Today...

...is my last day in Japan. Last full day, that is. Tomorrow, the 11th, I leave from Narita airport at 2:55pm. I'll arrive 9 hours later in LAX at approx. 7:30am on the 11th. Then after my wonderful 5 hour layover, I'll arrive in PDX at 3:35pm.

...I'll be so tired. D:

Today, even though its my last day, I'm spending it packing my things. I finally got all of my souvenirs yesterday! I'm wondering though, if I should make you all wait until Christmas to give them to you >:D

Let's do some quick updates!

Wednesday:
I didn't do a whole lot during the day, but that night I went over to my HF's for dinner for the last time. HM made eel, my new favorite ♥ And of course other delicious things. It was a great meal! Afterwards, she brought out a cake she made:

It says:
"Becca
You'll always be family!
Be well ♥"

Soooooooo cute. Teary eyes, etc.

So the time I came to dinner before this one, HG had told me that during her trip to... somewhere else in Japan, I can't remember... she had seen an ad on TV for Kiyoshi's new calendar, and so on her way back home she stopped off at a calendar store in Yokohama and tried to find it, but they didn't have it. She said she had really wanted to buy it for me, so she was angry that they didn't have it stock. "It's a calendar store, WHY wouldn't they have celebrity calendars?!?" She said to me. Adorable ♥

So on Wednesday before dinner, HD's younger sister stopped by and delivered something for me. HG said that she went to a bunch of stores looking for the calendar, and they didn't have it. So, she ordered it from a bookstore and luckily it came in time! She bought Kiyoshi's calendar for me!!

It is giant. Thank you, HG!!! ♥

After our meal, we decided to take a picture! Sadly HD couldn't be there, do to working late, so it was just the four of us:


The four of them are all coming to the seminar house tomorrow morning to see me off, so it wasn't goodbye yet! I will probably totally cry tomorrow, so I'll remember not to wear mascara.

Thursday:
Yesterday I went with Ayako to Kamkura to finish buying souvenirs for everyone! It was fun, of course, and we went to lunch at this great place. We both had shirasudon, which is Shirasu over rice:

Yeah, the eyes were still there. It was delicious though!

Ayako and our lunch!

She had to work later that day, so we left around 3:00. She also had to go check her mail, because she was supposed to get in her answer as to whether or not she was selected for the study abroad program to Linfield! Which... she was!!!!!!
She's coming with us to the airport, so even though it'll be sad saying "Bye" to her, it won't really be goodbye, since she'll be coming to Linfield next year!

...I'm planning on coming back here someday, so it won't really be a 'goodbye' to my HF either.

Right now I really want to listen to this song, but I know it'll make me cry:

Yuzu's "Until the day we meet again".


For now, I'm off to finish (read: start) packing. I can't wait to see you all soon!!
♥

And a few drinks later...

Today was mostly uneventful, except towards the end. I watched a movie online I had been wanting to see for a long time, cleaned my room, packed a bit.

Heh. Boring.

Then we went to karaoke, in honor of Yinzhou's last day in Japan!
It was soo much fun! Have some pictures:

BESTIE Niki and Nicole!

Action shot! Marie, Brenna, and Bestie.

Bestie solo shot!

Me, KC, and Yinzhou!

What did I drink? Two Fuzzy Navels, one Kahlua Milk, and one Fruits Mix drink. No, these did not contain very much alcohol. I was slightly buzzed. Get off my back, people!

Yinzhou leaves tomorrow to go back to China, but we'll all get to see her in Spring! Until then, Yinzhou~! ♥

Tomorrow I'm going to Harajuku to meet Chloe!!!! Soooooooo excited!

Well goodnight~

I live!!

...I LIVE!!

You all can stop worrying now, I'm still alive! This last week was sooooo packed.
Monday: Regular class, no big deal
Tuesday: Final test, and the Perspectives on Japan presentations
Wednesday: Speech in Japanese (3 pages memorized for me!)
Thursday: Economy presentations
Friday: Farewell Party
Today: Economy essay

Since nothing happened on Monday, let's start with...

TUESDAY:

We had our final test for culture. Well LET ME TELL YOU how awful that test was. Yes, she did tell us where she was going to take her information for the test from. Yes, they were handouts she had given us. But despite the fact that the class was SUPPOSED to be taught in English, the handouts were in Japanese as was the test. Which was overall fine for me, except for a few unknown words. The information on the test had less to do with culture and had more to do with "useful" information like how long and wide Japan is, the population, the climate, etc. All of the things on the test were things we would have had to memorize. As I studied, I imagine I got the best score out of all of us. Others studied too, but I think I took it a bit more seriously than the rest did. We just didn't think it was going to be that bad. It was ridiculous and we were all raging hardcore afterwards. Our culture professor was a nice woman, but a terrible teacher with a terrible mix of Japanese and English (Japanglish, anyone?) when she speaks. It wasn't my least favorite class, but I'm still glad its over.

After our test we did our presentations for the one-credit Perspectives on Japan. We had to pick one topic that interested us and do some research about it. Emily and I paired up to talk about the weird theme cafes we found around Tokyo. These included:
- Cat cafe
- Maid cafe
- Butler cafe
- Vampire cafe
- Christ-themed cafe
- Alice-in-wonderland cafe
- Hospital/prison cafe
- Futuristic-prison-on-the-moon cafe

...needless to say, it was interesting. For those who are wondering, we only went to two of these cafes, the cat cafe and the maid cafe. The others were too expensive or required a reservation, etc. Annoying.

Moving on!

WEDNESDAY:
Three pages I had to memorize!! In Japanese! Oh well, I memorized it and gave the speech like a pro. The topic was very close to my heart; I talked about my horrible experience with shutters and unhelpful train-men in Shinjuku station. じゅんや様絶対忘れはしないからね(;_;)♥ It went well and finally I got a 25/25 on a speech!! Previously I had only ever gotten 24/25.

Moving on!

THURSDAY:
Our last econ class! Oh god it was so nice to see it end. Hated that class. My presentation went overall pretty well, aside from the fact that I gave mine right after Niki's... whose was also on marketing. So basically we delivered the exact same speech. Oh well, hopefully that won't affect my grade. Afterwards, we went out as a group with our politics professor to this really nice Italian restaurant in Yokohama station! I had some great pasta with zuchinni and a fabulous drink called Gin Back which was just gin, ginger ale, and a lemon slice. It was delicious and I felt so grown up drinking gin. Even if there was hardly any in there. It was so much fun!! Our politics professor is such a nice person. He picked up the check, even. The WHOLE check. Had I known he was going to do that, I wouldn't have ordered a drank or desert. No, I did not make a mistake just then. I meant to type drank. That is how I differentiate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

Moving on!

FRIDAY:
We had normal class. Well, sort of normal. It started much later and was much shorter than it usually is. For the second half of class, we got all together and made "memory maps", which were basically just giant pieces of paper with a certain topic assigned to each and we would comment or draw pictures, etc. It was really fun to make, actually! Here are some of my favorite bits:

I drew this one, as you can see by how badly its done. It's my host family and I! Under our fabulous portrait I wrote "I love the Senso family!"


This one KC drew most of. It's me looking on lovingly from the third floor at Kiyoshi. Haha!! Surrounded by old ladies, no less. In the corner, I wrote my percentages:
"People who went to the concert:
97% Older ladies (literally Grammas)
2.99% Their husbands
0.01% Foreigner"
Awesome.

The farewell party itself was sooooo nice but of course really sad too. HM and HG came to the party, but HD and HS couldn't make it due to their work schedules. At the party, each host family was supposed to give a mini-speech about their experience with their host child, then afterwards each exchange student would give a mini-speech about their experiences and then their respective buddies would speak. My HM said such nice things about me! Mainly that they were sooooo relieved, especially HG, that I was able to speak Japanese so well, that she was happy to hear that I liked everything she cooked for me (lol), and that I really became a member of the family. It was so nice and of course I got all teary-eyed but I DID NOT CRY.
After that, the host families all got together and sang us two songs, "Furusato" (or "Hometown"), and "Silent Night" in both Japanese and English. It was so cute! When they dimmed the lights, HG was all worried that she wouldn't be able to read the lyrics, but she was able to after all. ♥
After that, each exchange student and their buddy gave their speeches. Poor KC started crying immediately upon getting in front of everyone! It was a sad event after all. Sadly, my buddy Ayako was tied up at her job, so she wasn't able to come. But she did write me a really nice letter that one of the other buddies read to me after my speech, which went well. Once again, I managed not to cry!!
Afterwards, we took loads of pictures:

All of us!! Can you spot HM, HG, and me?

Cute!!

Finally Ayako came!!

Hagi-san and I! Of course you can hardly see him, it could be any random bum off the street. Also, hmm... I see a trend in my poses.

Kiana, Shintaro, and I!

Misato, Brenna, Natsue, KC, and I!

Me, Kaori, and Emily!

Ayako, Manami, me, and Emily!

Manami, Kelli, Shintaro, Kaori, and Kiana!

My Minnesota buddy Marie and I! I'm going to miss her when we leave here. :(

KC and I! This is a great picture. ♥

Emily and I! The dynamic duo!!

Hiromi and I!

Hiromi, me, Shiho, and Ayako! Why so sad, Shiho??

Tried to take a picture of the people in the background, but Hiromi photo-bombed!

Then Hiromi and Ayako BOTH photo-bombed!

And finally I got my picture! Marie, Yinzhou, Yuta, KC, Hiromi, Manami, Kaori, Ayako, and Misato!

BESTIE Niki and I!

And finally we all took a picture with Eguchi-san and the poster we made for him and the rest of the international center!

After the party, KC, Brenna, Yinzhou, Ayako, Natsue, Nono, and I went out to...Denny's for dinner! Urgh Denny's is entirely different in Japan, but no better tasting. But we were with friends, so it was ok! Afterwards when we finally got back to the seminar house, I was surprised to find that my favorite grampa who works at the seminar house, Tsuriya-san, to whom I had given a present to before we left to live with our host families, had bought me a present! They were these cute little model sandals that girls wear with kimono. Of course, they were just a tiny model for decoration, but they were soo cute! I was so happy! When I got back to my room, with my present from Tsuriya-san and the presents I had gotten from the international center at the farewell party, and the all the pictures I had in my camera... I couldn't help it. I had a bit of a blub. It was good that I had waited until I was alone to cry like a ninny, because it ended up with my mascara all over my face. It was such a good day!

Now finally, today! Only three things happened today:

1. I finished my econ paper!! It was up to 8 pages, and I wrote 7! In less than 5 hours! Like a boss.
And after I was done?



My economy textbook. Where it belongs.

After that...

2. We (we being Niki, KC, Emily, and I) went to Yokohama and had Thai food for dinner! It was delicious and spicy and fabulous. I had green curry (of course) for dinner, then no-bake-cheesecake with mango sauce for dessert. Delicious!

And after that?

3. We were hit on in the train by some drunk Navy dude. He called us "kowaki", which is his own failure to remember how to say "kawaii" which means cute. Ridiculous. We got off the train as soon as we could. He wasn't a creeper or anything, but we just weren't in the mood for thinking up excuses for not joining him and his Navy buddies for drinks. After we switched trains, I decided to look up "kowaki" to see if it meant anything. Turns out it means "armpit"! So apparently we are all very "armpit".

And that was today!

Tomorrow... is the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test)! And after that is Ayako's early Christmas party! So I'm looking forward to that.

Wish me luck on my test! Preferably good luck, mind you.
♥

Alright, now where did I leave off...?

Well first let's reply to comments! Thank you for your comments, by the way >:D

Dad: Well my cold is no longer raging, but it's certainly not gone. It's been a week!! It should be gone by now. I'll blame my sleeping habits and stress from my horrible economic assignments.

Steve: Thank you!! Now... which Steve is this? (^^;

April: Why yes, I am a giant baby for with-holding updates until my comment quota had been filled! >:D I may have indeed gotten you something fun at Pokemon heaven! And hold on a moment while I go youtube Tony Bennett... Nah, Kiyoshi is at least 5 million times more sparkly than this Tony Bennett fellow. His fan-base consists of mostly mature ladies for the following reasons: 1. He sings enka, which is a tradional(ish) style of music that is very popular among the elderly (they release his singles on TAPES as well as CDs) and 2. He's not unattractive. Thus, he's every elderly women's dream man! Except HG, who doesn't seem to be a huge fan of his. Heh. Different strokes.
As far as the bullet train goes, it's really only used for long-distance travel, since it is pretty much the same price as a domestic flight.
I have yet to see any cool rocks, but I'll take a (5 minute walking) trip down to the beach to see if I can find anything before I come back! Which is officially less than three weeks now!

Alright, now let's carry on my wayward son with updates!
Where did I leave off...?

Friday Nov 5th: Last night with the HF
So as most of you know I had planned on making a scrapbook for my HF and giving it to them as part of my going-away-gift to them! But of course, as most of you know, I procrastinated and ended up finishing the scrapbook at 6:00PM on Friday night! One hour before dinner, which was when I was planning on giving it to them! Procrastination is of the devil, but at least I got it finished in time. Here's a look at the cover:

To the Senso family!
I took pictures of all of the pages, mostly to show Mom when I get back, so I won't show those here.

So after dinner, HD and HM decided it's time for them to give me a present they had bought. They were three pairs of really nice chopsticks; a pair for me, a pair for Mom and Dad and a pair for Grammy and Papa! How nice! I was really happy. Then HG decides to give me her present (which she made me pick out lol). It was this really really pretty scroll painting that she had painted herself! She's been doing painting and calligraphy for over 20 years, so she's really good at it. I nearly cried, but I didn't.
Then I have them their gift! When I gave it to them, I told them it was a little lame since I had made it myself; but when I told them that, they got all excited, and it turned out that they were really happy with it!! They looked at it a billion times and then finally put it on display on top of the wooden... what is that called, when they have that wooden thing the TV and DVD player etc fits in? Entertainment center? I think that's it. Well regardless, they put it on display and were all happy with it. Success!
Afterwards we looked through family photos of theirs and laughed at HS's inability to make a normal face in a picture. Then, we all went to bed. It was a really nice night!

Saturday Nov 6th: Back to Hayama

The next morning, we had breakfast as usual. Afterwards, I went and finished packing. While I was packing though, HG came up to tell me that she had to head out early to meet her friend, so we said 'See you later' to each other and she left. Then after a little while, HS came in and gave me a card she had made! Here it is:

Awesome webcam shot now, since I'm too lazy to get out my camera, take a picture, upload it to my computer, so on and so forth.

And a close up on the bottom half!
So the top half says "Dear Coffelt Becca", because here the family name comes before the given name. I thought it was cute! Then there's this large blank box and on the inside, she wrote "Put a picture of the five of us here!" in Japanese.
The bottom half has a picture of us from the Halloween party and a really nice letter thanking me for the good memories, etc. Let's see if I can't do a quick translation...
"Thank you for all the memories ♥♥
At first [when we signed up for the homestay] we thought, what are we going to do if she can't speak Japanese?? But then you came and we were surprised!! You really are practically Japanese. And now you are Senso Becca. My little sister ♥ Even though the home stay is over, no matter where you are you are still a member of the Senso family!! We're a weird little family, but you're already a part of it! (lol) Please come back with a 'I'm home!' any time. The four of us are waiting ♥ Thank you so much ♥♥
From Satomi"

Now this time I actually did cry a bit! After this, I decide it's time to go and return their house key. So I head downstairs and find HD, and hand it to him. But then before he takes it, he stops and says "Wait a sec. Wouldn't it be better if you just kept it? Right, HM, shouldn't she keep it?" To which HM says of course! Their reasoning? "Well you know, if you come over sometime after school and no one is home, how are you supposed to get inside the house?? You can just give it back to us at Narita." INSTANT TEARY EYES! Especially since the previous night, HG asked me where I was flying out from on the 11th, and I told her Narita, to which she responded instantly with "We'll go with you!" It was so cute. But anyway, back on topic, I still have their house key.

My stuff all packed :( Why yes, I did end up leaving with much more than I had brought with me.
So after I was all done packing, we decided that we were going to go to the seminar house and drop off my stuff, then go out for lunch. But first, picture time!

We had their very elderly neighbor come and take pictures for us. Hence the tilt.

This one came out a bit better!
After picture time, we drove back to the seminar house to drop off my stuff. HD asked the seminar house staff guy who was working then something I couldn't hear, to which the staff guy replied that HD would have to talk to the international center at KGU. I wonder what this is about?
Then we decided to go out for lunch! We ended up driving to Odawara, which is about an hour away, since none of us were hungry yet. In the restaurant, which was really good Italian food, HD decided to take a picture of HS and I:

Notice HS hiding her face and me not paying attention. It was just like Mom taking unwanted pictures at EVERY family event! Hahaha.
After lunch, we wandered around the grounds outside of Odawara castle, because there was some sort of flea market/hand-made stuff sale going on. Here's another picture of HS and I:

At least I'm being a good sport about HD's Mom-like picture taking! He got the most hilarious picture of HS though, she was making the worst face ever. She bugged him like crazy to erase it, which he said he did, but he didn't! It is now in my possession, but as a nice person I won't be posting it here.

Here's another picture of HS and I, though we didn't know it was being taken. We were looking at these hand-made cell phone charms. They were so cute! We ended up buying matching ones ♥

Afterwards, we headed back to the seminar house, and said our "See you later!"'s, and then they left. Sad :( But it was a really good day!

Monday Nov 8th: Text message from HM!

Sunday was homework day. In other words, there was nothing exciting to report on! On Monday, though, nothing exciting happened EXCEPT for a text message I got from HM. She told me that the had called KGU's international center and asked if I could just live at their house for the rest of the time instead of at the seminar house. AWWWWWWWWWWWWW. The international center said no (jerks). But HM said that I could come back and spend the night whenever I wanted! I was really happy just that they wanted me to spend the rest of my time in Japan there with them. :DDD
The rest of the day was class and homework, so of course nothing to report on. Oh, but we did come together for our first practice for our Arashi dance for the "talent show" we had to perform for, called "Let's Enjoy". I won't even get started on that Engrish, but let's just say we were stressing. We had to come up with 2 hours of entertainment! In less than a week! Awful. We decided on a giant group Arashi dance for the very end of it. And since Arashi's actual choreography was too hard, we decided to combine various choreography from kid's songs. Heh. Wonder how that's going to go over.

Friday Nov 12th: Grumpy McGrumpPants makes an appearance

I skyped with Mom/Dad/Grammy/Papa as usual on this day, except for the fact that several things were causing me undue stress and I was the grumpiest thing in the world. Sorry, guys!!!! Damn "Let's Enjoy" was later that day, and my economics report was also due that day, so I was stressing. Mostly from the econ report. I hate that class so so much. Everything about it, including our professor and our textbook. The bias is just too much for me to handle; everything in our textbook is written from a Japan-can-do-no-wrong perspective, and it's really frustrating when no one gives you an objective opinion about Japan's economy. In case you were unaware, David Flath (author of the textbook) and Mr. EconProfessor: Japan's economy has been at an utter standstill since the burst of the "Bubble" over 20 years ago!!! The current strength of the Yen doesn't not reflect Japan's economic situation in the slightest!!!
URGH rage. I am mostly raging because for the last papers we turned in, after reading them he decided to discuss with us, in front of the class, why our opinions were wrong. Why our OPINIONS were WRONG. Ridiculous. What a ridiculous excuse for a professor. When it came time for him to criticize my paper, he basically mocked me for my optimism on the United States' current economic situation. Old geezer fool. So you can see that I am NOT looking forward to next Thursday, when we have our econ presentations. Even though they are just reports devoid of opinion, I'm sure he'll have much to say about how wrong we are. Rage rage rage.

But rage aside, during our preparations for "Let's Enjoy", my mood improved greatly! The show itself was a lot of fun for us, but I imagine it was a little boring and awkward for our audience. The ones I was apart of were a silent version of the Three Little Pigs (in which I played the gangsta pig with the brick house) and the final Arashi dance.
Afterwards, our Japanese language professor treated Emily, Hagi-san, Ayako, and I to unagi!

Thanks Google image search! It was the first time for me eating unagi... do you know what unagi is? EEL. And it was sooooo good. The bones didn't bother me at all! Apparently they bother a lot of people. The entire meal was about $30, and she treated four of us. Which means our professor is loaded! It was a really nice meal.

Well we're off to go eat some Shabu-shabu soon, so I'll end today's update here and carry on tomorrow regardless of the number of comments I receive. Or maybe I won't because tomorrow I'M GOING TO GO SEE HARRY POTTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sooooo excited.

But you know what is definitely not okay? Apparently North Korea just sent a missile towards an inhabited island off the coast of South Korea, injuring at least 4 South Korean soldiers. This is not okay for several reasons, the biggest of them being the fact that KC has family in South Korea, and if this gets worse... I'd rather not think about it. I'd like to think that of North Korea keeps this up that they'll be shut down too quickly for any real damage to take place. But then I'm reminded of the missile they've got pointed towards Japan. So I'm a tad nervous at the moment. Not okay, Evildoer Korea, not okay at all. Leave Good Korea and the rest of the world alone.

Well, I'm off!