Exchange Student Get-together

Monday, July 18th is a national holiday in Japan so there's no school and most people don't have work.  Two days ago, on this national holiday all of the exchange students from the Kansai area of Japan and their host family got together in Osaka.  There were exchange students from many different countries staying for different lengths of time and there were also Japanese students who are going on exchange very soon.  It was a YFU organized thing but it wasn't mandatory.  A lot of people didn't come because it was too far or they didn't have time.  There are about 80 students in the Kansai area and about 20 came to the get together and about 12 Japanese students came.  That is a huge amount of people if you add in everyone's host parents.  I heard from a past exchanger that at her exchange student get together, there were only 3 exchange students lol so maybe this year was just abnormal.  I was kinda worried at first that there wouldn't be very many people but it turned out that soooo many people I know went.  And I had no idea their host families were in the Kansai area either.  Anyway, we all went to a Buddhist temple in Osaka and stayed from 10 until 3.  It was fun... but to tell the truth I probably would have had a better time at home lol because my host parents always take me fun places when I don't have school and stuff.  

Anyway, when we first got there, everyone just mingled... then at 10:30, the YFU people gave an introduction.  It was really funny because the director of the Kansai area and the other leaders of the event didn't even know any English.  So they had this one translator.  She wasn't very good either... I think everyone could mostly understand her but her English was really accented and full of grammatical errors and I am pretty sure she just didn't translate the parts that she didn't know how to.  My host dad could have done a much better job... he's like a pro at English :P After that, the Buddhist chief priest of the temple came and taught us how to do meditation.  It's called Zazen and you probably know it.  You have to cross your legs a certain way and most people couldn't because they weren't flexible enough.  I managed to do it for like.... 10 minutes but we had to sit Zazen style for 30 minutes and my legs got super numb in the middle and I changed positions.  Though technically you aren't allowed to move or you will get hit with a stick :) but I made sure not to get caught lol.  I kinda wish that I had gotten hit though because it seems like a fun to experience.  And you could tell that the Chief Priest wasn't hitting us as hard as he would normally hit.

Me.... meditating :)

Doing the Zazen was actually kinda fun and even though we had to sit still without talking for 30 minutes, the time went by so much faster than I thought it would.  Then again, I peeked a lot and watched when the priest hit other people... so I was kept entertained for most of the time.  lol After that, the exchange students came back to the main room where the host families were waiting and everyone had lunch.  When I first heard about the get together, like a month ago, I was told that everyone has to pay 1000 yen ($10) for admission and lunch and stuff.  But no one had to pay but then again everyone brought their own lunch.  lol so I am not quite sure about what happened.  We had an hour for lunch but no one actually took that long to eat so all of the exchange students talked and stuff.

Exchange student friends I made.  The one on the far right is an exchange student from China and she's staying for a year (jealous!!!), left of her is an exchange student from Thailand but she's actually Chinese and she's also staying for one year >_>, and left of her is a Japanese student going to Germany in August.  Lol all asian >_<

After lunch however, things got really boring.  The host parents went to a different room to have their "talk" and the exchange students split into two groups:  one with short term exchangers and one with long term exchangers.  The short term group was like 3 times as big as the long one :P Anyway, the we just about stuff like what's happened so far, favorite foods, differences between America and Japan, etc.  I was super bored by most of it, sometimes the topic turned interesting, but most of the time people just kept saying the same thing over and over.  A couple of the more obnoxious people >_> had to add their input for every single thing we talked about but their input was no different from everyone else's before them so we just kept going around in circle stressing the same thing over and over.  Yeah... I could have spent that day hanging out with Japanese friends or my host family and experiencing what's left of my exchange trip instead of talking about experiencing it. 

After that, we had a super long closing ceremony again with horrible translations and then everyone left...

Well the day's passed already so there's nothing I can do about my wasted time but it was fun to meet up with my fellow exchange student friends.  Unfortunately none of my best friends were there :( I seriously don't recommend going unless you really want to meet some American people lol or if you make plans to go with some good friends.