End of September and Most of October

Hey guys, so I know this is my only post for October (and it’s actually at the start of November) but nothing much happened in October besides midterm projects which took most of my time 😛 but I’m gonna compile any interesting bits from the whole month (and the last few days of September) into one post ^_^

My Bday weekend Sep.26-29

My birthday landed on a Thursday this year, so we couldn’t do a ton, but the girls in my dorm building are super great. My friends here decorated my door for me and got me a bag and some candy and then we went out to dinner for okonomiyaki which I had been wanting ^,^ I also went out that weekend to karaoke with John and some of his home stay friends.

They decked out my door and got everyone in the hallway out to say happy bday lol. They’re goofs and they rock

Some of the students in my unit made me a pancake with my name and the word love on it for my birthday. It was cute. (left to right) Kana, Minami, Mayu and Alyssa.

I got cheese mochi Okonomiyaki. It was freaking gooood

I got lunch and Ice cream on Saturday with my speaking partner (sorry only took pics of the food). The lunch was an omelette rice set (with hamburger steak and a bit fried fish over pasta) & the ice cream was Kyoto style matcha flavor with red bean paste and mochi in a cone^_^

Karaoke with John and his speaking partner Kentaro and their friends Tim and Cambin

October 6th- Small Festival in Kyoto

Mary invited me to go with her and her speaking partner (and her speaking partner’s friend and the friend’s speaking partner who is a french international student, so she let me practice my French with her a bit) to a festival on Sunday the 6th. We ordered yukata -the summertime kimono- and then we went around to some temples and shrines and did a photo booth (purikura) before the festival started. They helped us dress up in the yukata and wanted us to spend the day out in them 🙂 Mary’s is black with red and white and mine is green with white and a red Obi (the waist wrap).

The neat ride up to a shrine in Kyoto 🙂 (btw Emma’s braid came out so pretty with the flower clips!)

The shrine we visited before the festival started

We got lunch before going to the festival. It is a specialty for people who are going to go hiking. It’s flame-grilled savory mochi (tastes like camping) in hot udon with kelp. We got sweet mochi with it.

The festival started in the early evening!

Mary’s speaking partner (in blue) and her friend did the shooting game. Her friend won immediately XD

I got a small ¥100 ($1) egg Okonomiyaki

Before we left we played a game where you try to hook as many water balloons as possible. You only keep two tho, but I did pretty well 😂 Mary got one more than me haha

October 11th

Celine invited me to go as her plus one to her class trip to Costco. It was a 20 min bus ride from the main campus. I bought a lot of grape juice, mozzarella, and a loooot of Kraft mac&cheese

October 13th

YUI cup~ nothing big, but it’s like the school sports festival. I ran in the relay bc they needed three more people on my team :3 we won that round 👹 my team was blue and the others were red, green and yellow. My team got second place altogether and green got first. At least my team beat the ones my other friends were in 🤣

October 19th

Celine was craving McDonalds (as most international students do at some point while we’re here it seems XD) so we went and got burgers, soda and the Japanese McDonalds limited edition choco pie. It was so good but so bad 😆

October 20th

Mary, Celine and I went out to a cafe to study for the day. We spent 3 hours there and then got dinner at an Italian-themed/style restaurant attached to the main campus.

I got Creme brûlée, Celine got this pie/cheesecake? And Mary got…

… this monster for dessert. Limited time dessert until Halloween.

October 22nd-24th

I learned how to make some more stuff XD I may yet survive lol. I can make omelette rice now. It’s actually easy if you can get comfortable with the idea of putting ketchup in rice with mushrooms. The end result tastes good!

It doesn’t look especially pretty but it’s good I swear Lol

My go-to meal. Gotta finish off the boxes of Kraft. The yuzu salt fried chicken and cake from the convenience store is a bonus

October 25th

I went out with Mary to Umeda, an area in Osaka city, and it was fun. It is over an hour away by train, though, so it’s only a now and then outing. We got Thai food for dinner (which I’ve been missing so much :’3) and found a really awesome international foods store called Luqua Kitchen&Market.

Umeda when we arrived

I ordered two meals, pineapple fried rice and red curry chicken. Mary got massaman curry. I also got a mango lassi (though I guess the Thai version is maybe more watery than the version I get at Indian restaurants) and Mary got a mango cocktail. (ps, I didn’t know that bringing leftovers home is unusual, so please keep that in mind if you plan to go too. It was embarrassing XP)

We each got a Halloween themed ice cream outside of the market. It’s dark chocolate dip with charcoal in it to make it black. It was super good

October 26th

I went on a trip to Arashiyama, in Kyoto, that my speaking partner Aoi invited me to. Her friend set it up, and it was meant to bring international students and local students together to practice language and cultural exchange while also touring the area and completing tasks (Such as saying something about yourself or finding someone in a kimono and stuff like that). It turned out that most international students backed out, so I was the only one in our group, but Aoi was our group leader and translated for me which was super nice of her 🙂 Aoi took most of the pictures since she was the group leader and the rest of us had to have our phones off as part of the tour requirement.

Matcha ice cream is a must anywhere in Kyoto~

We went into a bamboo forest (with a path of course XD) the cards that some of us are holding are the missions I mentioned 🙂

The “kimono forest” of Arashiyama, as it’s called. It was cool. It’s sort of a path surrounded by tubes with kimono cloth inside and they light up 😋

Outside and inside of the gift shop at the kimono forest

Some last pics at the end of the day. The four of us here (I don’t remember the names of the other two girls, sadly, since we only met that one day and didn’t exchange contact info w/the phones off). We got beef filled steamed buns for dinner on the go & matcha dango for a dessert/snack. I don’t have pics of those, but they were good.

October 27th mall and Halloween party

So Sunday (the 27th) I went out with a classmate named Joelynn and her speaking partner + her speaking partner’s friend. We went to Kuzuha mall, on the border of Kyoto, which is only about a 5-10 minute train ride away. We did some shopping, got some food, and then went back. That evening we had the Halloween party in my dorm unit! I didn’t buy a costume so I used my ice cream cone blanket and was a strawberry ice cream for Halloween 😂

I did purikura with Joelynn (the one next to me) and her other friends at the mall. It came out cute. I’m not a huge fan of purikura though, to be honest, bc it messes with how you look too much. It changes face shape, adds makeup (which can actually be kinda fun), but makes your skin lighter (colorism is pretty big and not really addressed much in Japanese society it seems…) and makes your eyes bigger. Still, it’s fun when my friends are having fun ☺️

One of the students took a time lapse video for a part of the party, and as you can see I sat, ate and talked most of the time 😝 the blanket is a bit tight to walk in so I didn’t get up much _(:3 」∠)_

Wednesday

This past Wednesday is the last day on this post. Nothing big, just went out for lunch with Mary and Celine because Mary and I didn’t have any classes since they were canceled, as fall break was coming up, and Celine only had one evening class. So, we spent the day in Hirakata city (only a few minutes by bike from the dorms and the three of us all have bikes).

End of September and Most of October

Published by hubblebop

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