March 16th - April 4th, 2019

This entry will cover my experiences: February 4th - 10th 2019.

Monday (Feb. 4th):

• I joined basketball again and because of my team we won all 3 matches (NICE). There's like this one girl who is like a our captain and kind of tells (rather yells, though XD) us what to do. I think, I hurt my finger again after the last game, but it didn't hurt as much as the first time.
• According to my notebook I apparently played a cardgame with my friends that day (maybe it was the first day that I taught them because as of right now (March 16th) we've played several times.
• It was the first time going home from school to my new hostfamily's place, which was kind of far (about 1 hour 20 min in total from school to their house). I was supposed to take the bus from the station to their house (25 min) but I didn't want to wait for a bus that would stop at the right bus stop but would come in 15 minutes, which is why I took the one before, which I would have to get out off one station earlier. I did that but I didn't  know the way from that bus stop to the house. As I only knew of later, I had been taking the right way. But I thought it was wrong, so I turned around and when I saw another bus, I thought this one would be the one I should've taken in the first place (the one that departed 15 minutes later than the one I had gotten on). But it was the wrong one, so I ended up someowhere else and just before my phone battery died, I managed to text my hostfamily and they came to pick my stupid a** up. That experience was kind of scary and I will try to avoid it from now on. I've learned a lesson.

Tuesday (5th):

• Finally met my hostsister (23)! She works until 10 pm, so we hadn't had a chance to meet each other until that time. But it was great, she asked many questions and was so nice and it was really fun. We soon made out to cook something for Valentine's day together. It's awesome that I could experience having an "older sister", too. I was really relieved that we got along very well.

Wednesday (6th).

• In one English class of the 10th graders I was asked what I did on the weekend and I'm not sure what I answered, but probably something boring (or at least I said it so complicately, that it was hard to comprehend).
• Also talked about going to Disney Sea with one of my friends or something (at this point I can't really decypher the notes in my notebook).
• Me and Italian-Girl were asked by the exchange council school person (what do you call that?) if it was okay if they took some pictures of us for the school magazine or something. I lent my necktie to Italian-Girl since she had forgotten hers.

Thursday (7th):

• Never had I realized, how complicated and confusing the German terms for the reading the clock is. It's like "Now it's 5 minutes past half an hour before 8" like wtf. I mean there's also the easy way " It's seven thirty-five", but the students are supposed to learn the difficult one first, I guess. Even I was confused sometimes.
• Had chorus and when I left, I shortly returned to my classroom (to put something in the locker?) and met and "old" friend: One of the 12th graders (they have already finished all tests and would only have to attend the graduation ceremony), that I have met when my class (11th graders) went on a school trip to Taiwan. She was practicing her instrument (a trumpet or saxophone or something, can't recall ^^') and we talked a little. She and some other 12th graders and I had already made some plans for going to Sanrio Puroland (the land (amusement park?) of Hello Kitty and her friends) in Tokyo. It was so nice to see her again and it didn't feel awkward, which was nice.
• [Just a reminder for my future self, but probably boring for you, dear reader] I saw something that I really wish I hadn't because it's none of my business. I felt so embarrassed at the moment although it's nothing bad but I made a voice memo to one of my dearest German friends [LOVE YOU, BABY, MISS YOU, DREAMING OF YOU] and told her how literally my legs didn't want to move forward anymore and how weird I felt for seeing that. In the end it wasn't dramatic or anything and I don't feel weird about it any more. It's like no big deal, but at that moment I felt like intruding into someone's privacy bubble. [Okay, it's over now]
• When I came home, the hostfamily dog welcomed me for the first time (he'd been down because of his operation) and I was so happy :D

Friday (8th):

• I made Takoyaki (octopus dumplings?) with my hostfam. It wasn't the first time for me to ever make them, but it was nice. Although the first round always tends to be kind of not well-done. Still, DELICIOUS!

Saturday (9th):

• Hostfam and I made a "trip" to the Gotemba Outlet store. It's like a large village-like area with stores of many brands (Disney, Nike, Gap, Adidas, etc). We browsed some. My hostsister and I ate some MATCHA & ANKO (red beans) CREPE, which was perfection. 
• Later I also ate Anpan, which is warm, fluffy bread coated with sugar.

Sunday (10th): [Everything below (pics included): DETAILED SPOILERS FOR TOKYO DISNEYSEA (like Disneyland). DO NOT READ IF YOU WANNA GO YOURSELF]

• I went to Disneyland, guys! Actually it's Disney Sea, which is kind of a more teenager-friendly version. Rumour has it, Disneyland is kind of more childish. Anyway.
• In the middle of the night (I guess about 4pm) I got up and dressed and ate breakfast and my hostparents were as kind as to drive me to the train station since it was too early for any busses to be on the road. I took the earliest train and met my friend a few stations later. It was very cold and we both had some hand warmers (I think the most popular version is a small cloth bag that is filled with some chemical material (powder? sand?)   which warms up when you shake or rub it. They didn't help much though. Cooled down very quickly, but I think I did something wrong. Anyway, I later decided to put the merely littler warmer than outside bag in one of my shoes (the right one if I'm not mistaken)-
• So we took trains and trains and saw people with matching Disney clothing. My friend and I had actually bought the same sweater to match each other, but since it was as cold as behind the wall, we didn't take off our jackets, so no one could actually see, that we had the same one. Well...
• It was all my fault, that we went on the worst possible day: this Sunday was the middle day of a 3 day weekend since Monday was a holiday, so Sunday was the most crowded day. Because all schools in Kanagawa prefecture would have a week off the following week I was like: "So all high school students from Kanagawa will be going to Disneyland/sea that week, so it will be very crowded. Let's go the week before. How about Sunday?" I was such a fool. Disneysea is in Tokyo, and Kanagawa is (I think) next to it, but still far away, so it definitely would have been less crowded if we had went on a weekday that week when the Kanagawa students are free. What's more, the tickets my friend had bought for us didn't have a date written on them, so we could choose which day we wanted to go. And I knew that Sunday would be really cold, but I also thought, maybe because of that, less people will go. I was dumb. Shame on me. Obviously there are also people who bought tickets with the exact date.
• So we arrived somewhere in Tokyo and had to take a bus to the Disney Resort, but unfortunately due to the cold, some parts of the streets had frozen and the bus was late. We wanted to be at Disney Sea at 7.30. Half an hour before it would open. We couldn't take the first bus that arrived since it was already full, so we waited for the next one and finally arrived at the venue at about 8.20 I guess. If you forgot about the huge mass of people with headbands with Mickey's or Minnie's ears or the pig-hats from the pig of Toy Story or the bear-ear-headbands from Duffy and Friends (I had never heard of it before, but it's Disney featured teddy bears or something; very popular with Japanese high school girls, as it seems). We finally got in, but at first didn't really know what to do or where to go. My friend hadn't had breakfast and was kind of hungry and the place was already crowded.
• Disneysea is HUGE! It is without exaggeration a whole new world (not proud of that one) or at least village. There is a town market like place surrounding parts of the real ocean, there are boats and a big ship and a volcanoe that releases steam. Although the sky was clear and everything bright, it was still damn cold and the ocean's breeze added to the equation.
• We initially wanted to go straight to the biggest and most popular attraction (Tower of Terror), but when we arrived it was already so crowded that we decided to eat something first and then we kind of just walked around trying to find other interesting attractions and ended up at a 20000 Leagues Under the Sea ride-through. Then we headed for a restaurant to eat brunch/lunch/whatever and although the food was a bit expensive (didn't expect anything else) it was at least good.
• Then we headed for one of the main attractions: The Tower of Terror. Almost all people I'd asked for suggestions, recommended me the tower or something called "The Center of the Earth", but unfortunately the latter one was closed that day (which I didn't know, one more reason another day would've been the better choice). We lined up for 2.5 hours in the freezing cold (the wind was hell), looking at the attraction's scenery. The tower was pretty damn tall and there were many windows attached, it looked so big, so I wondered how much of all the room was used or if it was room or rather all solid rock. The queue's movement was managed by ropes and poles and guided us through the "garden" of the tower's character's story. I wasn't familiar with it, and I'm not sure if it's just a story made up for Disney Sea or if the story is the original part. I noticed some detailes in statues or newspapers' articles and was kind of surprised. The story was about Mr. Hightower (forgot firstname, but the lastname is stupid enough XD), who was the owner of a hotel (now the Tower of Terror), who suddenly went missing. The newspaper pages exhibited infront of the entrance (which we reached after about 2 hours) were mostly in English and had some cryptic hints on Hightower's whereabouts. I actually tried my best, guessing where he'd gone and/or what had happened, but the articles were pretty distinct, so possibly hard to comprehend for the average Japanese high school student. There even were some articles in German and French! I assume the attraction's idea was derived from an American version. I think I didn't see a Japanese article. What a waste of detail, in my opinion. We finally entered the inside of the hotel, which was warm and saved my friend and me from freezing to death (exaggeration) and again, so detailed, that I kind of pitied the designers for most visitors don't even take a second look at some things.
• The "hotel" was kind of old-fashioned and had many ancient relicts from different cultures as decoration. Most paintings/pictures (Hightower's character is 2d so, who knows) showed the hotel owner relentlessly depriving cultures from traditional artifacts (e.g. a Pharaoh's mask etc.), which I found very interesting, though too obvious.
• We then were guided to two different rooms. Because of the masses of people, we only had little time to appreciate the pictures in the first room. The second room played an audio of the last conversation Hightower had had with someone and then the room got dark and a small wooden Voodoo puppet thing started glowing in green light, shaking and talking and I guess, cursing Hightower. (Didn't get much of the Japanese). We were then leaded to an elevator (the actual attraction) by some staff members. Apparently the elevator we were supposed to take had some technical problems, so we were taken to another one of the three in total (?). The actual ride was fun. We sat on seats like in a cinema, things got dark and the elevator (it was about 4 or 5 times bigger than a normal one) started rapidly moving up, just to stop for a bit, showing another clip of the story between Hightower and the Voodoo thing, which I hardly was aware of, since I had taken my glasses off, afraid to lose it during the "ride" (it would have been totally okay to keep it on, judging from retroperspective). Then we fell and so did my heart rate, preparing for my last breath. Before crashing on to the ground it stopped again and went all up to the top of the tower, which offered us the unique view of all of Disney sea at about high-tower-prepare-to-die height whilst providently taking a picture of our last moment. When we browsed the souvenirs shop, I could stare up at my face on that picture for memory, hand on my mouth, without glasses that would've enabled me to fully appreciate the view (on the picture, not in the shop, lol). The actual ride felt like it was less than 20 seconds, which was kind of disappointing because it really was fun and exciting.
• After standing in the cold for more than 2 hours our legs were tired and our hands still cold so we went for another "snack" to a sandwhich restaurant. You can complain all you want about Disney Resort's prices but the food is good. I think I had a tunna/egg sammich and a cheesecake. Both delicious.
• We also browsed the Mermaid Lagoon and the Arabian Night's area and some shops and I got some caramell popcorn (the only thing that was not that good, when it comes to food). We also saw some characters like Sully (Monster Inc. (?)) and Donald Duck's uncle (don't know the English name). It was okay, but cold and crowded and there were no other attractions we really wanted to see, so we left at about 6p.m. (it's open until 8 p.m, I think).
• Conclusion: It was cold and crowded, but DisneySea itself is a huge park for Disney fans with many details (the park, not the fans). And it is expensive. But that's the obvious premise. If you want to take a visit, definitely pick a weekday that is no holiday and choose the right clothing/season (the ocean wind is very strong). I feel like I definitely could've had more fun if it wasn't for my stupidity. But it was fun after all. I'm not sure if it's a must-go thing for the Japan travel list, but it's a unique experience. Also: there is this thing called fast-pass, which you apparently get for free and allows you to enter attraction at a specific time on the fast-pass queue (short). Maybe my friend even mentioned it and I thought it was not for free and that we didn't need it. Well, it can't be helped now, can it? My favorite part was probably the Tpwer of Terror "ride" and after that the vast view (although it was crowded, but there were no skyscrapers. And secondly, the details of buildings' decoration or the pictures hanging on the walls of a restaurant.