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Well, firstly I'm safe and sound in my next and final host family. I'm back in Megumino which a nice little town suburb of Eniwa. My home is across the road from the station, and although I get the train sounds through my window constantly, it means no worries about getting to the station on time. Yay!

I'm again back at school being bored to death daily. It's started to get mighty cold but sometimes we hang out in Sapporo. So one evening, Sam, Chiharu (my host sister) and I hung out in Odori and later met with Dakota and some Swedish people that were at Dakota's school for a week-long exchange.

I also went out the next night with Kaela and her friend Sakura. We went to Susukino, sort of like the night-life area of Sapporo, and went to a Japanese pub for dinner where Sakura's friends worked, so the atmosphere was very friendly, and apart from developing huge blisters on my feet from buying new shoes and wearing them that night, it was a very fun night.

On Sunday 17th, there was a huge Rotary District meeting in Sapporo - I had to leave at 7am and the meeting started at 9:00. There were Rotary Clubs from all around Hokkaido, and we were in a big hall thing and important people were there, such as the Governor of Hokkaido and the Mayor of Sapporo and people like that. Felt important!

The rest of the day was like a workshop meeting that the young people (RotarAct/RYPEN/YEP etc) were doing. It was EXTREMELY BORING because it was like a brainstorming session in Japanese, and so we zoned out until we got private tours around the hotel that was hosting the meetings - the most expensive hotel in Sapporo. So we got to see all the mega-expensive suites and stuff. Then after escaping during free-time for purikura and coffee, we came back for a fancy supper. It was a pretty good day in the end.

Monday was a day off from school because my school had lessons on Saturday.... I didn't go though, because even though I saw it, no-one came and said I HAD to go, so I presumed it was a study thing or a test, so I didn't go. To be honest it would have been a waste of time anyway.

Oh yeah. I have a new friend - Kota. I was walking from school to the station on Friday afternoon and he rode his bike up and got off and walked with me because he had seen me walking alone the day before and thought he'd come and talk to me. So that's nice to finally have a friend at school, although he's in the grade above me. And he's the only one in the whole school who's said happy birthday, too. Too bad I have less than three months left here.

Anyway, that's basically it. It's my birthday tomorrow, and I have a small stash of presents from my family that they posted over.. my host family have said I can have a little get-together on Saturday, so, I suppose I won't be completely alone for my birthday this year after all :)

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Now, I was extremely lazy with my blogs and also my personal journal so I'll try to remember as much as I can about the past two weeks, when my family came to visit. :3

Week 1 - Hokkaido

My family arrived on the 24th, and on the 25th we went to Shiraoi, which is a town south of Chitose, near Tomakomai, which has an Ainu village that we visited.

On the 26th, we spent the day in Otaru, just looking around and shopping.

The 27th was a Monday, and I showed my family around my school and then we went to a place called Rejaspo in Sapporo - sort of like a giant game arcade but better, because it had a mechanical bull, segways, obstacle courses, baseball, free arcade games and just so much more. That was fun.

We spent the 28th in Sapporo, but ended up spending most of the day shopping, because it was raining. We climbed the TV Tower and the JR Tower, my first time up the JR Tower at night. On Thursday 29th, it was our last day in Hokkaido. In the evening we all went to our Welcome Party held for us by Rotary.

We all did speeches and had introductions and then went to one of those private bars afterwards. The next morning, on the 30th, we packed up and said goodbye and flew out of New-Chitose airport, bound for Tokyo.

Week 2 - Tokyo to Hiroshima and back.

We arrived in Tokyo mid-afternoon on the 30th of September, and caught the monorail into the city. After walking and finding our hotel, we basically spent the rest of the afternoon resting and eating 7/11 dinner.

The next morning we made our way over to the Imperial Palace, which was nice but we weren't allowed inside or anything.

So after a bit more looking around, we walked up the road to Ginza, where we had lunch and also looked in the Sony Building (it showcases all the new, un-released models of cameras, laptops, TV's, etc etc.). Then we caught the subway to find Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) which was really cool. We also had a good view of that new Sky Tower they're building, the tallest in Japan.

After a bit more temple-looking, we walked back the long way and caught the subway to Shibuya. By then it was dark, and we managed to find the famous Shibuya Crossing, the one that's always in the movies that feature Japan. There were hundreds and hundreds of people, and we just stood there and watched for about 10 minutes before we actually crossed ourselves.

We walked up to Harajuku, which was a disappointment. I didn't see any of those crazy-dressed girls, and so after walking around for like half an hour trying to find something, we gave up and took the train back to Tokyo, where we climbed the Tokyo Tower. From that height, Tokyo is just crazy big. It was pretty amazing.

The next day was Saturday, the 2nd, and we went to DISNEYLAND!

Wooo. It wasn't quite what I expected - there were a lot less rides, and like no upside-down rides or things like that. It was aimed more at younger kids, I guess. We stayed there til night though, and watched the fireworks.

There were so many people, and the longest we waited was 2 hours for this ride, Splash Mountain, where you go down a drop and get water splashed on you. Just quietly, I think the Gold Coast Worlds are way better. But Disneyland was fun, and the parades were really well done.

On Sunday, the 3rd, we packed up and caught the shinkansen... well, the rapid express train to Nagano, which is north-west of Tokyo. We found a hotel to stay in and walked up the road towards their landmark temple, and there was a festival just wrapping up. We chatted to a few people (I translated) and once we got to the temple we looked around there a bit. It's one of the biggest wooden temples in Japan, and it was beautiful too. Once the sun started to go down we walked back to the hotel, and ended up eating dinner at the hotel restaurant.

The 4th, Monday, we took the hour-long train out of Nagano to go to a National Park where you could see monkeys in a hot spring (onsen). We got a taxi from the station to the park, up this extremely narrow, twisty road through a forest, and walked a track for 15 minutes in the rain, to arrive at the hut and be told "Oh... there are no monkeys here yet".

So we all sat down and waited for the rangers to try and call some monkeys down from the mountains. And soon enough they arrived so we walked down to the onsen, and there were loads of them, all just running around our legs!

It was awesome, there were about a dozen baby ones, and then mums and dads and grandpas. They played and fought and jumped in the onsen... It was definitely worth it, although on the return, we were told there were no taxis available at that time, so we took the other walking track to the bus stop, but it was pouring rain. So we all got saturated, and gave up about half-way, so I called the taxi man and he came and got us after all. Definitely an experience.

Later that afternoon we caught the train to Nagoya (after very nearly missing it),

and after getting a little lost, then finding our hotel, we all got dressed up and went out for dinner with a man called Fujii-san, who was a good friend of my grandfather, who I never met because he passed away before I was born. Anyway, we met this old friend of my grandfather's, along with his family, and we all talked and looked at photos and shared stories about my grandfather. It was special to my Dad too, because he hadn't seen him since he was my age.

It was a very rewarding night.

The next morning, the 5th, we headed into the main part of Nagoya and climbed up a tower (42nd floor) and looked out over Nagoya. We didn't go to the Nagoya Castle, but we saw it from there.

After attempting and failing at shopping in the station, we caught a train over to the Toyota Factory, which was really cool.

There was all the original textile machines that Toyota was first known for, then the car part, with a model of their first car built and then some old models, like the Corona and Celica and that.

There was also a prototype one-person seat car thing, it looks all futuristic and stuff, but it only has a top speed of 20kph and has a lot of flaws (like no shelter from the elements for the driver, tiny tyres, etc etc) but it was still cool. And they had the robot machines that you could watch and stuff. That afternoon we caught the train to Kyoto, checked in, and basically just went to bed.

On Wednesday 6th, we got up early-ish (I got up first because I bought my Big Day Out ticket), and went temple-hunting. First we went to the Fushimi Inari Taisha - if anyone has seen Memoirs of a Geisha (the movie), you'll recognise it from that scene where she's a little girl running through that tunnel of red shrines. It was amazing there, we didn't do the full walk, but we still saw so much.

After that we went to the Palace, which was over-run with primary school kids on their school trip. It was still an amazing place though, the artwork and the special floorboards that were built specially to squeak to alert intruders lol. For dinner we headed into Gion. We all hoped to see some geisha or something, because like... that's supposed to be the Gion thing, but we saw nothing. Ah well. We walked around for an hour looking for a yaki-niku restaurant and finally found somewhere down an alleyway.

The 7th... We left Kyoto for a day trip to Nara, where we went to the park with all the deer. It was so funny, they nipped your clothes and demanded snacks and followed you and tried to eat pamphlets.

We got interviewed by more primary school kids on their excursion, looked at a temple (which held a giant buddha made largely out of gold - and it's celebrating its 1300th birthday), walked around and that's about it. We caught the train back to Kyoto then took the shinkansen to Hiroshima that afternoon. We didn't arrive in Hiroshima until late, and all the information

centres were closed, and we hadn't booked a hotel. We looked up a hotel in mum's lonely planet guide and luckily they had rooms available. Yay!

In the morning we took a streetcar to the A-Bomb dome. It was smaller than I imagined, but still pretty moving to look at. To think that just 65 years ago the city was flattened with a handful of buildings half-standing, and today it's there, just as well off as any other city. It's amazing.

We walked in the rain and looked at the Peace Park, made paper cranes for the shrines, and spent a good hour or two in the museum. It definitely brought you back down to earth.

For lunch we found a floor of Okonomi-yaki restaurants and had, yes, Okonomi-yaki. It was very tasty, and we didn't even eat dinner that night because we were still so full haha. After that we caught the train all the way back to Yokohama (just south of Tokyo). We wanted to leave earlier but the train tickets were sold out, so we got the next available train, which got us there around 9 or 10pm. We'd booked a hotel earlier in the afternoon and stayed at this really nice hotel next to the station. They had a bar on the top floor and my family and I sat up there to look at the view, which was good even if it was a bit cloudy.

The next day was the last day. We had breakfast at the station (pancakes) and caught a taxi to Cosmo World, where there was one of the worlds biggest ferris wheels. It took 15 minutes to go round a full circle, and even though it was raining and overcast, we could still see a lot (but not Mr Fuji). Hanna and I rode 2 rollercoasters, one which like dove straight down and into a hole in a pool. It was pretty fun haha.

After that we caught the taxi back, then got the Rapid Airport train to Narita Airport... I checked my bags in and we had ramen for lunch. Then mum, dad and hanna checked their baggage in for their Qantas flight. I was starting to feel sad then - all these Australian families heading back to Sydney (it was actually the most Australians I'd seen in one place for 8 months) so I was feeling a bit home-sick.

Soon it was time for me to go to my gate, and mum dad and hanna weren't allowed to come any further after the security check. So we had to say our goodbyes there. I hate goodbyes. I cried when Dad said to have a good birthday and christmas, because then it really sunk in that I'll be without them for those. I spent most of the flight home in tears, it wasn't very pleasant.

On a sidenote though, I did get put in the business class type seats for some reason. I have a feeling its because, when I went and checked in, I did it alone and spoke all in Japanese and understood everything. The girl who served me looked really relieved that she didn't have to speak english so maybe it was a favour from her lol. Either way, it was cool, even if I didn't know how to work the stupid fancy tray that came out of the arm rest haha :P

But yeah. So that's my past two weeks. It's a lot to read, and I congratulate you if you've read this far. It was a fantastic 2 weeks, and it's been only a few days since I saw my family but I already miss them like hell. I have 3 months left in Japan now, and I know it should go fast, but it doesn't stop me from missing them.

In other things, I've moved to my final host family and started school again, and next month is my school excursion to Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. My birthday is next week and it should start snowing in just over a month.

And.. I think that's it for now.