My June ♡ (1/2)

こんにちは！ konnichiwa! Hello!
How is everyone?
Im going to split this entry into two posts, because I haven’t written for almost a month (I’m sorry!) And theres alot to talk about. So here’s the first section..I may not get around to writing the next one till after the weekend by the way >_<
And high five for those of you that get the Kpop reference in the title ;D

So I left off last time talking about my super-fun-filled day at Disney Sea. After that I had a full week of rest while the students at my school did their mid-term exams. I spent most of it sleeping in and relaxing, until Friday, when my host Grandma picked me up at around midday. The last time my Grandma took me out it was to Kamakura, as you could find in a previous post, and this time she had an equally beautiful and Japanese-culture-y place to take me.
On the Saturday morning she woke me up early and dressed me up in a Yukata – a traditional Japanese summer dress. It’s similar to a Kimono, which is worn in the winter, but simpler and easier to put on (although it still requires alot of skill and time). We drove to Senkeien, a stunning old Japanese Garden. It was named after it’s owner, who made it open to the public when he lived there long ago. It was huge, the size of a big park, with a lake, many bridges, shops, pathways, different kinds of trees and flowers and a number of traditional Japanese houses and buildings that you could look inside, or even have your wedding recception in. In fact, while we were there, we saw a just-married couple, who were wearing Wedding Kimonos. We walked around the garden admiring the beautiful scenery and took many pictures (and I was stopped quite a few times by people who wanted to take pictures of me – a foreigner wearing a yukata is a rare sight). Here’s a couple of them;

About half way through our exploration of the garden a lovely old Japanese man came up to us and offered to show us around as an ‘unofficial guide’. He seemed to know the garden very well, and I suppose he must spend alot of time there. He showed us around to a section of the garden that Grandma didn’t know was there, a sort of Chinese area, where there were lots of water lillies and a little old gazeebo that was given to the garden by China, and also a Chinese pottery workshop. It was very serene, and we were lucky with the weather, seeing it has entered the rainy season now (although it was extremely hot wearing the yukata, I had to take it off eventually).
We finished our visit with Senkeien Soba (a special noodle dish supposedly made by Senkeien himself), which was delicious, accompanied by seaweed tea (it’s much better than it sounds).

That evening Grandma, Ken (Grandma’s son) and I drove to a huge warehouse/supermarket place. It was like a Pack’n’save and The Warehouse put together, then doubled (for those of you who know those places). There we bought lamb, potato mash (in a packet!), croissants, a huge packet of Hersheys mini chocolate bars, a super size bag of chips and Nutella! Yum yum yum. (I’m still finishing the Hersheys and chips a month later xD). On the way out we each got a big cup of soft serve ice cream. It was the best! We ate the lamb and mash for dinner, in great New Zealand spirit. Delicious!

The following day was an outing in Tokyo. Ken took me to Azabujuban, which is near my school, and we went to the National Market. The National Market is a little supermarket filled with international food, seeing lots of foreigners live in the area. There we bought Vegemite! Yeeeeahh!! Our next stop was Ginza, which is pretty much the center of Tokyo, and we walked up and down the main street, window shopping in the many stores there. All of it was miles too expensive for me, but it was enjoyable anyway. The Japanese really love their famous brands, like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel etc. There was also a shop there that has apparently been in the same kind of business for 350 years or something – if it’s true that’s pretty impressive. They sold traditional Japanese items, like fans, cards, little wooden toys, designed paper and calligraphy equipment.

After we’d finished in Ginza we took the train to Akihabara, were we met with Anna, who is Ken’s daughter. She’s in her twenties and is an enthusiastic otaku! She took me to three different shops that every otaku must know about. The first was Animate, which I went to last time I was in Akihabara – jam packed with manga, anime, merchandise and drawing equipment – the second was a doujinshi (fanfiction) store. Fanfiction is (in this case) manga written by manga-fans that parody mangas. Alot of it is romance orientated, where a fan will write a fanfic about two characters (and I mean ANY two characters, if you get my drift o_o) in a manga that they think should be in a relationship. I was surprised at how good it was, and how much of it there was. The third place was Jump Store, which is a shop dedicated to selling Jump merchandise. Jump is a publishing company that handles many of the most famous shounen (action) manga, such as Naruto and One Piece.

For dinner we went to a little resteraunt where I ate sweet and sour Karaage (chicken balls. No not that kind of–ugh, geez). It was delicious, but I was so full afterwards I could hardly walk. All in all, it was a fun (if tiring) day! Here’s a couple of pictures~

[The watermellon in Japan is absolutely divine. Mmm yum]

[A doll Grandma made for me out of a glove and real Kimono fabric. I called her Aka-chan. Aka means red and chan is like a cute version of ‘miss’, but ‘Aka-chan’ is also the Japanese for ‘Baby’]

A week later, on Sunday the 16th of June (which also happens to be Japanese Father’s Day), Sophie and I (the girl I went to Disney Sea with) went to Harajuku for a day of shopping! In the morning I took the train from my house to Hiyoshi station, then Meguro station, then took the Yamanote line to Harajuku, all by myself, for the first time! Of course I take the train by myself to school every morning, but this was the first time for me going somewhere other than school without someone to help, and I was very proud! Since then I’ve gone to a bunch of other places by myself and I’m discovering that public transport isn’t so scary and difficult afterall, isn’t independance great!

We started the day by looking at second hand shops on Harajuku street, but Sophie didn’t have any cash with her, so we then spent the following three hours (no joke) searching for an ATM that would accept her card, seeing almost no shops in Harajuku take cards (in the end we walked all the way to Aoyama – the next district over – and back). Finally we found one in the center of Harajuku, almost where we started, but it was pretty fun walking around anyway. We saw much more of Harajuku that we would have, and got free samples of Danish cheesecake from a small bakery in Aoyama. We spent the next four hours – until seven o’clock when I had to go home – shopping all around Harajuku. Sophie bought a couple of second hand items, and I bought some things from Takeshita Dori (the main shopping street of Harajuku) including a cap that has ‘BOY’ written across the front and ‘GIRL’ written under the peak. We had dinner at McDonalds, and I was more surprised than I should have been that my Double Cheese Burger tasted exactly the same as it did in NZ..
By the time I got home my feet were killing me, but it was a good day out!

My next topic the Senior One Conference, which was a camp for my year level that took place on Thursday and Friday the 20th and 21st of June. It was called a conference because the idea was to discuss important topics, such as our futures, friendship and (being a Christian school) God. What really happened was we spent most of our time talking, lying on our beds (or in most cases it was lying on each other on one bed) or tearing around the camp building playing tag, a game I thought I would never play again after becoming a teenager. But hey, this is Japan!
For breaks inbetween the playing we listened to an hour long speech each day about something important (goodness knows what) and had delicious meals provided by the camp staff. I think the best thing I gained from the camp was a deeper friendship with my friends, which is always a good thing! On the thursday evening, after using the communial bath, we all got together and played games as classes (there are five classes in Senior one, by the way). One was an egg-and-spoon race with the added difficulty of having to duck under a rope halfway through, and the second was a game where everyone lies down in a circle and links arms, then a few people have to try and break the circle by pulling on the lying-down-people’s legs. It was heaps of fun!
At the end of the second day we took the bus back to school and watched the movie Enchanted on the built-in t.v screens. On the ride there we watched Simon Birch, which I must admid was kinda weird..but it had a good message, I suppose :P
Here are a few photos!

[Outside the camp building, about to head home]

[Some of my closest friends and me being totally crazy]

[My class playing that circle game. I’m in the top right of the picture, wearing my signature purple jumper]

And that concludes the first half of this update. Here’s a temporary parting gift, and a taster for the second half!

[Only in Japan :P]