School Trip

Ok so I havn’t been able to write in a long time. And now I have a very long entry for my school trip that happened last week. I wrote it all down on paper because I didn’t have my laptop with me then, so now I’m basically just copying. Fun.\

Day 1
The journey to Osaka was a long one. First we took the train to Chitose Airport. That train was a half an hour long and packed. There was a lot of standing and waiting in the airport. Two plane rides later we were finally in Osaka. Then we had to take an hour busride to Nara.

Nara was actually really nice. Too bad I wasn’t allowed to use my keitai to take pictures. But it was really nice. There were deer everywhere that you could pet. And a building called Todaiji (todai temple). The largest wooden building in the world, even though it is actually 33% smaller than when it was originally built. It holds a huge Buddha, as well as a few other big statues. And a souvenir shop of course. That was a bit disgusting to find in a place worshipping Buddha. Then we walked around Nara Park for a while. It was very pretty and I’ll just have to steal pictures from Donny.
After Nara we drove back by bus to Osaka to our hotel, the Monterey, where we had supper and went to bed.

Day 2
So today was a ‘free’ day with out groups. After breakfast we went to Kyoto to see two temples. The first temple we went to was called Touji. That temple is the tallest building with five roofs in Japan. The second temple was Byoudoin. It is supposedly very famous, since it is on the 10 yen coin.
Nothing of real significance happened at either of the temples. They were both very beautiful and scenic, but not much other than that. There were also some Buddhist shrines around Touji that we went to.
I spent literally over 5,000 yen today just on train fares and admission fees alone. It was ridiculous. It costs so much money to travel around Osaka because it’s just so huge. And since we took so long with the temples we didn’t have time to stop for lunch, which was a shame because we were going to go to this famous food bazaar thing, but I didn’t mind too much. I didn’t feel like spending a bunch of money on lunch, then again for supper anyways. So it worked out. After the temples we did go to a matcha place though. Me and Ai skipped on the matcha for money reasons though. It was very expensive. I think 600 yen for a cup of matcha.

So from Kyoto we went back to Osaka and to a big aquarium thing. Like a sea-creature zoo. It was pretty neat. The day turned out to be fun. I talked a lot in Janglish with two of the other girls, but I don’t remember their names.
We ended up having okonomiaki for supper. It’s hard to describe, so...maybe just google it haha.

Day 3
More temples. Today we stayed with our class so we had to wear our uniforms all day. Our first temple was Kinkakuji. It’s also known as the golden temple considering it is plated in gold. It sits in front of a large pond and is surrounded by gardens. We were behind schedule since the buses were late too pick us up, so we didn’t get much time there. Out next temple was Kiyomizudera. It was huge and surrounded by forest and sitting like… on the side of a mountain. We had some time to look around at the shops here and I managed to get some togarashi and yatsuhashi for my host family as well as some yatsuhashi for myself. Yatsuhashi is a popular sweet in Osaka. It is like rice dough triangles with anko in the middle. And togarashi is just a red pepper spice that is really hard to find in Hokkaido.
After temples we caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. We all had to rush on it because we only had 2 mintues for all of us to get on. (All 300 of us). But we made it. The Shinkansen is super fast. We had lunch on the train and I listened to Creature Feature. Love that band.

As soon as we arrived in Tokyo we went to the Tokyo Historical Museum, which was kind of fun. We got some really funny pictures with me pretending to be godzilla with the miniatures displays.

After the museum we went for supper. The same stuff we had last night, only waay more. Oh and there is another girl in our group now. She couldn’t come for the first bit because of influenza but is fine now I guess.

After supper we went to our hotel. The Hilton. Tokyo Bay Hilton. I was so excited. I literally ran to my room, ran to get my bags, then ran back to my room to change. I collected my Donny and we explored the Hilton together. We got some of his Japanese boys and went to the star bucks in the lobby a little later, and talked about colonoscopies and hospitals...

Day 4
Today we had a free day so we planned to go to Tokyo Disneyland. It was the first time I’ve been to Disneyland and I’m really glad I went. I don’t think I would have had much fun if I went when I was younger, because back then I let my huge spectrum of fear control me too much. The only rides I would have went on would have been the boring slow ones.

Anyway, as soon as we got there we literally ran to the Splash Mountain. It was a really cool log ride. The final drop was huge and nearly completely vertical. The first time I have ever been on a roller coaster type ride. Talk about diving headfirst into things hm? We went on that ride twice.

Other than Splash Mountain, we went on an African boat adventure thing, Pirates of the Carribean, Teacups, Pinnochio, Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain. My favorites were Thunder and Space mountain. For Thunder we had to wait nearly 2 hours in the line. And we were lucky because we went right after a parade so there weren’t as many people. But the ride was worth it. Space, we didn’t have to wait long because we got fast passes. That one was amazing too. It was like a roller coaster in a pitch black building with little lights like stars and it really felt surreal. And the Haunted Mansion was based off of Nightmare Before Christmas. It wasn’t really as scary as it was freaking neat, with all the special effects. The robotics were amazing in POTC too. At first I thought the Jack Sparrow was actually a real actor guy.

For lunch we went to the Red Queen Banquet Hall, which is Alice in Wonderland themed and a really nice place to eat. The food was really good too. For supper we went to some average place in Tomorrowland. After that we were basically done.

Day 5
Not much happened on the last day. We visited the Nippon Maru and a boat museum for a bit before heading back to the airport and returning to Hokkaido.