NEWS FLASH: School is still School

I don't really know what I was thinking when I decided to go abroad as an exchange student. Maybe I was thinking that school in other countries would just be people doing backflips and giving each other high-fives. Maybe I thought that I would enter the front door on the first day and a rad dude would surf by me screaming "Cowabunga!" and a massive beach party would start, and would continue until the day I left.

Well no matter what I thought, school in Japan is totally not what I thought it would be. School in Japan is just school, but in Japan. The sports afterwards are pretty rad though. I started up Kendo today, which was fun. I didn't really know what to do for the first day, so I got an english teacher (the same one who's been my guide) to help me talk to the Kendo teacher. I got all sorted out with the teacher and went to watch the practice to see what everything was like, but I ended up actually trying some of the exercises out. It was pretty fun, but I have to wait until later to actually put the armor on and participate in the actual sport.

There's also a sports festival coming up this weekend, and the school is preparing for it everyday after lunch. Instead of having classes as they normally do, everyone changes into the active wear uniform (yeah, they're big on uniforms here) and heads outside to get ready for the festival. Usually a bunch of people come up to me during that time to introduce themselves, or to see if I remember their names (I never do, I should probably work on that).