kimono.

i'm so exhausted. because of the binge yesterday everybody skipped classes today so it was only me (dead tired) and anastasia. it was really stressful and i was royally pissed off at the others for just staying in bed and letting us do all the work.

it's raining again and i got soaked on my way home. i took a hot shower when i arrived but i'm feeling a cold coming up. just watched some drama with my family again while eating matcha cookies.
julian's host mother gave mine a hint today that there's a sale at some second hand shop in the city where you can get yukata at a low price. she took me there and i got 4 yukata, 3 beautiful obi and even 2 kimono (each only 1000¥!) for a total of 5,500¥! one yukata and one obi even was for free. me lucky. me happy gaijin.

on our way home i gave my mum a call and when i put her on speaker, she talked to my host mum which was really cute: "konnichi wa, okâsan!" "konnichi wa, okâsan!" (...) i can't believe i'm already leaving on saturday. it feels like yesterday when i arrived here, putting my clothes in the drawers of my room and feeling rather uncomfortable around my host family. but in the meanwhile i grew fond of them and this house and everything and i'm really sad about leaving this place.

today we also had our last trip where we went to an elementary school which was real fun - japanese kids are just so cute! when we arrived, they were all super excited and cheered and waved at us. first, they were rather shy but soon they started touching our blonde hair and "different" clothes and permanently asked questions and asked for autographs on their exercise books, we felt like damn celebrities! it was exhausting but fun.

i was in a 4th grade class with haichi (a chinese student). we came around lunch time so we ate lunch together with the kids. the way they act with their teachers and their politeness is intriguing, so different from european kids. they all have their tasks, for example a group of pupils handed out the food to everyone, two stood in front of the class before and after lunch and asked everybody to put their hands together and say "itadakimasu" and "gochisôsama deshita" and they all cleaned up their classroom together afterwards. also, the teacher's more acting like a father than a teacher.

after lunch, they had half an hour of free time and we all went to the schoolyard and played basketball together. after that, they had to clean up their classrooms. when the lesson started, haichi and me stood in front of the class and were the sensei (=teachers) and tried to answer their questions. i didn't felt nervous because they were so curious in a nice way. before we had to leave, we all played games together and had to give more autographs or draw pictures for them. one girl wrote me a little farewell letter, how cute is that?

university life

雷 - kaminari.

yeah, weather icon!! i woke up to thunder and the rain against my window at 5am this morning. i really like storms and as i know that they usually calm down in the morning, i told my worried host mother that it's ok if i'll go by bike but as it was still raining during breakfast she intended on going by car. when julian's host mother fetched me up to drive us to the university, the rain stopped (of course) and i felt quite helpless without a bike the whole day long. especially when we went shopping after university and had to walk the whole way over to the "saty" mall because unfortunately, the rain in the morning didn't bring any coolness but more humidity. well, i'm at least happy that the average temperature here is now around 30°C and not 40°C like our first two weeks here in japan.

i really need to stop buying tiny whacky stuff and food all the time! i bought socks&tights today, treated myself with dark chocolate and pink grapefruit juice because it was suppai and bought an epilator by braun (since mine isn't working in japan) at the reduced priced of approx. €20 which is quite cheap for such a thing. smooth skin again! aah, the little pleasures in a girl's life!

this evening i did 留守番 rusuban (house-sitting) with my host brother. when we had dinner earlier (btw we had sukiyaki, a yummy nabe dish), the kids told me that they wanna play (board) games with me later so when okâsan and my host sister returned from her ballet class, we had a fun game night. i always lost but i'm happy to see that they're losing their shyness little by little. also yesterday i was sitting in my room doing homework when they both appeared at my doorstep, grinning like cheshire cats. they gave me a bowl of matcha icecream and ran away giggling cheerfully. so cute. the one thing that always makes them happy is the fact that i'm a sucker for green tea like themselves.

i'm resigning to the fact that they often still ignore me because they're too busy watching tv or something. speaking of which, japanese tv is crazy. &who would have thought that a tv show about a couple of men dressed up as women standing in front of a table with miscellaneous items who have to guess if an item is worth 100¥ or more could be that entertaining!?