Last week, Li-san 'gave' me a bike. I don't know where it came from, whose it was before...or whatever...but it didn't have a lock on it and she told me I was allowed to claim it as my own...so
I'm running with that. I bought a lock and so now I guess its mine. Japanese bikes are very different from American ones (I can't quite put my finger on why) and I had a lot of challenges learning to ride mine. The seat really hurt at first, but I think I'm used to it now. The handle bars are also a little different, but I'm getting better control over steering I think. The sidewalks are really narrow in Japan, so a lot of times we either ride in the streets or Tony laughs at me whenever I squeal because I get scared every time I have to squeeze between a person, a car, a street sign a wall or some variant of the three. Its terrifying! Especially when people park their cars on the sidewalks or run red lights...which they do a lot around here. But like I said...I think I'm getting the hang of it....Japanese kick stands though are really cool. It flips down off the back of the wheel and keeps it standing straight up, like in the picture.So yes, now that you all understand where I suddenly got a bike...on with Hanami. Tony and I got up early to make a lot of Gyoza, because our
understanding was that a lot of people were going and everyone would bring something so that it would kind of be like a potluck picnic. It ended up just being Isshin, Tony, Masashi (our RA) and myself, but it was still very fun. We biked about half an hour to Senbako, a lake near the station that has a lot of Cherry Blossoms. The banks are covered! We walked around taking a lot of pictures like the tourists we are (though I think some of the Japanese people 
there took more pictures than we did) and ended up stopping to eat some food at 'Sakura Hiroba' or 'Cherry Blossom Square'. We actually didn't end up sitting on a map and singing or anything...but the weather was really nice and it was just fun to people watch and look at all the Cherry Blossoms. It was really calming :) In my opinion, it wasn't very crowded and very nice. Masashi and Isshin said it actually was very crowded because the Cherry Blossoms would only be in bloom for two weeks. I told them I disagreed since for the first time in two weeks, I had a personal bubble. Tony and I somehow managed to explain what a personal bubble is, to which Masashi and Isshin said "In Mito, I think maybe you can have two or three bubbles." Haha!
One thing that surprised me was that swans (also known as Hakuchou) are about as abundant as squirrels are in State College...which if you know anything about State College...that's a lot. They just walk around, doing there thing or trying to eat other swans' babies...whichever is more appealing at the time. I was surprised at how many people just walked up to them and let their children near them and all the other ducks and geese. I didn't get close enough to find out if they're different from American ones...but in American they aren't to friendly if you invade their space. It was very interesting :)Around 4 we ended up going back to school because there was a festival of sorts for all the clubs to try and attract new members. Unfortunately by this point most of the clubs had left so we really didn't get to see much other than the magic, crew, choir and break dancing clubs...but I'm hoping if I can find out when they meet I can either join the UNESCO, Film or Japanese archery clubs...or the woman's volleyball since I'm probably one of the tallest girls in school. That and I want to make it a goal to see a Kendo match while I'm here. Our team is supposedly really really good!
Later that night Tony and I went with Adom to a local Yakiniku restaurant. Yakiniku is basically Japanese barbeque. It was about 10 dollars and you get rice, 200g of various meat and access to
the soup and drink bar. I love the drink bars in Mito because you pay 2-4 dollars (when usually drinks are 3 bucks for just one) and you get unlimited access to any and all drinks you want, ranging from coffee to cocoa and soda. Yakiniku was delicious and confirmed my love of Japanese restaurants where you cook your food yourself. Its really a very social experiance and lots of fun. I learned a lot about the culture of China from Isshin and he taught us how to make it since its one of his favorite restaurants in town. I can see myself going there quite a bit :)On Sunday I attempted to go to school to get Internet, but they lock all the buildings, so that quickly turned out to be a bust. I also tried McDonalds since it was listed as a wireless point, but I didn't pick any up and the people had no clue what I was talking about. :/ Getting Internet is turning out to be very frustrating here and I can't wait to get my alien registration card so that maybe I can short-term contract Internet. I also tried to go to Book Ace to rent 5 DVDs for 10 bucks because I figured I had nothing else to do...but after I had picked out all my DVDs, the lady tells me I can't rent without a special card and I can't get the card without an alien registration card! That left me feeling really depressed and dejected that I'd been denied access to renting DVDs due to my nationality, so I ended up buying a coloring book and coloring for a large part of the afternoon until I ventured down to Tony's room to practice making Tortillas.
Since the Korean students made dinner for us one night, we're going to make American Tacos for them some time this week, along with Isshin and Ruhla, the Palestinian girl who lives next door to me. However tortillas are not a widely found commodity in Japan, much less in Mito, so we had to make them ourselves, so we decided to do a trial 
run before we made fools of ourselves in front of our Korean friends. After a couple of attempts that resulted in ones that either burned or looked/tasted like pancakes, we finally got a system down, and mastered making Tortilla using a glass Slamma bottle as a rolling pin. Things got a little messy, so I ended up going to Don Quiote to buy a Japanese Apron. We ended up also making a dinner of some beef, bean sprouts, rice and some barbecue like tomato paste, which was yummy. :)Oh yes, and since I've been asked, here are some pictures of my room and Japan!
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