Cake and school

I have my ups and downs in Japan. Sometimes I feel not my best and other times I feel really good about being here in Japan. The last two days were a lot of fun. Yesterday I went on a quest to find cake. We searched for maybe two hours in two different cities before finally finding one in a department store in ikebukuro. (Department stores are different than American department stores but I can’t accurately describe the difference.) Once we got the cake though we had to find a place to sit so we went out looking for a place to set and low and behold we found a place to sit… but get this, the place we found was at a real cake shop… After looking for one for two hours we finally find it when we don’t need it. We kind of felt rude bringing a cake to a cake shop and eating it there but there are hardly any places to sit and eat in ikebukuro. Anyways, we enjoyed our cake(23$ for the whole cake) and talked for a few hours. It was a nice place to sit and eat because it was the only place to eat outside around that area that I saw. The cake shop only had one table outside the building and I didn’t see any other place like that. Actually it was kind of surprising because every bit of space is normally used to the fullest in a crowed city area. I say city area instead of Tokyo because Tokyo is made up a bunch of cities. It all one city and its also like 6-7 cities. There is more concentrated area than other areas. Tokyo Tokyo is probably the most concentrated but I’ve yet to actually go to Tokyo station. Shinjuku, Akihabura, Shibuya, are all cities in their own right. Tokyo is a massive city. I think I read it’s the largest city in the world. I know it has 22 million people in it.

Today I went to an elementary school. We were paired off in to groups. They had a big ceremony for us. They have been looking forward to us coming supposedly all year. It was a really good experience. In a Japanese school kids really do a lot more. The group of kids kind of govern themselves inside the social dynamic. This style of schooling can leave bullies unchecked and kids can get a little loud too. We took a two hour lecture on how Japanese school children our schooled differently than American school children. It was actually really interesting, although the lecturer was insulting to me as a home schooler, but I won’t get into the insulting things he said. Anyways back to the elementary school. I had 4th grade which is 10 years old in the Japanese schooling system. They were incredibly cute. There is no other word for it. We helped clean out the room, we played lots of different games and we had lunch. This one little girl Mirai (which means future) and this little boy were practically attached to me the whole day. They helped me throughout the day showing me what to do playing the games with me. It was a lot of fun. Mirai was really good at English and really good at talking in clear Japanese for me to understand. I can’t think of all the cool stuff I want to say about that visit but it was surely something that will stick with me for a long time. They invited us back for the sport’s festival which is in a few weeks. I think I’ll try going back for it if I have time.

Japan is expensive. I’m doing fine on my money but its hell of a lot more expensive compared to America. A can of Dr pepper costs like 75 cents in American, it costs about $1.30-1.50 in Japan. It depends on the machine but most drinks are 120 yen. The cans aren’t big either. At least you don’t tip in Japan…

I took pictures at the school but they warned us Japanese are strict on privacy laws with kids so no pictures.