it was quite an unexpected surprise when i woke up at 11 and got told we’re going for a picnic at my host mother’s home town. it is actually an area still within the himeji region, but its the furthest west you can go before it turns into the next prefecture. the area was vastly covered with grass or crops, and surrounded by green hills. about 40 minutes drive.

their property was huuuge. they actually had a full size garden, and a house that would compare to those we live in in australia. they also had a huge plasma tv, although the reception wasn’t all that good.

after the barbecue, we went tamanegi (onion) hunting! this involved riding on the back of this 3-wheeled card on roads so thin i was really scared that my dslite would end up in a pool of water by the end (along with me). but after a 5 minute bumpy ride, we arrived at a field of onions.

i didn’t really help with the cutting/picking, but was left in charge of transporting them back to the crate. my hands smell like onions still even after washing them 3 times ^^;. it was a good experience though .

this guy knows his fires. he totally owned up the barbecue and later on the dead plants.

today is children’s day in japan. while they say “children” this is actually the day for boys only – there’s one for girls in march. the traditional thing to do is fly these fish-shaped kites outside your house if you have any young males in the house.

we decided to make a trip to the local zoo. imagine perth zoo, but with about 1/8th the real estate. this means a lot of animal in a small amount of space. it was quite interesting, but you’d find it very hard to spend over 2 hours wandering around.

a lot of the animals didn’t look happy, but i guess thats what happens when you put them in a tiny cage in a zoo. pictures were hard to take with cages so strong they looked like something more fierce than racoons and deer should be inside.. ill put the rest up in the gallery tomorrow.

i need more practice at item battles. they are quite interesting though! if anyone else has tetris leave me your friend id.

i think we went a bit overboard with donuts yesterday. but i won a bag of some kind in the scratchy competition thing . mister donut is goooood

so without having any uni commitments to worry about, we have quite a bit of free time over this longish weekend. since i haven’t posted anything about gaming for quite a while, i think i will today :p

firstly, after a few weeks i finally managed to beat Ready!Steady!Go! on cheerleader in 応援団. i was pretty happy , but think i can still improve on the score for it. i plan on going back and completing every level on S rank next. osu!

i went to the locall shopping centre to firstly check for ds lite stock, and also for tetris ds. although most of you will be able to guess the answer, ill say it anyway. there were no ds lites, but surprisingly they had the originals in stock! for 14,990yen…

anyways i managed to pick up tetris ds for ~3,400yen. its fun and probably a bit too addictive. the online play is especially quite fun, but i think i need a bit more practice before i go back on there…

for anyone who hasn’t heard of this game, you should really check it out. alan pointed me to it last night, and i ended up playing it for quite a while before i forced myself to exit. i’d explain the concept, but i think its best to just experience it for yourself. linked from the image above

we found some very interesting engrish yesterday ^^;

i have gotten excited… very much.

so the way golden week is on the calendar means the amount of holidays each year varies significantly.  without going into detail, we ended up with only 2 days off out of the possible 5.  i guess its nothing to cry over, but i do feel a bit cheated :p.

that said, we have no real plans.  the general idea behind golden week is that being the only official consecutive work-free days of the year, the whole of japan decides to go ’round the mulberry bush, causing awful traffic on both the roads and public transport.  as expected, all tourist destinations are also the target of screaming kids and their parents.

my host family is going away tomorrow at 6am to avoid this rush.  they tried to find a hotel to stay in starting about 2 weeks ago.  they found nothing.  so with no accommodation, who knows if they will actually be able to stay overnight.. yet they are still going.  my mum called it a “mystery tour”. lol.

i took a few pictures in japanese classes this week which amused me.

daniel points out how insignificant our home city is.  and also if you look close, you can notice how much the coastline has been eroded by the ocean..  i’m surprised i haven’t heard about that on the news…

王さまと結婚するなんて、想像もしなかった！