Wow I am surprised that these two months have passed so rapidly and that I have done so many new things and gone to so many places in such a short amount of time.  I have now gone to universal studios Japan in Osaka, I have been to Kyoto as well as Nara, and Okinawa. I have been to tons of historical sites and the second largest museum in the world, and probably a hundred temples and shrines by now.  And I frequent the beach near my house but I don’t think it’s very well known.

Until now my favorite has been Okinawa and not only because of the beautiful beaches, the scenery, and the amazing weather, but also because it was the most educational.  When I went there my host family took me to a couple war museums of the battle of Okinawa and the flame of hope, which is were the names of the Americans, Koreans, and Japanese that died in the war are written. And I learnt so much in these museums their were dozens of first hand stories written by the survivors and most of them were really graphic and hard to take in, and in the case of the Okinawans I learnt that before the war they were subordinated under the Emperors control and forced to change their old customs and religion and these people who were least appreciated by Japan and who cared least for the war were the ones that suffered the most.  In history class I always thought of the war as something so far that it never really affected me but this trip really kind of opened my eyes to what war really is.  And what shocked me the most was the most famous story from the war (or at least in Japan it is),  was the story of a high school of girls  (about 200 students and 18-20 teachers) who was forced by the government to care for wounded soldiers and these girls were around the age of 18 and they had to help dying soldiers and amputate body parts in dirty caves and see their friends die around them, and when the government released them from duty where nowhere to go and the battle still raging a lot of the girls killed themselves and in the end about 150 of the teachers and students ended up dying.  I’m sorry if this was a little depressing I just had to share it so those of you who read this can get a little glimpse of the horrors of war so we can prevent things like this from ever happening again.

On a lighter note to lighten things up, school is still very fun I study Japanese by myself still and I go to the classes I picked and try to understand and when I cant I just do my own thing.  But I do participate fully in, PE, art, and calligraphy, which is my favorite class. And I found out that my art teacher is into pretty good music, and when I’m not working in the class we talk about music and he showed me his old punk rock disc collection. And I am also assisting some English teachers. And speaking about English I managed to fail my English quiz, but it wasn’t because my English is that poor, yet, it was because the instructions were in Japanese and the teacher didn’t really have time to explain because it was a timed test, but I guess it doesn’t really mater because I don’t get grades anyway and I thought school in Japan was going to be hard.   But although the other students do get grades they don’t really seem to matter unless you’re a very special case and happened to ace all your classes which is almost impossible, your whole chance of getting into a college is determined by the grade you get on your college entrance exam, (its kind of like the SAT but it has every subject and getting a perfect score is unheard of) so for college its not like America where they look at your extra curricular activities and service hours, and for that reason most students don’t do after school activities their senior year, so your pretty much just a number for colleges and the competition is crazy I think 50% of people here go to college.

And now that my Japanese is better I am communicating more with the 1^st year students in my class.  After school I am going to kendo 4 days a week, the kendo teacher was nice enough to lend me full gear and my host father use to do kendo back in the day so he let me borrow his bamboo swords so I have my own for practice.  And I am still biking in total 1 hour and half from and to school everyday.  And I finally learnt how to handle my bicycle with one hand and hold the umbrella with the other and get barely wet.  Although a couple weeks ago I went out with my friend like we always do in the mornings except this day it was raining, and we both had our plastic transparent umbrellas (They sell them everywhere here for like three dollars and are very convenient for bike riding because you can see everything around you with the umbrella over your head) but all of a sudden the wind started picking up and saying us as we went, and on the way my friends umbrella broke a little but not that bad, and then we reached the bridge we have to cross every day to go to the next city in which our school is.  When we started climbing the bridge my “friend” closed his half broken umbrella and put it in his bike basket, I didn’t think much of it I thought he just couldn’t hold the umbrella and go up the bridge but as soon as we were over the river it hit me like a rock,  one of the strongest winds I have ever felt came from the river and almost tore the umbrella out of my hand but I held on and kept it close to me while I was swaying side to side and I didn’t have enough control to close it, and to top it off it started disintegrating while I was on the bridge and by the time we came down all I had left was the metal branches it has, it looked liked a metal tree with no branches. So at the next dumpster me and my friend just threw the umbrellas away and just kind of laughed at each other because we still had like a 10-15 min bike ride and it was still poring.  But we got to school soaked, but safe.

Oh and as for rotary meetings and that such I have gone to my rotary club meeting once a month and at the last one they made me sing karaoke at the dinner we had and I gave my small speech and answered some questions. And I also met up with Rotex again and they had another competition for us but this time sports and my team won again.

That’s it for now and again I would like to thank everyone in rotary for making this possible and putting in so much time into this,and The Davie/Cooper City Rotary club for sponsoring me and for being so encouraging the couple of times I went to the meetings.

And to all the other foreign exchange students around the world the Japanese don’t really believe in luck so they usually say “ganbatte” which if it were to be translated it means persist or fight so everyone……

GANBATTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!