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Well, the school trip has been and gone. Even though it was only a 4 day/3 night trip, it was very busy and I was SO tired by the end, not to mention about ready to slap a few of my classmates haha.

So, bright and early on Friday the 5th of November, 164 students (half of my grade, the other half left separately) met at Chitose airport and we flew, via Tokyo, to Osaka airport.

From Osaka Airport we all got on buses and drove the hour to Nara, where we spent a little over an hour looking in Todaiji Temple and around the grounds, and feeding the deer, although some of the girls preferred to keep the deer-biscuits to eat themselves (yuck). I'm glad that I visited Nara earlier with my family, because it was quite rushed and we only had 10 minutes to get any souvenirs we wanted. After that we travelled back to Osaka and got into our hotels and yeah.

The next morning we woke up super early (breakfast was at 6:30am) and bussed over to Kyoto, where our first stop was the Kiyomizu-dera. I got a group of European travellers come up and ask me all about exchange and where I'm from and how's Japanese school, so that was fun.

After that we went to another temple, where we all had to enter with our palms pressed together, step through the door left foot first, and then sit yoga-style on cushions (or attempt to, anyway). There was a strict monk/priest guy who, after telling us all to be silent and still, rang bells and bowed to the shrine and then got a long stick with writing on it, and patrolled around to make sure we were all sitting properly. If someone was doing it wrong he'd whack them on the shoulders with the stick. He was scary lol. So that went for a solid hour... no moving, no talking, although it was nice to just and listen to the birds and stuff outside, instead of the usual cars and yelling and city noise.

After that my group and I walked around Gion a bit, then had lunch at Kyoto Station and went back to Osaka where we found our way to a place called Dotonbori which was just stuffed full of lights and people and noise, it was fairly awesome. We went to a restaurant down some stairs and had Okonomiyaki for dinner before heading back to the hotel again.

The next morning, another early wake-up, we went to Shin-Osaka Station to catch the bullet train to Tokyo. It took about 2 hours, and.. yeah. We ate obento and slept and stuff, everyone was pretty tired.

Once in Tokyo, we split off into smaller groups and were allowed to explore the city ourselves. We went to the Tokyo Tower first, which I led the way to seeing as though the hotel I'd stayed at with my family was right nearby, so I remembered the way. We didn't end up climbing it which I was disappointed about... the other girls didn't want to pay the 800yen (though they were happy to go and buy loads of food and souvenirs. Hmm.)

So after that, we headed back to the station and caught the subway to Asakusa, where the Kaminari-mon (Thunder Gate) is, but they weren't interested in that, they just wanted to find this place where we could cook our own traditional snacks, famous in that area apparently. I showed the way once again, and we made our snacks.

By then it was getting to be late afternoon, and after making a brief stop in Tokyo to put some of the souvenirs in lockers we caught the train to Shibuya, where the giant crossing is. I love that place, and I saw a few REALLY NICE cars, lamborghinis or something like that. Yummmm.

Anyway, after spending just 20-ish minutes there, we realised we had to head back to the hotel to get home before curfew. Of course no-one listened to me about which way back would be faster, so we were 15 minutes late and got in trouble. I was pretty peeved about that.

Anyway, the next morning we headed over to Disneyland. I'd been there only a month ago, but in that month they'd changed the decoration theme completely from Halloween to Christmas. It looked pretty spectacular.

I stayed with my group at first, but after ONE HOUR of wandering back and forth, back and forth, with them umm-ing and ahh-ing about what to line up for, (not to mention them ignoring my explanation of the Fast Pass system), I gave up on them and left to spend the rest of the day by myself. I didn't ride anything because there were too many people and I'd ridden everything I wanted to with my family, so I spent the 4 hours we had browsing the shops and watching the parades and basically just chilling out, which I was quite happy with. I also bought an AWESOME teapot.

Best buy of the year haha. So after that, we drove to the airport and flew back to Hokkaido, arriving in the evening.

The things I disliked most about this trip was the lack of common sense of the students and teachers alike. We weren't allowed to go to sleep before 10:15pm, even though we had free time after dinner. I was tired and admittedly got annoyed at my classmates for telling me matter-of-factly that I was to get back into my uniform at 10:00pm so I could go with them to the other room for a group meeting. We weren't allowed to leave our room if we weren't in full uniform.

On the last night, in Tokyo, we had to take all our baggage downstairs to get freighted back to Hokkaido. So that meant that we had to put anything we needed for the morning in our backpacks, so I had to walk around Disneyland and return to Hokkaido with a heavy backpack of pyjamas, toiletries and whatever else. It was stupid.

I also got frustrated by the indecisiveness of my classmates. We could've saved a lot of time in a lot of situations, for example at Disneyland, and in Tokyo when we were late for curfew.

The things I liked, though, was the hotel quality - all the hotels were 3-4 star and comfortable. Although I didn't enjoy having to continuously wear my uniform, I liked the mixed expressions I received from other foreign people and Japanese alike. I was approached by a few foreigners and asked about my exchange, and it was nice to speak to them.

Anyway, that's about it really. It was a pretty good trip, if not very busy, and I do admit it's a lot better than Australian school excursions in the way of going to places.

Now I only have a month or so left of school, about 18 days of school in total, and I'm looking forward to getting out of that uniform for good!!