Hanami, yakiniku and purikura

A lot has happened these past two days so this will be a long post ;)

Yesterday was Melanie's birthday and so we had decided to surprise her in school so when she showed up we all started singing Happy Birthday :) Later at the buffet restaurant Jennifer showed up with a cake. The staff didn't want us to eat it there, but Massimo grabbed a bunch of spoons and then we sent the cake around the table and let everyone have a bite. Lucky it was a small cake! :) After that I, Gan, Laura and the new Vietnamese girl Mai headed out for Hanami, which is watching the cherry blossoms bloom. Some Japanese people make a picnic or a party out of it, we just went for pictures and having fun. So we took the tube to Shibuya and then we walked to Meguro. In Meguro there's a river and on both sides of it there are sakura trees. There were a lot! We walked alongside all of the river and I have so many sakura pictures. I will probably go Hanami one more time, since these were white sakura and I wanna see pink sakura too :P

Today's been a kind of weird and fun day. After the second break our teacher, Mimura, started showing us old Japanese stories and poems. We were also introduced to the Japanese language used for over a thousand years ago - that was kind of cool and nothing like today! We also read and listened to a song in Okinawa dialect, which to me sounds like a mix of Chinese and Japanese :P Can't understand it at all :P We also found out that it was his last day at the school and then he was transferring to somewhere else. That called for a class photo of course (this has become a tradition, everytime someone is leaving there's a new class photo). For lunch we went for yakiniku. You get a plate of raw meat and then you have a real grill on the table! Everytime we turned the meat around on the grill the flames were all over! xD So funny! Japanese food is fun :P

What happened next was that we met up with Caro who was once again in Tokyo, before going to Osaka tomorrow. I, Caro, Gan, Chappie and Fanny went for purikura together. It was so crowded at the place we chose! Of course since it's spring break and everyone's been graduating, everyone is taking purikura. After four rounds of purikura we decided that it was too crowded for a final fifth one so instead we went to a cafe (Choco Cro ofc!) to divide the pictures. At this place you couldn't send the pictures to your phone so I can't get them on the computer this time. :/ At the purikura place I found this sign, which is just so ridiculously funny in English xD What the sign says in Japanese is: don't enter through here. Then we went to a store called Loft, which is kind of like Tokyu Hands, but I like this one better :P There I bought a small scrapbook and some stickers and when I got home I transformed the scrapbook into a purikura album :) (I think there are real purikura albums, but I couldn't find one and anyway the scrapbook thing seemed funnier). When I went back to the tube station to go home I stumbled across this café and I just had to take a picture!
For dinner tonight my host mother served a shot of sake as appertif. She said she'll do that sometimes. I liked this sake :) Tasted sweet and not at all much alcohol :3 After dinner she showed me two small ceramic plates in a box. She said that she didn't need them and asked me if I wanted to have them. So now I have two small Japanese ceramic plates :D