Omiyage Shop, Lake Tazawa, and Kakunodate

So, I realize it has been a long time since I had updated this with my trip and adventures. For that, ごめんね (go-men-nay) or in English, "I'm sorry." I have been busy with classwork and socializing. Anyway... let's try to play catch up?

Okay, so my school had organized a trip to Lake Tazawa and Kakunodate. Background information on both places first then pictures? Okay, sounds good. :)

Lake Tazawa is home to Japan's deepest lake, 423.4 meters or 1389.1076 feet for those in the United States who are too lazy to do the conversions themselves. It is a very beautiful lake. When looking at it, you could perfectly see the reflection of area surrounding it; plus the coloring of the blue in it was simply gorgeous. Yes, you might be thinking, "aren't most lakes like that" to which I would respond with, "not like that." I have seen lakes before in the States, and even though I love the States, the ones in Japan are much nicer looking to be honest. I am going to compare a picture I got from Lake Tazawa versus lakes I have personally visited back home. (Now remember, some of these meaning the middle two were found online, so they might have been used as a promotional thing.

Lake Tazawa

Newton Lake

Merli Sarnoski Park

One of the Pennsylvania State Parks
Now, look at the scenery in each one. Which one is the most breath-taking? Which one makes you want to call an ambulance just in case your breath is literally taken away from you due to the beauty of the lake? Which one would you rather be at?

So Kakunodate is an old, preserved samurai town. For the day, we got free tickets to visit traditional samurai houses that were available to the public viewing-pleasures. It was founded in 1620 and hasn't changed its ways since then... expect for plumbing and electricity and ice cream. But other than that...

So yeah, let's get on with the trip. We first started off by boarding our assigned buses. Our first stop was to an omiyage shop. For those of you who do not know what "omiyage" is, let me tell you. Omiyage is in one word "souvenirs." You buy these for going over someone's house, when you go somewhere outside of our normal place, on trips, etc. While there, I bought some post cards... still need to find somewhere to buy stamps. The shop that we were in specialized in something that I love dearly... miso soup and something else that I don't really care about. Also, it sold soy-sauce flavored. Yes, Japan really just went there. It is supposedly really delicious, but being lactose intolerant and greedy with my Lactaid pills, I did not try any.

We stayed there for about one hour before heading off to Lake Tazawa. The bus ride was fun. Thomas sat in the seat across from me and Gustav was sitting behind me. Sadly, Heather was not on our bus with us. Sara and Rebecca was on a completely different bus than all of us. Either way, all of us were having a great time to talking to each other.

Once we got there, we pulled the tourist-y thing by taking photos of any and everything! Myself included ;p. There was a shrine there (very Japanese-like) and water and nature and prettiness and gaijin (foreigners). It was truly a beautiful sight though. I wish I can describe how gorgeous it is, but sadly, no words can live up to it. Because a picture is suppose to say a thousand words, I'll just show you a group of pictures and let them do the talking for me. :) Better pictures at available on my facebook. If you are some random person that happened to come to my page and are interested in seeing more, the only advice I would have for you is to google it. I'm sorry but I don't want to add strangers. Sorry if it is an incoveince for you~

After we visited the "main" section of Lake Tazawa, we visited the other side of it. Yeah, I know. We're that hardcore. :p While we were there, we had to pass through another omiyage store. This one specialized in Akita items... most of those items included the Akita Inu/dog <3 It was super duper cute~!! Ano (a-no), I mean "kawaii~" (ka-why-e).

After passing through that, we all took pictures with the famous statue like before... but this one was a cut-out face thing one. And by "we all," I mean Heather, Yuzu, Gustav, Sara, and myself.

Anyway, you probably want to see more pictures of nature, ne? :p Well, if that is what you want, I shall give the people want they desire~!! ^_^ (I don't have that many, so pictures of what I do have)

After eating and playing at the other side of the lake, we hopped back on the bus and rode off into the sunset. Lol, no. That did not really happen. We then rode off to Kakunodate (Ka-coo-no-daa-tae). I love the scenery of Japan so I will be posting a few of the mountains here, but I'll try not to clog up the blog with just photos of nature.

So, we got to Kakunodate safe and sound (obviously). It was very humid and hot when we went, like most of the days here in Japan, but the town itself is very cool. See what I did there? It's a play on words. :p Yes, I know. I am very lame... -_-;;

Like I had mentioned above, we received free admission tickets to samurai houses, but before that, we went for some ice cream~! :9 The ice cream in Kakunodate is very delicious tasting. The place we went to for ice cream was famous for their skaura ice cream. Yes, you heard right, sakura ice cream. What is sakura? It is the Japanese word for what we Americans call the "cherry blossom." Yes, it makes ice cream using cherry blossoms flavoring(?). It is suppose to be really delicious, but they were sold out of that flavor the day we went. That just shows how popular that treat can be. I am hoping to try some before I leave Japan though. *fingers crossed* Instead of the sakura ice cream, I ordered the Apple Mango ice cream. It was very delicious. Let me just say this now, in America, I hate ice cream cones. They are disgusting. They have no taste to me. However, in Japan, the cones tastes so good. Like, they actually have flavor!

Yes, I did just write a whole paragraph dedicated to ice cream. Surprising, right?

I am going to apologize now. I would like to show pictures of the actual samurai houses, but I do not have any photos of the outer of the houses, which were gorgeous and what Americans tend to think the Japanese people live in. So instead, as much as I would like to post those pictures, I am going to post pictures of me with friends outside of the houses and some of the outside photos I do have.

Map of one of the houses we received tickets for

Hanging out at the almost round table of Kakunodate... doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Hi, Rebecca from Taiwan!

We practiced the sitting down on cushions thing. It wasn't that bad, but it was only for a few minutes.

Doing the Japanese thing by taking off your shoes before entering

Omiyage shop

Shrine outside one of the houses

One of the few outside photos I could find of the building. This is the outside of a samurai' house front entrance for honorable guests. We weren't honorable enough to go through that way though :/

Yes, Japan still has some of these guys around... I wasn't kidding when I said nothing much changed since the town was founded

The water moat separating the parking lot and street

So, I hope you enjoyed the adventure so far~! It was a hot/humid/tiring day, but there was something beautiful around the corner that made everything seem okay. I had a great time with friends and got to see the culture of the samurai first-hand. It was definitely a wonderful chance to do something.

This School Knows How to Party

No, seriously... AIU really does know how to party. To make things easier, I am going to combine the three social events together + one spur of the moment dance: welcome party, ice cream party, random dance party, and the Welcome Back party. Like seriously, who doesn't like an ice cream party? :9

So first, the "Welcome Party."

During the "Welcome Party," we were put into groups by what was placed in our card protectors. I was in the Naraokayaki group. Naraokayaki is basically a beautiful pottery dish. It has a blue enamel that is very pleasing to the eye. Look, here it is on my card thingy.

After we got into our groups, we had just talked to the people at our tables. I got to know a domestic exchange student named Ai. She was very kind to the people at our table and seemed like she generally was interested in what the other person was saying. I also met a girl from Hong Kong, but she was very shy. At my table, there was a guy from England that I had met earlier, but had forgotten about. He was aware of that at the party. So, once again, sorry Robert!

We had then eaten delicious food/snacks. I did not take any pictures though. So, after that we played an ice-breaker game. In your groups and then out of your groups, you were suppose to go around and ask people about themselves. If they had something on the list that you haven't filled in yet, you had to write it down. Here is what mine looked like... obviously I wasn't too good at this game. XD [if a last name was written, I covered it up for the protection of others]

After that, we all returned to our tables. The next game was played was rock, paper, scissors. But before that, my table played a different game by ourselves... the nose game. No one had wanted to be the leader of the group to play against all the other tables so we did the nose game. I think only the Americans at the group knew it, but no one else. We had to quickly tell the ones that didn't know the game what we were doing. Some went with the method of "just put your finger to your nose before anyone else does" and some went with "touch your nose if you don't wanna be the leader." So, our leader was picked that way. XD

She made it to round three, but then got out. Heather's team almost made it though! Then time for more socializing within our groups. And that's when the music started playing. You could tell that people wanted to dance but were too scared to do so. What most people did (including myself) was just sway to the music. It wasn't until the macarena was introduced and got everyone doing the dance! Then the YMCA started playing. Everyone was having a great time. As time went on and music still played, people were leaving one by one or in groups. Because I love dancing and having a fun time at dance parties, I didn't want to stop dancing. I wanted to dance the night away. I tried, but eventually they gave us looks like "go away. We're trying to clean here." We continued dancing until after the song "Cupid Shuffle." After that, we left the cafeteria and went to our respective rooms to sleep.

So... second party was the Ice Cream Party~!! The ice cream party was so much fun~! Like seriously! Being lactose intolerant, I was like, "ice cream party? :/" but then it changed more into "ICE CREAM PARTY~!!!!! :D" shortly afterwards. We are still children at this school, there is no doubt in my mind about it.

Seriously, the games we played here were musical chairs (twice) and Japanese Rock, Paper, Scissors.

So, musical chairs first. There were two rounds of it. Most of friends went in and played, but I didn't want to. I would rather take pictures from the outside. Everyone was cheering people on. I acted like a cheerleader for the Ursinus folks and for friends. Thomas made it to the final five, but got out. I didn't know the two girls who were playing in the first game. However, in the second round, it was Ivan (from my school) versus some girl I don't know. I was cheering for Ivan to win; just because I wanted a UC student to win. XD

While cheering, a Hawaiian friend of mine Keli'i (pronounced as Kelly-e) was cheering on his friend. He put me to shame with his cheering skills~! XD [Sorry, random short story to throw into here.]

When they called Ivan's name to teh stage, all the UC students were cheering. We were all "whoo~!" However, when they asked him where he was from/which college he attended. Sara and I let out the loudest "WHOO~!!!!" in the whole room. At that point, people were mostly quiet but still energetic. It was really fun~

Then we ate the ice cream. They had different flavors; vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies and cream (they ran out of that one before I got to it D:), and a different vanilla. So obviously, I went with the vanilla~! Yummy~ :9 But I did want the cookie one~

After eating, we played more games. ^^ This time Rock, Paper, Scissors... JAPANESE STYLE!!! Actually, I don't know if it is Japanese style, I just only seen in Japanese tv and here in Japan. I just assumed, but it might be incorrect. Anyway, I should probably give a brief difference between "American" rps versus "Japanese" rps.

American - you play against one person and someone loses. After that, the person is out of the game. People keep playing until it's only two. Japanese - you play one on one (like American). But instead of that person loses, they join onto your team by holding your shoulders. Then the person who won, goes to the next competitor. They play, someone loses. You gain two more people for your train. It continues until there are two long trains of people. Then they BATTLE ROYAL it out. Okay, not really. But they do have a last match. This one was on the stage without their trains. Only difference.

So pictures? Pictures.

MIM WON~!!!! :D As her sempai/pi/aneechan/unnie, I am so proud of her <3

Thomas is not too good at this game.

Thank you all members of IAC for throwing such a fun party for all of us~!!! ^_^
So, here is the back story of the random dance party one: Thomas, Gustav, Sara, Rebecca, Heather, and I were just hanging out in the Student Hall place. Anyway, we were sitting near the dance studio. So me being me, always wanting to dance, had decided to let it out and dance in the studio since no one was in it at the moment. So, Heather and Rebecca convinced me to do some K-pop dancing. Like I needed any persuasion! :p. After I had finished k-pop dancing, we were just sitting there talking... and that's when MIM and LIN came into the room to get back to wherever they were heading. They had joined in the fun~! We danced to more k-pop together. It was a fun time. :D We did multiple SNSD, PSY's Gangnam Style, Super Junior's Sorry Sorry, BEG's Abracadabra, etc. I had so much fun with those two~!! <3 Let's do it some more? :3

PSY - Gangnam Style

SNSD - Oh!

SNSD - Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)

SNSD - Run Devil Run


So, random dance party = over. IAC's dance party = beginning. So, yesterday (September 7th) IAC - or Intercultural Affairs Committee - had thrown a "Welcome Back" party for all the students. I had just gotten back from a field trip with one of my classes (that's for a separate post) and was in the almost finished/in the middle of eating when Phil (the head of the program) had approached Rebecca, Heather, and I to help out set up. We were all excited and already had been planning to join that committee so of course we said yes. We had a fabulous time at the dance. It was a lot of fun~! <3 I danced for most of the night (except to most of the rap songs and when I was trying to recruit people to come and dance). We were so official~! Here are some pictures~: (sadly, I got no during set-up, the dance itself, or clean-up... but other people did.)






A final/special thanks to all the members o f IAC for their hard-work on these events and Rebecca for letting me use her dance photos of Mim/Lin/me. Also, thank you to all the readers of my blog. Please feel free to comment on here or on my facebook~ don't be scared~!! :D