Recent Pictures

Here are some new pictures of the past couple o' weeks :)

Life is good

I just wanna update telling the world that I love my life! :)
I'm so happy that I just break into song and love everything and everybody all the time always :D

I miss you guys.

<3

i am ureshii

Hi all~
I am doing so wonderful here! Normally I have one entry for one topic, but in my head I have a jumble of happy thoughts floating around, so I want to explain a little about each one.
I just watched a Youtube video which made me smile and be happy just because I am a part of the same world as the maker of the video.
It is actually quite famous, but I had only discovered it today:



It is called 大きな箱とねこ (A Big Box and a Cat) and it has, rightfully, scored over a million views on Youtube.
And in case after the video you want to see more "Maru"; (the cat's name), it means "round" or "circle"; the owner has devoted an entire website to the going's on of Maru.

http://sisinmaru.blog17.fc2.com/blog-date-200904.html

It makes me SO bubbly and genki whenever I look at it. The creator is a Japanese person, but has English translations on the captions of all his or her pictures of Maru. He or she keeps us updated on all of their beloved cat's comings and goings. The site is very well set up and maintained and in case you have a free minute you really should check it out.

This is a new topic from now on:
I had the best day with Maria and Melissa this weekend! It actually was two days, not one, because it was a sleepover. After school on Friday I went up to Esojima which is where Melissa lives and met Maria and her at the station and then we walked to her house. The reason for the sleepover was the next morning we were going to wake up and go to this ghost town called Ashio and plant trees.
Do you guys know the story of Princess Mononoke? In that, there is a town name Irontown on the edge of a great and ancient forest, but because there is a stock of iron under the mountains of the forest, the people of Irontown are destroying the forest to get to the iron beneath it.
The reason I bring this up is that Irontown bears a strong resemblance to Ashio, (the town we went to plant trees.) Ashio used to be a...copper...bronze? mining city, but it turns out the waste it was producing and dumping into the river was poisonous, so it wiped out almost the entire forest and killed many people who drank and ate fish from the river. In 1907 the miners rioted and planted dynamite around the mine, blowing it to smithereens!!! Maybe not smithereens, I am not sure, but anyway it caused a significant amount of damage. The mine has been closed down for tens of years now, so our job is to go and plant saplings to try and bring the forest back to life again.

I only planted one and a half trees. (Me and Melissa planted the second together so I can not say I planted two whole trees.)
I really don't know if I made an impact with my one and a half trees, but maybe.
But anyway, at Melissa's house, we watched the 5th episode of Smile. I have been watching Smile for 5 weeks now, and usually I watch it with my host mom; but because of the sleepover I watched with Maria and Melissa and Melissa's host mom. And Ren-chan, the cat.
If you don't know Smile, it is a drama starring Matsumoto Jun as a Filippino/Japanese biracial 26 year old who is trying to have an honest existence in lieu of racism he receives for being not a pure Japanese. He falls in love with a girl, who for some reason (relating to the press always tormenting her because of her mysterious father), has become afraid to speak to the point that she can no longer use her voice. A lot of terrible things happen to Matsumoto Jun's character, and throughout it all he manages to smile.
Me and Maria cried at the ending of that episode.

Then later the next day, after planting trees, the three of us went and played at a park for an hour or so. We swung on the swingset and slid down the slide and acted like we were seven. Who knows?; maybe we are.

But I can't upload pictures because Blogspot sometimes has sporadic psycho baka spells and won't let me.

:)

Okinawa School Trip

From April 19th to the 22nd, my class of 177 boys and girls went on a field trip to Okinawa! We left school at 6:00 in the morning on the 19th, and took a bus to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Then we flew to Okinawa, and spent the rest of the time touring and visiting the Peace Memorial, the giant Aquarium, and other really cool places.

Our hotel was called, "Moon Beach" because it was on Moon Beach. lol. It was really awesome because Moon Beach is privately owned by Hotel Moon Beach, so we all got to go and swim in the ocean!

I shared a room with Midori and Harumi, my two best friends here. Every day was so fun!
I will upload all of my favorite pictures from that trip.
It only rained in the mornings, and was about 75 or 80 degrees during the day. It would be wonderful to live in Okinawa for a few years. All of the natives are SUPER BROWN skinned because they have lived there for so long, and the weather is always hot and humid and sunny; and it is an island so there is ocean on all sides...



My favorite part of the trip was when we were all in the hotel. Midori was really hyper; and a photographer was coming to take pictures of us, and she didn't want her picture taken so she ran into the closet and slammed the door. The closet door had angular slats on it, so if you go down onto the floor and look up you can see inside, so I angled my camera upward and took a picture at random and it got Midori's eyes!!!
After seeing the picture I laughed so hard I started crying and had to pee. After the bathroom, Harumi and I, one by one, took the same pictures.





After that, we went to a Petting Zoo, and to the Aquarium. I was in the Aquarium and I saw a manta ray, and it had a face that makes it look like it smiles at you! I had no idea!


At the petting zoo, I petted a baby goat!




And then we went to the ocean, (my second time in my life) and I swam in it (for the first time in my life)





Anyway, I have a lot more stories but I will let the pictures speak for themselves because I don't want to type right now.

I could have danced all night...

Ｆor all of you aware of my new obsession with old movies and Broadway Musicals, and my ongoing passion for Japan; you will be very delighted to hear what I have the privilege of going to see tomorrow:





It's the Japanese adaptation of My Fair Lady! And I'm so, so, SO EXCITED! We are going to the theater next to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. We (My Host Mom and I) recieved the tickets for free from a Rotarian who had two extras. The play is at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon, so the two of us are waking up at 7:30, taking the 8:40 bus to Tokyo, having a light lunch and then seeing the musical. Afterwards, we are going to eat at a buffet!

The coolest part is, (well, that's debatable there are a lot of cool parts to this,) is this...has anyone reading this watched the 2007 drama: "Hanazakari No Kimitachi E", aka. "Hana Kimi"????

If so, you will obviously remember Masao (Oscar) M. Himejima, the Leader of Dorm 3. I ADORE Oscar M. Himejima, he was one of the true stars of that drama.



His character was wonderful, I was always laughing whenever he came on screen. And the actor who plays him is REALLY CUTE!!!

Well, guess who is actually starring in this musical????



YEAH! I actually get to see a musical with a FAMOUS PERSON IN IT! ONE THAT I KNOW!

I AM SO STOKED!!!!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A little distraction from Speech Writing

I have my district speech contest coming up on April 26th. It's a five-minute speech in Japanese and the theme is free-choice. I am so stressed out about it because I have been having trouble finding a good theme. So I went on the internet and ended up talking to Julian for about forty-five minutes, about things that, of course, are very relative to Japanese Speeches.

Julian: "I want them to play Demonhunter at my funeral. I'm telling everybody so that at least one person will remember."
Me: "Lol, I'm gonna make them play Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' instead.I want them to play Haddaway's 'What is Love?' at mine."
Julian: "Yeah!!! I can just imagine everyone crying and head banging at the same time!!"

www.tokbox.com

Lol.

Thanks, Julian!!!

sakura hira hira?

yes yes.
Well, April 1st has come and gone, and that means two things: 1 was that I was subject to a lot of silly April Fool's Youtube videos and 2 is that the sakura trees have started to bloom!






Je vois la vie en rose.
"I see life in shades of pink."

Right now je vois la vie en rose because of two reasons:
(#1)-All around my house bright pink cherry blossoms have bloomed.
(#2)-栃木駅でマリアと私の秘密な約束しました。

Number two is naisho da yo so don't even try to guess it! LOL. I can be so mature, I know.

Today I went to Ichiba Market in Ashikaga with my host dad. It was a wonderful, wonderful place. It was a big warehouse full of boxes of fruits and stock items like pans and pots. Trucks were zooming in and out dropping off loads and the whole place smelled like fresh air and fish and people and car exhaust. It was so vibrantly ALIVE that I loved it. And my host-dad goes there at least weekly to pick up supplies for the restaurant, so I tagged along because I wanted to spend more time with my host family lately because I have been doing alot of hanging out out of the house, with friends and such. So I came along, and we chatted in the car about how Mizushima Hiro got engaged to Ayaka, and how cute it was because they are both #1 Popular in Japan right now, Mizushima is, arguably, of course, the #1 popular boy and Ayaka is, also arguably, the #1 popular girl and they got engaged. And I have never heard of Ayaka so my host dad played some of her music in the car on the way up.

This is Ayaka and Mizushima Hiro, by the way:



It turns out they have been married since February but didn't tell Japan until yesterday. My school was in an uproar. Well, the girls were anyway. The boys in my school only care about baseball.
Anyway, enough about "life-shaking" current-events, back to my story about Ichiba Market.
When we got out of the car, we were surrounded by burly old sailors and farmers and other like-sorts and they saw my host dad and were like "TAKASHI-SAN!" Because it's the kind of place that only looks daunting. Truthfully, everybody knows everybody else and there was a really warm atmosphere. These two little girls, Arina and Anji, were sisters. They were maybe 3 and 5 years old. They mother and grandmother run the fresh vegetable portion of the Ichiba Market so they have lived there all their lives. They are so cute. And it really seemed like a good place for kids to grow up because they said they wanted to go buy juice, so Anji (the older one) ran to the cash register and unlocked it and grabbed a 1,000 Yen note (about 10 dollars) and then grabbed Arina's hand and they skipped off to the juice, weaving through wheelbarrows of fresh vegetables, trucks carrying pounds of meat, and crowds of people like it was second nature.
Later I saw them pushing eachother, (and like five other little kids) on one of those giant push carts, the kind where you can stack boxes on and wheel around.

It was so sweet.

Then I bonded with my host mom because I made an apple pie! From scratch. She stayed in the kitchen and we listened to some of my favorite songs off of my Zune, and we gabbed about pies and apples and other important things.

:)

Life is good.

My address!

I am brewing up a big update on the many wonderful things that have happened this past week!
But in the meantime:




Jaremie Forsman
1787-2 Tochimoto-cho
Sano-shi, Tochigi-ken
Japan 327-0312



My home telephone # is 090-3593-6545


My host parents names are

Mom and Dad

lol

I'm just kidding! Just because I don't know my grandpa's name so I call him "grandpa" doesn't mean I am so horrible as to not know my host parents'!

(Mom) is Michiko Urano
(Dad) is Takashi Urano

If you wanna talk, call my cell phone from Skype. 090-2940-9188
but make sure you select "Japan" so that skype can fill in Japan's area code for you.

If there is an emergency so that for some reason you need to call my host parents, don't fret. They understand English.

:)

More soon!

let us die young or let us live forever

Ohhhhh dear. I do not want to grow up. How did this happen so fast? Why am I sitting here at 10:28 at night in my host families kitchen searching for answers to my life...on the internet? Ahhh ENGLISH!!! Why did I type "host families kitchen"??! That doesn't even make sense!
I have given up on being a game designer, again. For the time being, anyway. I know what my problem is: I don't have just one passion. People that are, for example, really passionate about writing and writing only naturally will become writers and will be writers until they die, happy and fulfilled. I have never had a consistent passion last for more than a few years.
I am such a skippity person. My hobbies change weekly, my goals...daily, and even my thoughts come and go in frenetic three second blurbs, before they are replaced with a massive torrent of 983 other thoughts to fill their place. I can't stick to plans well. I hate schedules. I was not made for conforming into a single work-droid who follows the pressures of the world around her and lives her life on the same line from birth to death. I don't FIT IN BOXES!!! I will passionately commit to something, put all my effort into it, see it through till the end, and then once it is finished put it down as a good experience and completely change course and try something new.
How can a person like that be expected to choose a career to follow for the next fifty years? I could choose a career for a three year chunk, maybe even make it four. But the thought of being pinned down to the SAME thing year after year terrifies me. This world is too beautiful and fascinating a place not to experience every bit of it.
And I am already so old. Please, please, dear sixty-five and seventy year old readers; please do NOT chastise me. I am old. I am seventeen and I was sixteen three minutes ago and fifteen an hour ago and twelve last week. I'm gonna be fourty-five and trapped tomorrow and I'm going to die of old age in a month. My life is slipping through my fingers like sand. No, not like sand. Like water.
I feel like I am a little ship with no sails in the middle of a stormy sea. I can't grasp a direction in life. And going the way the wind takes me has always worked for me in the past. But now the world is telling me I have to grow up and choose a career and I about wanna PUKE. I have to drop anchor, right now. "Oh, not right now, you have PLENTY of time...you're so young yet!" But no, I am a Junior in high school, so at this exact moment I have to choose a college and a major.
I want to learn some card tricks and take some singing lessons so I can pack up my host dad's guitar and like, a spare sweatshirt and go live as a street performer. That is living. And also the voice of ignorance, I know.

See, that's the thing about me. I am perfectly equal parts realist and idealist. I will come up with an excellent idea and then immediately shoot it down.

I don't know how to choose my career. I am talented at art, I love math and solving problems, reading comes as naturally to me as breathing, I have determination and people skills, I am comfortable with my ability to speak Japanese; I am going to learn Spanish next and then Mandarin Chinese, I have a knack for computers...

I am a well-rounded Jack-of-All-Trades. One who doesn't necessarily prefer one trade over the other and is being presented with the need to choose, and choose one for life.
What on Earth am I going to do with myself?
I would love to come back to Japan, but maybe not live here. I don't want to be old.
My youth is slipping out of my grasp and I am so worried about that fact that I am spending all my time worrying and not enjoying my youth as I have it now.

I have not been this disoriented in a long, long time.

Somebody please advise me.

東京 ３月１日 (Tokyo, March 1st)

I am typing this from the teacher's lounge at school right now! I brought my laptop in to school because the best thing ever is going on right now: TESTING!
I.LOVE.TESTING.
The entire student body is having a giant testing thing. It starts today, and is three hours long, and then tomorrow is another three hours and Friday is the last three hours. On top of that, after tests each day we get early dismissals! That's not even the best part: the best part is that I don't have to take the tests because I'm the foreign kid who can't read kanji and has her own studies to attend to. So I get to use my laptop in the teacher's lounge for three hours, and then we all eat lunch and go home.
YESSSS!
But that is not the point of this blog. I am going to write all about Tokyo, cause I went there again on Saturday and saw lots of places.

First off, there are a few misconceptions about Tokyo, the biggest being that "Tokyo is a big city in Japan."
Tokyo is not big. Tokyo is a behemoth that is so colossal it isn't even referred to as a city, but a "metropolis." I took this picture off of Wikipedia so you could see how big it is, from satellite:



Tokyo is not so much of a city as a separate universe. It is composed of 23 cities, or "wards." I went to five of them with my host parents! *I am not exactly sure if these places are the wards, they could be smaller subsections...
We went to Asakusa, Harajuku, Shibuya, Akihabara and Ginza! I've always, always wanted to go to Tokyo. It kind of swamped my mind, I have to admit.

If you want an idea of it's massive amount of people, Minnesotan's, this is for you:




Those pictures are not quite to scale, but close enough to give you an approximate idea of the size difference of Minnesota and the entirety of Japan. Now take it one step further and realize that Tokyo is about the size of that circle that says "Tokyo." Compare that to the Minnesota map and think about this:
Minnesota's population is 4.9 million people. Tokyo, that tiny little circle,'s population is 8 million people. That is a little under TWICE Minnesota's population.

WOWWWW.

I will post pictures up of each place I went to. The rest of these pictures I took with my own camera. The ones above are from the net.

ASAKUSA:
Asakusa was Tokyo's party district in the 1900's. It was the liveliest, but now is mostly famous for it's temples honoring Buddha, and the big, red "Thunder and Lightning" Lantern.







SHIBUYA:
Shibuya is Tokyo's most popular shopping district. It is famous for that HUGE street intersection that has huge stores on all sides and can be crowded with thousands of people going back and forth. My favorite part of Shibuya, though, actually my favorite part of all Japan, is the story of Chuken Hachiko. (Loyal Dog, Hachiko):


Hachiko was an Akita dog, *(This picture is taken off of the internet. It is an actual photograph of Hachiko.)
Hachiko was an Akita owned by Ueno Sensei. Every day, Ueno Sensei would go to work and every day, at 3:00 PM, Hachiko would walk alone to the train station and sit and wait for his master. They would go home together and the cycle would start all over again the next day. One May 21st, when Hachiko was a two year old dog, his master had a stroke and died at his job. Unknowing, Hachiko went to the station to pick his master up. When he didn't show up, Hachiko waited all night, until the very last train left the station, and then returned home by himself.
The next morning, onlookers noticed that Hachiko was at the station again, at 3:00 PM. He again waited until it got dark and all the trains had left before walking home alone.
This routine of Hachiko coming alone to the station and waiting, continued...

For ten years.

Every single day, even through the pains of arthritis, as Hachiko had become a very old dog, he would still come alone to the station, wait, and then come home alone. This dog became a national sensation. He would come to the station at Shibuya, and wait in the exact same spot. People would come and give him food and pet him and cheer him on.
On March 7, 1935, after ten years of waiting for his master, "Loyal Dog" Hachiko was found dead in the very spot he had waited.

How is THAT for a story? It was such an expression of true loyalty and I, along with the rest of Japan for years and years, was extremely moved by it.

They erected a statue after he died, but when World War II came they had to melt down the metal to use for weapons. They rebuilt it though, after the war. It stands in the very place where Hachiko waited for ten years.

I TOUCHED IT!!!



It is such a sweet story.

AKIHABARA:
Akihabara was great!!!! It is the nerd center of Japan. (I FELT RIGHT AT HOME) It is Tokyo's "Electronic Village" except that it is more of a universe than a village, in terms of size. It is a giant collection of stores, most of them used electronics stores, all meshed together and full of foreign people looking for cheap computers. I bought a 2 Gigabyte SD card for my camera, for 3 and half bucks! (400 yen) It was sweet!




My attention span is waning so I am going to just post the rest of my pictures from Tokyo all right here.




















Now you're caught up on my Tokyo adventure!

Jaaa neh.