Vol 14

先月の二十二日から二十三日まで山梨県へいきました。
とても楽しいです。
私はもう一度山梨県へいきたいです。
日の出もとてもきれいです。

先月に私はちょっといそがしかたですから、どこもいきませんでした。
今、勉強します。

I know I haven’t posted for a while, but I’m serious about having a short attention span.
I’ve been typing this one entry for over a week, and look how short it is.

On November 22nd -23rd the American students took a trip to Yamanashi Prefecture.
We got to see Mt. Fuji, and check out a lot of different places like Castles, Houses, and Museums.
Yamanashi Prefecture is very very pretty.
While there, I felt like I was in a bowl, because you’re surrounded by Mountains.

We left Saturday morning around 9am.
According to the schedule we should have arrived at our first location in about 2 hours, but the traffic was horrible.
Throughout the entire trip we were on the bus for about 7-10 hours each day.

Our first stop was the House of Kinjiro Ninomiya.
Kinjiro Ninomiya was the Japanese former who would work and study at the same time.
He was so determined to study, even though he uncle told him not to, that he made his own oil so he could study at not.
At least that’s why Tanaka said.
I think Kinjiro was also a samurai.

Next we visited the Odawara Castle.
The place has a really pretty view.
You can see the Ocean, the Mountains, the City, everything from this castle.
And it had a really small zoo right in front of the main entrance.

Our third stop was suppose to be the Owakudani mountain, but we didn’t get to go there because of the lack of time and setting sun.
This was the one place that we wanted to visit the most, because we could climb the mountain, and they had this black egg thing we could try.
But since we didn’t go to that stop, we went straight to the hotel, and that took hours.
We were on the bus from 2pm to 7pm.
Dinner was schedule from 6pm, but since we got to the hotel late, it was rescheduled for 7:30pm.
We had 6 rooms in total.
3 for girls and 3 for boys.
My roommates were everyone that I hang out with most.
Lena, Jo, Chole. Roxana, and Sarah.
Even though we had the “big room”, that’s about the size of my room in America, it was kind of small, but nice.
The hotel had a communal bath, but everyone in my room took a shower instead.
We stayed up until around 12am playing around, but everyone else went to sleep.
So while they were sleep I went out and sat in the hall, then down in the lobby with Justin and Owen, who were also up.
I think I went to sleep around 3am, and woke up at 6am.
It wasn’t until morning that we were able to see that our hotel had a water front view.
It was too dark when we arrived.

Breakfast was at 8am, and we left the hotel at 9am.
Our first stop was Saiko Iyashi no Sato.
This is a rare site that perserves Japanese traditional buildings.
This place had the best view of Mt. Fuji
We also got to try on Kimono’s and old Samurai outfits.
Kimono’s….大変ですね。
I never want to wear another traditional Kimono again.
It takes so long to put on.
But, the fabric is really nice.

Our second stop was Koufu city.
We ate lunch there.

Our third stop was Takeda Jinja.
I don’t remember what we did there.
Oh yeah!!!!
We got to visit a shrine.
At the shrine, they were going the 七五三祭り (7-5-3 Festival).
7-5-3 festival is a festival to celebrate 3 and 7 year old girls, and 5 year old boys.
Those kids were so cute in their traditional Kimono’s, but almost every little girl I saw tripped over their Kimono.
ちょっと危ないですね！
Chole and I had a field day here with out Jumping pictures and SM dances.

Our last stop was Erinji Temple, which is the nicest place I ever been.
If only that place could be my house.
Japanese Foliage is something you should take a trip to see.
I’ve never saw the Sakura Blossom festival in Japan, but I’m pretty sure that next to that, the Foliage is second best.

It took us about 4 hours to get back to Tokyo because the traffic was bumper to bumper, like always.
By time we returned to Tokyo, everyone had just about as much as they could take with sitting on a bus.
All in All the trip was really fun and nice.
I never did like the City.
Any city.
So coming out to the country was very refreshing.
I also made two new friends.
They are friends of my classmate.
Both Japanese.
One is learning English and asked if I could help him with it, Tomo-san.
And the other speaks English fluently, Hippo-san.
Hippo-san said that he would bring me and my friends out to his parents house one day.
His parents also live in the country and from the pictures I saw, they live close to a waterfall.
NICE~~!!!!!

This post is solely about the Yamanashi Trip.
I’ll post later about everything else that has been going on, but right now I should sleep.
Not to mention I have homework, and it’s already 11pm.
Oh yeah! And a test tomorrow!


I took over 500 pictures on the trip, and I post them all in my photo album
Again, the link can be found on the left hand side of the screen.