Homestay!

So, if being a college student in Japan for a year isn't cool enough, I'm also gonna be doing a homestay next weekend. It's Toyo's bunkasai (school festival) so we have a long weekend, most of the exchange students from various countries signed up to join the homestay! We're going to be in Itakura in Gunma prefecture, and stay with families who volunteered to host us for 3 days! Sounds fun right?

My host family is a young couple with a 4 year old and a baby. Sadly, no pets. I miss my kitty from home... Also no smoking, but I requested that (the only thing I requested) when I filled out my paperwork. The ryugakusei (exchange students) are also going to go to Seijoin Temple and participate in a tea ceremony, and have a lecture on Buddhism. Which may sound boring, but considering that I'm doing the NaNoWriMo this year, it very well might make it into my story! 

Stress Less

In the last year or so of college I've started getting more and more interested in knitting, and as I've become interested I've found that the more stressed I feel the more I want to knit. It is relaxing as nothing else I enjoy is. My current project is for a friend who saw a hat I made the first week I was in Japan. She said she wanted one just like it and offered to buy it. (Paying customer Woohoo!) I told her 1,000 yen (about $10) plus the price of the yarn, so she bought the yarn and gave it to me on Monday.

I suppose without realizing it I've been de-stressing all week by working on this hat for her. My class has had an awful week of vocabulary tests and grammar lessons. We did lessons 5-7 this week, plus the vocab test for lesson 4 on Monday. Tomorrow is, thankfully the last day of the week, and this week there's no Saturday class (Yay!). Hopefully next week isn't so bad, but thanks to my knitting I'm not feeling as bad as I could be.

I'm currently about halfway done with Emily's hat, and since the yarn is a bit fluffier, same weight but different brand, so it is turning out a little different, but I'm happy with the results. I found a little shop with some superwash wool/cotton yarn that I think I'm gonna buy to work on a shawl for when autumn starts cooling down as well.

Nekobukuro

Nekobukuro, Cat City... The name really speaks for itself, I think. It's located on the 8th floor of a department store in Ikebukuro called Tokyu Hands. The store has some crafty things, and a whole floor dedicated to stationary and another to bags and travel supplies, but noting too interesting to report short of the pet shop on the top.

Sorry about the lack of photos of the actual building, but my camera was not cooperating with me and did not want to focus on anything out of arms reach. 

Basically the whole place is two rooms that have ramps, stairs, and walkways all over the walls and ceilings for the 15 or so cats that live there. You pay 600 yen and go in for an unlimited amount of time. I got there just at the end of nap time, I think because the cats all started to wake up a few minutes after we got there.

Keep in mind this is a busy shopping district in Tokyo, so if you want to come visit the cats, try to go during school hours. That seriously decreases the chance that the place will be filled with 5-10 year olds chasing the cats with strings tied to sticks; or all the benches being full of high schoolers trying to keep the hair off their uniforms. All in all it was a fun place to go, and the cats were great, though they do make me lonely for my cat back home.