Host family pictures

Here are some pictures my host dad took :D First one of me and a strange Spanish (?) family (?) that is playing cards, I think.. So many questions!

Here's my host parents and me at their house having "fika" (that's a Swedish word, look it up, there's not really a great word for it in English but..).

乾杯！Skål! (Oh, man, why does my face look so creepy >.<)

Here's another pic from Banpaku Kouen, in the background is the front of the statue shown in one of my previous posts.

Feels a bit weird to have a bunch of pictures with me in them xD I usually like pictures better when I aint in them, u know?

Banpaku park with host families

This Sunday all of the schools students that have a host family went to meet them at Banpaku Park. We went with Sugitani-sensei by subway/train and when we all united with our host families we became around 160 people in total. These 160 people proceeded to Banpaku Kouen which is a HUGE place with lots to see. Didn't have time to see it all though.

Firstly, we all sat down to eat our bento's. Then we got divided into four groups and competed against eachother in three games. Don't know what the first 2 were called but the last one was "Janken train" and was definitely interesting.
In the end the winning team was of course the one I was in (that's a joke, but yeah, my team won)!

Fun and games being over we packed up our stuff and headed in to the museum that was just behind us. It was a museum containing old (and some new) things from different countries. The only thing we found from Sweden was a telephone catalogue...
I'm not really that much of a museum person but I really quite enjoyed it. Comparing to other museums I've been to it is among the more interesting ones. Would've liked it even better though if my feat hadn't hurt so much!

Afterwards I went with my host dad by car to pick up my host mum (first time meeting her) and we went to a Tonkatsu restaurant near their house. They bought me a bigger meal than what they took but luckily I managed to eat it (well, most of it).

Having finished dinner we headed back to their house, which was 3 stories, the 3rd one being a tatami room. It was very beautiful. We had cake and strawberries and before leaving they asked me if I wanted some plates/glasses that they didn't need. I said yes to almost everything because I don't really have much of anything, and it'll come in handy next year when I have to move and will probably live with 1 or 2 other people. They also gave me candy! xD Such nice people.

On the way home I believed the bus took me to the wrong place, but when I got inside the subway station nearby it turns out maybe it wasn't wrong after all. I got home allright!

Sadly I don't have any pictures of this day worth showing, but it was an awesome day.

EDIT: Okey, got me some photo's (not taken by me):

From inside the museum; they had a lot of instruments in one place, especially guitars. Made me wanna play some :v

This is the backside of a huge statue thingy made by a famous Japanese artist (do you call it artist?)

Universal Studios Japan

Helllooo!

This Saturday I went with 4 people to USJ in Osaka. We got there at around 10 in the morning and stayed until the very end (9 o clock). Thus we had time to ride ALMOST everything and also see the "Magical Starlight" parade at the end.
Even though our feet hurt from almost never sitting down and mostly just standing in line, we had a great day and I will definitely be going back to USJ after the Harry Potter attraction is made.

Best rides if you ask me are the Hollywood Dream (not sure if that's the name), Spiderman and Space Fantasy (also not sure about that name).

The Hollywood Dream is like your typical rollercoster (from all I know about rollercoasters), it's very fast and fun. You can also choose what music you want to hear when riding, which adds a lot to the fun.

Spiderman is a 3D ride, so I don't know how much the carriage actually moves, but it feels like you are falling off of buildings, getting thrown up into the sky and crash into street signs. Also the enemies fighting Spiderman while you ride in the vehicle will electrify the car you sit in and spray water on you, etc etc.

Space Fantasy is an inside rollercoaster where you are riding in space, seeing stars, planets and other things as you go by. Very interesting and fun.

There are many attractions at USJ though that aren't rollercoasters. For example we went to The Terminator 3D movie and Shrek 4D movie. The Terminator one was (sadly) kinda boring.

Pictures!!:

This is the train that got us to USJ - It was plastered with HP characters. Took a picture of my favourite of the main three. :)

Here are some pictures from the parade:

 Walking out from the Shrek 4D movie you see the book from which they read in the beginning of the first movie:

Universal Studios :)

Cyberdyne Systems logo!

I had an Hello Kitty bun, inside was pork (?) and eggs and it was very tasty.

Japanese "make if yourself" candy

This Saturday I spent a bit more on candy than usual just because I wanted to try some of Japan's "make it yourself" candy.
Basically, you get a small box where you add water and different powders to create candy. It was easy and kinda fun to try, but I wont do it again.

Why?

Well.. first of all; it wasn't very tasty! Second; you don't get a lot of candy out of it.
Also it is expensive compared to already made candy.

Here are some pics of what I made...

 For this one you first make small round balls/bubbles by using a squid (a youtuber described this as "Octopus poop candy"). Then you make some foam to put them in - and then you eat. Not that good. The foam has sort of a "ramune" taste to it.

 This is the second one I tried - make your own candy-sushi! And yeah, in the end you only got three! And mine don't look very good, they tasted better than the previous candy though.

In the end, after this I bought some normal candy instead..

Shared my blog on FB

Shared my blog on FB two (?) days ago, and from that I got over 200 views! Nice but ... I only have like 80 or so friends, so how did that happen? o.0

"Homestay" family? Why, yes!

Hello!

Here at Osaka Japanese Language Education Center they have a "homestay program" for the students that are here on a scholarship (why only for those on a scholarship, I do not know), that I signed up for.
You fill in a document with what you like/dislike/hobbies and what kind of family you want to have. The school then sends the documents to all the different families and they choose if they want you or not. This year everyone who applied for the program got picked by a family.

This Saturday we gathered in a big room at school, to finally meet our "host family". First we got a document with a little information about the family we got, and then all the families started rolling in.
Us, the students, got to give a short speech about ourselves and then meet our respective families.

The family I got consists of 2 people, both 71 years old (oldest of all families I think) and have been a part of this program for years, it seems. I only got to meet one of them this time because the other still works! We chatted for a while and then got going to the subway because they had been instucted to make sure we knew how to get to and back from where our host family lives.

Sooo.. we took the subway/train to Momoyamadai just so that I would know how it looked like there. Then back to Umeda where we ate dinner, went to a manga book store, ate at a cafe, etc.

It all would've been a tad expensive for me if it wasn't for the fact that I didn't have to pay for anything! >.< Such nice people there are out there, eh? :)

I had a really good time and I'm looking forward to meeting with my host family again.

(Info about the program: You get a host family but you do not live with them; you simply just meet with them as much or as little as you and them want to. It is to help you learn Japanese and also to get insight into Japanese way of life.)

Karaoke!

Last night me and 11 or so other people went out to karaoke. It was my first time doing karaoke in Japan so I was really looking forward to it and I wasn't let down. Karaoke is a lot of fun!

The room we got was a bit small, but it worked. It's kind of pricey but you get free soft drinks while your there. We were there for 2.5 hours and it still didn't feel like enough time, we only left because we had to get back to the dorm before 11 or else they wont let us in again. 2.5 cost around 1570 yen per person.

They had a lot of songs to choose from; Eng, Jap, Korean, Chinese, etc. And not just songs you might expect in karaoke but also songs from bands like System Of A Down.

It was a lot of fun hearing everyone sing and some were really good. For me though, since I have a cold right now, it sounded worse than usual. Still enjoyed it.

I want to show some pictures but it was dark in the room and not a lot of space to move around so I didn't make the effort to take any. Maybe next time.

Really recommend karaoke! It's cheaper during the days than the evenings and on weekdays, so that's when you should really go if you have time. Saturday/Sunday is really expensive.

Another day of nerdsomeness in Japan.

Yesterday me and 3 others went to Nipponbashi (?) here in Osaka. It was my "first" time going there but after a while I recognized some stores from when I went to Nanba with my cousin.
It's in this area that they have collected all the very nerdiest things. There are maids in every corner of the streets and every store you walk by sells manga, anime, figurines and games etc etc.

There are a lot of game centers too, and in one of them they had Purikura with cosplay, which we tried! The cosplay was acutally free so it didn't cost anything more than a regular Purikura without cosplay option.

There was a board with characters to pick from.
But almost all the cosplays were already out for rental or in cleaning, so I didn't get my first choice. The one I took though only had size large left, but it still fit like a glove.. wth? o.0 Jap ppl aren't rlly that small right..?
(Not going to show the pics btw xD)

They also had this sign right when you entered the floor. Why would they have these rules, eh?

More pictures:

 First store we entered has this awesome Ironman outside.

In the same place as we took Purikura they also had this vending machine for Katanas (these are short but they had long ones too).

We went to a big manga book store and I bought 2 mangas, one being Bloody + Mary as seen above. Totally new so when I searched for pictures online I only got odd ones of some other manga with sorta the same name...

 We went to the store I was in before, so now I could take some pictures of the YGO figures! This time I didn't see any Kaiba though. And still no Bakura.

Lastly we went to a music store, because that's what I had been bothering everyone about. Found one pretty quickly and I saw the keyboard I had done a bit of research on online. The price was as low as it could get (if you can trust the internet), and a lot lower than it had been in the music store I first looked in. Sooo, I bought it. It was the last one, aka, the one they had on display. But it looked untouched and everything and it's working great.

The store is called TAKE OFF and is located in Nipponbashi, Osaka (I think. Still don't know where to draw the lines between Nanba, Shinsaibashi, Nipponbashi etc. It's all Nanba to me). They also sell cheap guitars, ukuleles etc.

They first song on the list on this keyboard isn't "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" like usually, instead it's the Totoro theme song. *_* Time to learn how to play Tonari no Totoro Totoro ~