm back, finally! Alright, a ton ton of stuff has happened since I last posted again, so I'm going see how much I can get through.

First, it was so nice to see everyone over winter break. I had a great time at Steph and Tyler's wedding, even though I was a little sleepy some of the time. And I can't really send you all thank cards... well, I guess I could if I felt like spending a fortune, but I thought it would be nice to say a big thanks to everyone for the Christmas gifts. And if you didn't get me one, don't worry; I still think you're cool.

It was really nice to be able to relax, see everyone, and eat Mexican food.

I had a great time relaxing in the states, but the chaos started as soon as I started on my way home. I spent my whole time on the plane from Chicago to LA planning how I was going to spend the two days I had to finish all of my final papers before classes resumed again. But all of the planning didn't really matter because I ended up missing my connection. I wasn't super surprised since I asked and they told me it might be too tight to make if my plane didn't land early. So I ended up chilling in the airport from 12 am to 4 am (special shout-out to the Isham's Christmas cookies, especially Erika's muffins which got me through the night without dying of starvation) until the people started working the counters, then I caught a flight from LA to San Fran to Tokyo (Narita) to Osaka (Itami). The coolest thing about my new flight path was that I flew ANA, a Japanese airline instead of United and it was awesome because the food was like 10x better than what I had on my way to Japan the first time.

As soon as I got to Japan, I found out that my checked bag that the guy at the counter had assured would make it to Japan with me was not there. I thought I might test my luck and see if it had somehow ended up in Itami, so I didn't really make a big fuss about it in Narita. Like I had guessed, it wasn't in Itami when I got there. The airline people were really helpful, though, and assured me they would find it. But it wasn't until my host mom called and tore them apart the next day that they mysteriously found my bag in LA and had it shipped within a day. It was awesome. Since my host mom used to be a flight attendant, she knew what to say and how to say it to make sure they would find my bag and get it to us.

Around this time I also had all of my finals and final papers, which was not fun. Luckily, I had kept up with my classes pretty well, so it wasn't a big deal. And that pretty much brings me up to last weekend, when I was about halfway done with my finals.

My host parents asked me if I wanted to go visit Nagoya, where my host mom's older sister and her husband live. I figured that I might as well be adventurous while I'm in Japan, because I can study whenever but I don't get to go on trips too often. So I said okay and we spent Saturday night in Hikone (halfway to Nagoya), all day Sunday in Nagoya, stayed Sunday night in my host mom's sister's house, spent all day Monday in Nagoya, and drove home that night.

I'm not really in the mood to tell a funny story right now, but I have one, so I'll tell it anyways. We went to the Tokugawa Art Museum and garden in Nagoya. While we were walking through the garden, we stopped to take a picture. Jion and his cousin (who is also 4 years old if I'm not mistaken) were too distracted by the fish in the pond to take the picture with us, so we just let them be. After we took some pictures, everyone was just talking about random things until we heard the sound of splashing water. Yep, the cousin was peeing in the pond. His mom had to hold herself back from yelling at him because she didn't want to bring attention to the fact that he was actually peeing in the Tokugawa pond. Really, though, we were in the most prominent spot in the garden so I think a few people noticed. They said he's never done anything like that before and he doesn't ever pee outside, so it was completely unexpected and we laughed for a long time. Everyone commented on how he's probably going to become an important person in the future. It was fun.

Other than that, we ate some really good food, slept at my host mom's sister's really nice house, and just relaxed. Since both my host mom's sister and her husband are newscasters we got to see them both on tv during the time we were there. It's kind of a big deal :) Nagoya, though you might not have heard of it, is actually the third (? I think) biggest city in Japan, and economically I think it's the second biggest next to Tokyo since the recession hit Osaka pretty hard. So to be newscasters in Nagoya is a sufficiently big deal. Haha.

Alright, I'm only halfway through my tour tales, but I'll continue the second half of this post tomorrow :)