Twentieth Post

November 13, 2018

This weekend was fun. On Friday after school, I went to Kawaramachi with my classmate friend Nao, and we ate ice cream and went to a healthy restaurant for Japanese food for dinner. After that we walked around a bit and went to a movie theatre to see ‘Ladybird’ together. It was a good movie but seemed long. We both had already watched it but it was fun to talk and hangout. While we were walking around to find a restaurant we passed by an owl cafe- which I read something about online and thought there were owls inside. 

On Saturday, I’m my host family told me more about it and that there weren’t actual owls but we went there for lunch and the food was so good. The cafe was owl themed so no animals but still cool. Possibly the best food I’ve tasted in Japan. The main part was a roasted chicken sandwich but there were other ingredients and side dishes that made it so amazing. After the cafe, we went to do a bit of shopping again near kawaramachi and I bought a very cheap small strawberry bag. We rode our bikes to an underground bicycle parking area and walked to a place where we went down some stairs and there was a small room, with beautiful warm lights and flowers. There were chairs and in the centre of the room on the white wooden floorboards was a beautiful black grand piano. There were three ladies in gorgeous dresses playing piano flute and violin. It was so harmonic. The piano player was a friend of my host mothers. I ate an apple flavoured candy and we left to ride home. 

The next day, Sunday I woke up at 8 to leave at 9am to catch the bus with my host sister to meet her fathers uncle and his wife to go sightseeing. First we walked to Tofukuji temple, which had a beautiful Japanese garden and some traditional art inside the temple. It was so peaceful, and there were other foreigners speaking French there. The next place we went to was called ‘inari shrine’ and it’s very famous in Kyoto. It had ‘kitsune’ statues which means fox statues in Japanese. We saw the famous ‘one thousand shrine gates’ and walked under some of them, but since it was getting close to lunch time we didn’t go through all of them. The food by the shrine was so delicious. I got okonomiyaki- my favourite Japanese food, and some roasted corn on a stick. There were also some things that looked like nuts with a dark brown bark like shell but inside was sweet potato like food. After, we went to McDonald’s and had more lunch. Then my host sister and I went shopping and walked home eating cool ice creams from a convenience store. We later watched a movie called ‘fantastic beasts and where to find them’. It was good, but I’d already seen it, so this morning - Tuesday - my host sister told me we would go see the second one which comes out near my birthday and see it after school on the day of my birthday! 

Last night -Monday- my host mom surprised me by bringing Macedonian and cheese (KD) to the house- which I didn’t know they had in Japan. I made some for them for dinner and they really liked it. 

Today I woke up as usual 7:30 ish to leave me a half hour to get into my school uniform and eat breakfast and ride my bicycle to school. It usually takes 20 minutes on my bicycle to get to school from the house when I leave at 8am. My breakfast was cream corn soup, cucumbers, toast, and tea. It’s different everyday, but sometimes I have leftovers from dinner for breakfast which I don’t really like. It’s not something I’d complain about though. I have an ESS (volunteer event club) during lunch today, then have my afternoon classes and school will end. Then I usually go to my music club and practice piano or violin, then study until my host sister is ready to go home as well.