HALLLOOOOOWEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNkinda

Yesterday I went with my host father to go see the Shimabara Castle, which is about an hour away from here. As you can see from the photo , it was a really nice day. A little windy, but nothing too too strong; just strong enough to mess up my hair for every photo I was in.

Photos weren't allowed inside the castle which was a bummer because there was plenty of interesting stuff that I wanted to show you guys. They had a ton of samurai armor, lots of really interesting sword hilts and other stuff from that sort of time period. On the top floor they had an observation deck. The view would have been great but they put a dang fence up to make sure people wouldn't fall off. This dude was also hanging out in the castle. He wanted to give me a ride on his ox/fire/cart thing, but uh, I already had a ride. Instead I just snagged a SUPER SECRET pic.
Outside they had a bunch of stands where people sold antiques and clothes. In one of the booths Ultraman tried selling me some guaranteed genuine watches, but I already bought one from Megazord so I had to turn him down.
After the castle, we went up the volcano that was in the area. Getting up there took what seemed like forever, because the road up was super curvy and all the cars in front of us took it really unnecessarily slow. After driving for quite a while, we made it up to one of the observation posts. It must have been right 0n the edge of the face facing the wind, because the wind was SUPER strong up there. Everyone who was up there had to lean into the wind constantly to avoid being blown over, and every once in a while a huge burst would make everyone stumble and fall over. After hanging out in the winds for a few minutes, my arms were freezing cold so we rushed back into the car and took off to see the national park they set up further up the mountain. It must have been on the opposite face or something, because the wind was totally calm over there.
My host father also showed me around a natural hot spring in the area. Walking over there, I could smell the springs about half a block before we actually got to it; it wasn't very strong, but I could definitely smell sulfur in the air. And then when we got there, there were huge clouds of steam from the springs that would blow right into my face and those smelled something strong. There was a hotel and spa right next to the hot springs that used the water as their hot water source. Apparently the surrounding neighborhood did as well, which I thought was pretty cool.

Also, there were a bunch of people selling hard-boiled eggs at the hot springs. My host dad called them "spa eggs" and told me that they cooked them at the hot springs themselves. I guess they just came across some hot springs while real hungry one day, took a big whiff and were all "MAN THIS IS A SIGN". He said that they were supposed to be really delicious, but to tell you guys the truth, they tasted exactly like hard-boiled eggs that I would make on the stove at home.

After getting back and telling my host mom that I wasn't able to take photos of the armor in the castle, she was all DANG THAT AIN'T NO FAIR. Turns out her dad owns his own suit of armor. So today we rolled on over to their house, which is less than a five minute drive from my current house, and checked out the armor. It's not a for real ancient samurai armor set, but it's still pretty cool (she said it was made about twenty years ago). Also, her dad had a katana as well, which came in handy because a tank attacked the house while we were there and I had to chop it up, because, you know, katanas can totally do that (I saw it on the internet).I think most importantly though, her dad owned a HUMONGOUS teapot, complete with a sad-looking dog statue. Then we went over to her older sister's house, which was probably under five hundred feet away (I guess family sticks close together here). They had just gotten a baby pidgeon which, to tell the truth, was actually kind of gross. I mean, birds without feathers just kinda look odd. Especially when they open up their wings, because it just looks like a skeletal being awkwardly flopping about. It was still a pretty rad bird though. Except when it pooped on the table. Nothing is rad when it poops on a table.Then after lunch I went to meet the Rotary exchange students here in Isahaya for something or other. I don't really know what the significance of the meeting was; they just said a bunch of stuff in Japanese and gave us cake. Also, they told us that in the future, we're gonna go to a Mt. Asso (giggle!), where we will get to have the delicious Asso Milk (tee hee!).

Later on I went over to my English teacher's, Mr. Tysen, house for a Halloween party. They don't really do anything for Halloween over here even though all the stores are all OOOOOHHH HALLOWEEN ORANGE AND BLACK. So Mr. Tysen, an American, has set up a small course of houses where they know there'll be candy for his kids and friend's kids to go trick or treating at. When we went out with the kids, they rushed ahead of us so quickly, so by the end it was just me and the other adults walking back to the house without the kids. All the other adults and I hadn't dressed up as anything except Mr. Tysen, who was dressed up as a pirate. So he was left walking around at night, dressed up as a pirate during a Halloween party in a country that has no idea what Halloween is. FUN TIMES.