My first weekend in Japan

Today is my first Sunday in Japan, which means no school (although Saturdays are also usually the same), so my host family and I went out for various things.  First, we went to the park, where everyone is enjoying the cherry blossoms.  As you can see from the picture, I mean everyone.  Ever.

One of the first things I asked my host family was "where is the closest store that sells CDs"?  It's a Tsutaya outlet near the train station, and from the point of view of someone who does not listen to anything from outside of Asia, it was like a dream.  It's also "very small", even though to me it was GIANT in terms of Asian media outlets (since there are none in America).  I cannot wait to go to the biggest one I can find.  Also, I bought After School's Japanese album to commemorate the event.

You know those sushi restaurants with the conveyor belts where you take the food you want as it goes by, with the plate's color indicating the price?  We don't really have them in America much, but today's lunch was at one such restaurant called Kappazushi.  It was wonderful, and Japanese wasabi will immolate the entire inside of your nose (in a good way).

Here's my host mom and me at Kappazushi.  We ate SO MUCH FOOD.  And this is AFTER we had bought a box of donuts at Mister Donut.  Still, it's all much better for you than American fast food, so it evens out.

I promised some pictures of the house and cafe within, so here they are!  As you can see, there are some palm trees and such, so we're living in our own little piece of Hawaii.

Here is the inside of the Sunset Cafe.  It's my favorite.  Last night seemed pretty busy, too, but I was asleep through most of it.  As you can see, it's also very Hawaiian.

 Tomorrow we start doing some school stuff, to which I am looking forward considerably less than some other events.  However, it should still be a nice day.  It seems that the latest we ever finish school is 4:30, and that is only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  On Mondays and Fridays we finish at 12:20, and on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays we have no school at all.  There are also many, many breaks (holidays, expensive trips we're not taking that disrupt classes, etc), so it seems that we'll have many opportunities to get out into Tokyo.  I have been wanting to do so since I got here, and all the stories about it during orientation were NOT helping.