(Jade Bellairs with classmates)
Lately I’ve been questioning why I don’t truly feel settled in. Maybe it’s because I am moving host families in three weeks or so. Or maybe it’s because I feel a little left out during class, since I still don’t understand much. Whatever the case, it will be hard to feel at home when I am constantly moving around, so I do my best to cope with it. I went out with some Rotex for dinner and we went to a food court place in Kita Senju. It was really fun and we took a lot of pictures with the SNOW, and Snapchat filters. In ESS (English Speaking Society club) we began planning for a Halloween party. I was put on the game planning committee and we’ve thought of some pretty interesting games. I went to Akihabara with two of my exchange student friends from school and we walked around and played in game centers and took lots of purikura. We also ended up going to another cat cafe. They were so cute but they kept running away from us. I can understand why but still, I just want to pet them! The next day I went to Disney Sea with a large group of exchange students from districts all over Japan. There were about 18 of us altogether but we split off into smaller groups after the initial meet up. That day was so fun, but it was a lot of walking so my feet really hurt. Disney Sea is not nearly as big as Disney Land or Disney World in America. The rides are also kinda lame, but it was fun being with all the other exchange students. The sad part was when we had to leave Disney Sea. I probably wouldn’t see these people ever again so we were all super sad. On Tuesday the 4th I had to stay home because my stomach hurt really badly. I slept for 16 hours that day. On my next break, we had a Rotary field trip with district 2580 and we went to the Ueno Zoo, Asakusa, and the Tokyo Edo Museum. The zoo had a lot of cute animals and we got to see a panda! In Asakusa we all got our fortunes for 100 yen. I got bad fortune but not as bad as this other guys’. It said he was gonna be unlucky with basically everything in the future and that everything in his life is going to go wrong. Mine just said I don’t get along with others. Other than ours, everyone else got a good or normal fortune. The next day I went out with another exchange student friend from my school. We went to Shinjuku together and basically just walked around and did whatever we wanted. We took like 4 purikura and went to this cool fancy cafe. On the next Saturday we had tea ceremony practice. I could NOT get the turning right and the scary teacher kept yelling “NO!” at me and it wasn’t fun. The next day was a day off, so I slept for 14 hours and went out to dinner with Rotex in Ueno. My schools’ midterms began yesterday and I only have to take the English tests. When I am not taking a test, I am sitting in the exchange student room doing nothing/studying/drawing/sleeping. All my Japanese friends are jealous that I don’t have to stress about taking the tests at all and I just sit there. I’d be jealous of myself too. Nothing outstanding has happened. I’m just living my life here and trying to fit in as much as possible. Next month we only have two days off (sob) but in December we have a (almost) 5 week break so I’m pumped for that. I am also looking forward to the Japan Tour in March. We will travel to places all around Japan! Again I want to talk about the trains. Dude. They get SO packed. You don’t even know. People will try to fit in but then they’ll fall down because they can’t squeeze themselves in anymore. If you’re unlucky you get stuck in the middle where you’re literally being smashed by TWICE the train capacity! It’s pretty painful. Also, in Japan there are weird guys who will touch you on the train. You can’t see who it is or move to stop them because the train is so full. Sure, you can scream for help but it’s kind of impossible to get help cause first of all, you don’t even know who it was and second of all most people would probably just ignore you cause that’s the “mind your own business” culture here. It’s actually a big problem and it’s happened to me on quite a few occasions. There are “women only” cars but they are all the way at the front and I don’t have time to run all the way to the front of the train before the train comes and goes. I have said something a few times and they run away with embarrassment but most of the time I can’t do anything about it. Future Japanese exchange students should be aware of this. I try to stand against the doors or use my bag to block them. It’s also suggested that you have a safety pin so you can stab them with it and I think i’m going to get one since it happens so often. Anyways school is pretty… boring. Sorry to admit it but Japanese classroom life isn’t the highlight of my exchange. I usually just write stuff in my journal or study. I’ve taken up the art of sleeping now and it passes the time a lot more efficiently. We have switched over to our winter uniforms but it was 81 degrees today and I was so hot. My classmates are so weird. It was like 75 degrees and they were all complaining about it being cold so they turned the heater up to 87 degrees. Like what? We are all wearing sweaters and some of us are even wearing blazers! Why are we making it hotter in here!? I am hot at 75 degrees!!! Today I took an English exam. It’s really difficult. We were learning about food banks for the homeless and desertification in English. What will they ever need to know desertification for? English class is quite interesting though because occasionally the teacher will ask me to pronounce a word and then the class will repeat the word like 500 times. They were absolutely fascinated with the name Michael for like an hour. I feel like I’m homesick but I know that it’s not real homesickness because it’s weird things that I miss from home. I miss dollar bills and cheese and brownies.I really want to get a haircut but i’m afraid that they will cut it like all the girls have it here and I do NOT want that. They all have bangs and kindashortish/medium length hair. I’ve heard so many hair saloon horror stories here so I’m scared to try it. I believe my next host father is a hair stylist so maybe I could get it done by him. Looking forward to it~ 
 
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