Well, this was it. The event many high school students in Japan look forward to, the Shuugaku Ryokou… I personally am not a big fan of group-trips, though, so I didn’t really like it that much ^^;

For one thing, many of the places we visited I had already visited a couple years ago when I first came to Japan to visit my friends in Saitama. For another thing, I just really got sick of being around the other girls all the damn time. I’m one of those people who really needs to be *alone* at least a couple hours every day (sleeping does NOT count…and besides, I usually had to share a room with 5 others). I absolutely despise sharing sleeping quarters with other people, too… (gee, and I wonder why I’m not married ^_-). Well, I do like sleeping in the same bed with people I love (like my cat or my mom or my brother when we were kids…), but not with people I hardly know… Well, that said, you shouldn’t be so surprised when you hear about my other complaints in this trip ^^;

Anyway, the first day of the 5-day-trip, we got in the shinkansen (bullet train) and rode SEVEN HOURS to Hiroshima. Gggg…gg….g…..yes, those were my thoughts. Well, anyway, Hiroshima itself was pretty nifty. Here’s a picture of my entire class at the bomb site

Then it was off to a traditional Japanese hotel (the kind where the room is about the size of a US master bedroom and 6 people cram in there on the floor in futons and it has a Japanese toilet and sink attached, but no bath/shower so you have to take a public bath downstairs and there was NO WAY IN HELL I was getting in one of those… I think I mentioned this in some other entry somewhere, but I lied and said I was on my period so I couldn’t go. Hahaha. So the couple other girls who were leaking and I stayed behind in the room and watched Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo. Yay >: )= The night’s sleep was awful, forever… after taking a half-assed shower (washing my face…), I elected to sleep in the closet so that I could be more separated from the others. They all thought this was really funny and cute, but I seriously thought it was a very good idea. I was glad I did that because the other girls stayed up sooooooo late. I know most teenagers like to stay up late, but I have always hated staying up too late, especially when I’m accustomed to waking up early, because it’s very difficult to deprogram my brain. But since I was in the closet, I managed to go to sleep a little before the others… but that didn’t help too much because I kept waking up in the middle of the night… I hate sleeping in a strange new place on an unfamiliar surface.

On the second day, we went to the island near Hiroshima (always forget the name of it… someone help me ^^;), you know, the place in that episode of Marmalade Boy where Miki went to visit Meiko and there were a bunch of nosy and pushy deer with no antlers running around… It was just like that. I liked it a lot. The deer were very funny. One of them sneaked up behind Satomi and nibbled on her skirt and she happened to turn around, saw the deer, and screamed. It was so priceless ^_^

After that, we visited the site where the a-bomb was dropped and saw a museum with lots of gross pictures of burn victims and stuff. Fun.

After that, it was back on the shinkansen to go to Kobe. I had not been to Kobe (or Hiroshima, actually) during my first Japan visit, so this was also nice and new… but we took a long, scary bus ride up a very tall winding mountain at night…all in the name of seeing "the view". Even though I’m generally paranoid about driving up narrow, winding mountain roads, I wasn’t the only one who was scared. A few times, the bus could barely make the sharp turns and we had to back up… DOWNHILL… on a 234234235235889245 ton BUS… aaaahhhhhh…. Reminds me of the trip my choir took a few semesters ago… but that’s another story entirely ^-^;

The "view" wasn’t all that spectacular, really. I suppose it would have been had I not been so scared for my life the preceding 30 minute drive up to it… and then being scared over the fact that we had to go back DOWN ^^;;; and it was freezing cold up there. Grrrrrr.

But after we got down, it was as if I had gone to Heaven. The next hotel we stayed in was VERY high class. A formal, Western-style banquet hall, nice rooms with SHOWERS ATTACHED!!! REJOICE!! And there was a little more room on the floor to sleep (yeah, we still had, like 6 people to a room and still slept on futons on the floor, but it was much more comfortable. If only stupid Joanne hadn’t talked on her phone and made noise until frickin’ ONE IN THE MORNING… and we had been getting up at 6 in the mornings… these people are CRAZY. I remember at this point, I really started to dislike Joanne and Rumi (the main noise makers in our group) and really like Ishikawa Aya (who we all called "Ishikawa-chan", since there was another Aya). She was very calm and mature and became my primary "buddy" during the trip ^^; I guess mutual enemies united us.

The next day, after waking up to Joanne’s annoying cell phone alarm again (I was the only one who woke up from it, actually…) we shopped a bit in Kobe… whatever. I don't really like shopping… And then went off to Osaka. From this point on, the trip was basically a repeat of my former trip to Japan. I went to all the same places in Osaka: Osaka Castle, the Osaka Aquarium (NOTHING compared to the Monterey Bay Aquarium : p )… and then it was off to Kyoto (yeah, all in the same day ^^;)

I think I liked the hotel best in Kyoto. It was more Japanese and very classy (though not as luxurious as the one in Kobe; it was more practical. I like practical hotels : p ) Plus, many of the girls went off shopping during the night (everyone was buying SO MUCH STUFF!… Sure, a lot of it was gifts for other people, but they spent 10,000 yen bill after 10,000 yen bill… O_o I think I spent, like, 5,000 yen total on that trip and it was all in gifts : p ) And while they were gone I got to hang out in the room and stare at the ceiling. I LOVE doing that! ^_- Later that night, we all watched a music program on TV (ahhhh, my kind of Japanese TV) and I made fun of the enka singers. That was cool. We went to bed late again, but I didn’t care as much that time. Probably because I had that hour or so of alone time… AND there was a shower at this hotel (no hot water, but a shower no less)

The next (4th) day was undoubtedly the worst. We had chosen groups of 4 to be in for the 4th day and where we were going to go sightseeing. For some reason or another, I didn’t have much of a say in which group I’d be in and was stuck in a group with Joanne, Rumi, and Ishikawa-chan. Ishikawa-chan was fine, but I did NOT want to be with Joanne and Rumi. I really wanted to be with Erika and Satomi and Miho and Sachiko…but oh well. We basically went to places in Kyoto that I had been before (like the martial arts movie theme park, Kinkaku-ji (an all-gold temple…I didn’t mind seeing THAT again; that was nifty), but the day was sooooo tiring. Too much walking. At one point, Rumi saw some white people and asked me to ask them to take our picture. And I asked her if she was sure they speak English and she said she was (so I assumed she HEARD them speaking English or something…) so I asked them in English, and he answered in very broken English, "I don’t speak English. I speak Portuguese". So I told Rumi (in Japanese) "He’s not American. He’s Portuguese", and he corrected me (in Japanese) "No, I’m Brazilian" ^^;;;; It really does amaze me how many Japanese people think that if a person is white, he automatically speaks English…

Later that night, I was so proud of myself. The lights were on, the TV was on, Joanne was talking on her cell phone, and everyone else was talking and walking around… and I still managed to fall asleep!!!! This is a reallllll breakthrough for me. I’m usually such a light sleeper. I guess I was able to do this since I only got 5 hours of sleep each night before then. Grrrrr…

The last day of the trip, we went to the Love-Temple. They sell many charms for love there and give you your love fortune and you get to drink different kinds of water… I chose to drink the water that makes me live long… (I think my other choices were to be smart and pretty, but I’m already smart and pretty, so that’s why I drank the longevity water instead >: )=

After a few hours in the shinkansen, we were back home. AHHHHHHH!!! This was the first time in Japan that I had felt homesick, but I wasn’t homesick for my home in America, but for my home in Iwate ^^; That night I slept verrrrrry soundly for quite a few hours and the next day there was no school. Ahhhhh. I went to Key-chan’s, gave her a gift from the trip and read manga for hours. Ahhhh. The little pleasures of life ^-^

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