Dennis

DAY ONE AND TWO:

On January 27, a group of 21, including myself, boarded the plane for Japan at noon, local time. The flight was a torturous 12 hour long flight and I did everything I could to entertain myself during that duration including sleeping, playing games, and watching movies. Alas, the flight was too long and I began to feel myself begin to fester on the plane as the hours ticked on by. Hours were spent either in the plane or in the airport, everything in my daily life surrounded and embraced it: eating, using the restroom, sleeping, entertainment and pleasure, my entire being was being sucked into the plane and its surroundings and I was slowly losing myself. Finally, and fortunately, as the flight was coming to an end, and I came to, I was surrounded by new exciting experiences. However that excitement lasted for a while before the plane landed and the terrifying process of airport check-ins began. The check-ins were long but I had the stimulus surrounding me from Japan, keeping me awake and helping me search for more. After the check-ins, we ate dinner and traveled to the Youth Hostel in Tokyo where we are going to stay for the next three days. We learned how to put together futons and took a nice hot bath. Soon we laid our stressed souls and had a nice deep sleep... after doing homework.

DAY THREE:

6:30 AM January 29, the beginning of a new world, culture, people, and opportunities.My group and I got ready and started to eat breakfast, which was a new and unique taste for me. I finished everything that was served to me and generally liked all of it. The only foods that I found to be more special than the rest was the natto, fermented soy beans. The taste of it wasn't bad, but that is only because it tastes like nothing. The texture, on the other hand, is extremely difficult to put into words. The first journey in our adventure was travelling to the Meiji Shrine, accompanied by one of Sensei's old colleague. The trip from the initial gate to the shrine was a peaceful one but as soon as I entered the Shrine, I encountered something that I found to be hilarious. On one of the wooden plates where people write wishes or statements they want to tell the Gods it said ; "Dokdo is Korean territory! - by Korean 2018/01/15." After the trip to the Shrine we went to Takedoshi-Dori, a narrow street completely covered in stores and restaurants. My first purchase, a chicken mask, was in Takedoshi-Dori and I don't regret ever buying it. Our lunch was in Hachiko-mae. My group was in charge in the pm for today and we first went to the Miraikan, the National Museum for Emerging Science and Innovation. We stayed at the Miraikan for over 2 hours our group rested for half that time in the lounge area. Our feets were aching and everyone recommended such an action. When we left the Miraikan we went to the Ferris Wheel which was a whopping 115 meters tall and took 16 minutes for one rotation. To sum up the rest of the day due to my lack of sleep, aching feets, and desire for rest I am going to quickly write the rest of the day down. We went to Diver City to shop for about an hour or so and then ate food at Gonpachi.

DAY FOUR:

6:45 AM January 30. The breakfast that I ate today was more to what I was use to eating, i.e, rice with sausage and some toast. After eating we went to Waseda University, a prominent University in Japan. The school was pretty cool and had a couple of unique structures to them but it didn't personally interest me as a student to want to go to Waseda. After Waseda we went to a government office building where we took about 20 minutes to take a single photo. Everyone was struggling to get that one photo perfectly situated. We went to an observation where I ate my first morsel of horse meat jerky. The initial taste of the jerky was absolutely horrible but after you chew it a couple of times it became so much better. Add some fried squid to the horse meat and it was great. For lunch we stayed at Denny's for nearly 2 hours for everyone to finish eating. The menu for Denny's in Japan is insane and completely different from the menu we get at the states. I got a nice Salisbury steak with some tofu and veggies around it. They gave me a raw egg and some salad as an appetizer for the steak. After finishing up my lunch I went over and took parts of two people's lunches. Quickly after lunch we went to a garden/shrine. The garden had plenty of flowers and the shrine's main building was blocked off as expected. However the best experience from that location was when we went outside and started feeding crows. When the feeding of the crows was over, we had to rush to the Sky Tree as soon as possible since we were behind on schedule by hours. At the Sky Tree my group did the exact same thing as we did yesterday in the Miraikan, rest for half an hour. Everybody's legs were tired and half of us were already going to fall asleep at anytime. We ate our dinner from MOS Burgers at around 8:45 and everyone zoned out after that.

DAY FIVE:

6:45 AM January 31. The breakfast that I had today was something that I wish I was capable of eating everyday, rice with bacon. Today wasn't an extremely exciting day seeing as travelling to the Zao Onsen took about 4-5 hours leaving little to no time for an adventure in town, in fact we didn't go anywhere besides the inn we're staying in. My first major impression of this town was that it smells horrible, the entire town smelled like sulfur and I wanted nothing more to do than grab a hazmat mask and put it on. But I eventually got use to the smell and started to experience the inn more, especially the Onsens that is extremely hot yet soothing. The dinner we had that day was absolutely delicious. I first looked at the meal thinking to myself; "huh, this amount of food isn't capable of feeding anything". But little did I know, I was in for a shock, the waiters brought out food after food for half an hour straight. I felt like a king, sitting there in my yukata and having people filling out food for me. When dinner was over I went back to the room and starting to work on my homework and eventually falling asleep.

DAY SIX:

Woke up at 2 in the morning. Struggling to fall asleep again I simply stayed up til 3 then slept again. This time around I slept perfectly fine and woke up at 7:30 and prepared for breakfast. For breakfast I had many types of foods that I have yet to see or taste yet, most of them amazing while the others are slightly more questionable to my taste buds. The absolutely best tasting dish was the apple juice, it was heavenly and despite being pure apple juice it tastes more like a perfect mixture of apple and pear. After breakfast, me and a couple of fellow trippers went into town and traveled around. When we got at the top of a nearby hill I wanted to try skiing for the first time yet I didn't because everyone else didn't have the guts to ski. We went into a couple of stores and I bought a lot of snacks. We later went into a ramen store for some lunch, ironically I bought curry rather than ramen. At 3:00 pm we went to the mountains, at least a couple thousand feets into the air. Me being stupid I forgot to bring any hats and extra layers to clothes, leading me to freeze within mere minutes. Luckily I found a store nearby and huddled inside of there to keep warm, waiting for everyone else to finish sight seeing. Eventually it was time to leave so we all went down the mountain, and got ready to eat dinner, after that we bathed in the onsen and slept.

DAY SEVEN:

5:45 AM February 2nd. I woke up from a night of frequent naps, still tired I struggled to move on for the day which I know would be filled with hiking a mountain. I swiftly got changed and prepared my yukata for breakfast time. After breakfast we went on the hiking trip which was a couple hours away from bus and train. When we got there Carlon and I ran up the mountain as soon as we could to see the beautiful scene that was soon unraveled for us. We obviously made our way to the top quicker than the others and thus had a lot of time to settle down and look around in more detail. It took a while but eventually people started to show up one by one. Due to the amount of snow that was present on the stairs it was difficult to get down from the mountain so I started to slide to the bottom. Looking back I realized that if I made a small mistake then I could've possibly broken a bone, but it was fun and nothing happened so it's all good. For lunch we went to a small restaurant and I order 2 meals, curry rice and something similar to a Salisbury steak. We got back home a couple of hours later and ate dinner as soon as we got back.

DAY EIGHT:

7:30 AM February 3rd. I woke up, excited yet anxious, knowing that today is the day we get meet our host family for the first time. After getting mentally prepared I grabbed all my belongings scattered across the room and jammed it into my suitcase without any care how messy it would be. I had to go to other people's room to make sure that I didn't miss anything either. Right after I finished packing I went to the dining area where we would have our last meal at the inn. The food was good as usually and it had a higher proportion of things that I prefer than others AKA more beef and pork. We had to say goodbye to Jin-san, the greatest tragedy of the trip, and prepared to go to our host families. It took over 4 hours, a bus ride, 3 trains, and a car trip before I managed to get to their house. From there I simply introduced myself and started to talk to the host family. My host brother's name is Kengo. I proved my might as alpha male by beating my host dad in an arm wrestling competition. Today was a slow day, filled with many train trips, but in the end it was fun when I got here. As the day is ending I'm finishing some of my homework and preparing to sleep.

DAY NINE:

7:30 AM February 4th. We had a pretty lax morning, simply eating breakfast with my host family and talking about how life is contrasting or similar in America and Japan. After which we went to the train station to meet up with Jack who's currently living with the principal and Kengo's friend, Yuuzo.

DAY TEN:

5:30 AM February 5th. I have to wake up early due to excessive time it takes to get to school. First taking a car, then a train, and finally a bus ride we finally made it to school. The first thing we did at school after being situated was introducing ourselves in an gymnasium to the rest of the school. After which we went to

DAY ELEVEN:

6: 30 AM February 6th.

DAY TWELVE:

7:00 AM February 7th.