My Hawaiian Winter Vacation: Family, Friends, and American Food

Well, I’ve only been back in Japan for about two days now and I’m aching to go back to the warm, Hawaiian weather. Nevertheless, my return to Japan means another blog entry to inform you all of the happenings in Japan

I left Japan on December 23rd to meet my family and friends in Maui. My last day of school was at a difficult ES and since we are way ahead at that school, I decided to take it easy and have a Christmas lesson with the 5th and 6th graders. I showed them pictures of my Christmas tree, lights on the house, presents under the Christmas tree, and of course, all of the winter activities, including sledding. Then, they were able to ask any question related to Christmas they could think of. I got some interesting questions, but sadly I don’t remember them anymore (I should’ve typed this right after the fact).

On the 23rd, I started my journey to Maui. I walked about 1/2 a mile with my suitcase and golf clubs to the closest train station and bought an $18 ticket to the Nagoya International Airport. 2 trains and 3 airplanes were all that stood in my way of seeing my family, and it was quite the travel adventure. Let me walk you through my day: walk ½ mile, take one train for 7 minutes, transfer, take another train for 120 minutes, hop on a plane to the Tokyo-Narita airport, take another plane to Honolulu, and finally, a short trip to the Kahului, Maui airport. What an adventure! I finally realized what a small world it is, when on the airplane to Honolulu, I sat next to a former JET participant, who is currently pursuing her MBA at a university in Kyoto. Personally, my favorite part of my wild travel day, was the fact that I left my local train station at 10:03am, Thursday morning. When I arrived in Maui, it was only 10:05am, Thursday morning! When I finally calculated it, my Thursday was about 40 hours long.

I spent my vacation with my friends and family, which was a nice break from everything Japanese. We did a variety of Hawaiian things. I was lucky enough to see a former teammate who lives in Maui. We got to play golf a few times (and for those of you who know Kelly aka. “the professional”, I want you all to know that I actually beat her my final day).

I got to see Kelly and her parents!

After 18 days, it was time to head back to Japan. In the end it was just my parents and I, a far cry from the 18 people who were with us during the vacation.

Now that I’ve been back in Japan for about two days, I’ve noticed a few changes. First, I’m back to layering clothes. The temperature took a change for the worst; the highs are about 40 and lows around freezing. My car also does not like this weather, every morning it’s been a struggle to get the car started, and I feel like one morning I’m going to walk out and it won’t start (fingers crossed that won’t be the case). Second, I forgot how large school lunches are! I’ve been fortunate that the past 3 days have had some type of pork, meaning I didn’t have to eat the full lunch, but I’m still full! Third, there is this one JHS that I’m currently at, and I can’t believe how funny this girls are. Today, I spent recess in an 8^th grade classroom with some girls. They asked me a variety of questions, do you have a boyfriend, what music, actor etc do you like. However, the highlight were these two girls that took red, green, blue, and yellow chalk, and used it as makeup to make this girl look like….Lady Gaga. And finally, I was showing pictures of Winter Vacation to the JHS kids, and every time I showed a picture of my family outside wearing sunglasses, they got the biggest laugh out of all of us. Not that many people wear sunglasses here, so I guess it was a little interesting looking.

The picture that made everyone laugh!

Sorry I don’t have anything too exciting to report. I am going snowboarding this weekend over in Nagano. I’m pretty stoked to get back up to the mountain, Japanese style!

Hopefully I’ll have a wonderful story and pictures to post after this weekend.