Wednesday July 14th

Tsurumine High School – Day 3

This was our final day at Tsurumine High School. Okaasan made me obento again (which was very good) and we headed off for school. I didn’t talk to as many of the students individually today as I had done the day before. After the day’s English lessons (in which I had a quiz and gave my presentation on the school life at CGSB), Takahito rushed me back to the Home Room to get another class picture as the first one taken yesterday was blurred.

I also got an email address from one of the students (although I was the one asking). It pales a little compared to some of our group, who got asked in floods of requests for an email address :P heheh.We then had lunch and were sent off by Tsurumine High. It was incredible! We were all in the grassy courtyard surrounded by 4 story buildings, with students poking out of every window watching us.

There were some speeches made on the ground and then loads of party poppers let off around us, accompanied by numerous photos with loads of different groups of students. I had pictures taken with okaasan, Takahito and also Ayaka, who rushed down from her classroom to above have a one taken with me last minute before we left. ^_^ We all walked out down the road with our luggage, looking back to wave at everyone in the car park. Amazing send off. I’ve never been part of anything quite like it… The group went shopping for a couple of hours in Shibuya before we returned to the Youth Hostel. I went with Lianne, Wai-sun and Heather to buy Simon’s cake and also two little edible lion and tiger decorations to put on it :3. After freshening up at the Youth Hostel, we went out again to Karaoke (just our group of 8 in a booth), to celebrate Simon’s birthday. It was really entertaining and everyone ended up singing, including songs by Bon Jovi, Queen and we even dared to try Evolution, by Ayumi Hamasaki – absurdly fast! Despite it being very hot, we lasted the hour (with a little iced water) and went back to the Hostel. Simon loved the cake with the ‘Only in Kenya’ decorations on it :P, and we all piled into my room afterwards to relax and have dinner. I’m really missing the constant immersion in Japanese already, and all the accents from my host family. I have this distinctive pronunciation of my name in my head that Natsuki used when saying ‘goodnight Michael’, which sounds something like: ‘My-kell, oyasumi’ in a really high voice ^_^;. It’s odd how the smallest things like that just stick.