花火 Fireworks

So last weekend was a lot of fun! Friday night I went to the Absolute Ice Bar in Ginza with Cameron and it was a little expensive (高い！), but it was worth going to because I had a lot of fun there. We were given little cloaks and gloves and with our "free" drink we also recieved a frozen treat :). It was a really good 45 minutes spent! Also, the drinks came in giant ice glasses, how cool is that?!
Saturday was the Hanabi (firework) Festival and I dressed up in my purple yukata and looked all pretty and fancy. I went to the Ueno Zoo before the festival, which was amazing fun. The only downside was that my pictures lacked in light because the day was so cloudy and dark due to the rain earlier that day. The zoo also made me a little sad because they had rhinos in cages that were smaller than the monkey's cages, and I felt that was really wrong :(. Rhinos deserve bigger cages than that. I'm not usually a person to be sad at zoo either, but I just thought that they needed to reorganize the room they gae some of the bigger and smaller animals.
After the zoo, I got on a very packed train to Asakusa (where the festival was located). I had never been on a train so squished at night! It was insane!
The festival was a lot of fun. I think my favorite part about it was the food stands. I tried some stuff I liked, and I tried some stuff I didn't like. There was this one treat the looked like a homemade lollipop around a piece of fruit, and it was really gross. I regreted getting it automatically after my first bite. There was also these potato stands that sold, well obviously potatoes, but they were slathered mayo and people would stand in forever long lines to get them. I'm pretty sure if the potato stand was even in a ring of fire, these people would walk through it to get their potato. I of course didn't get it because I was frightened about trying weird looking things after the treat I purchased. I continued to buy normal looking foods after that (my favorite being the straight up melon on a stick...おいしい！).
The spot I got for the fireworks was a really good one. I was able to see them perfectly :). I tried to take pictures, but there were too many people and me without my tripod made is difficult. I got some good ones of the fireworks, though :D.
Sunday was unfortunately not a lazy day. I got up pretty early and went to the Asakusa Shrine, which was packed with tourists. I had some white peach ice cream there that was very much delicious :D. After the shrine, I went on the Tokyo River Cruise, which was very relaxing and pretty good for picture-taking. Later that night, I craved pizza so I went to a Jonathan's chain that's here in Ikebukuro and ate pizza and vanilla ice cream with a cup full of blueberries served with it :D. All-in-all it was a great weekend.
Today at school we got our "how are you getting to the airport?" sheets and I kind of got excited to see it. I never thought it was possible to be this excited to go back to the USA, but here I am :). I miss a lot of things that I haven't been able to get here. Mainly they are food items.

1. Pizza. Cheap, delicious pizza.
2. Mexican food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Salsa! Jalepeno!!
3. Cranberry Juice. I'm so juice deprived here.
4. Waffles with peanutbutter.
5. Cow! Steak, hamburgers, you name it!
6. BBQ sauce. Oh how you are very much missed...
7. Whole-wheat bread.
8. Sandwiches.
9. Spicey food. Food w/ bold flavors.
10. FRUIT! It's like they don't have any here and if they do they cost an arm and a leg!! Japan needs to get with the program and get more fruit!

I never realized how much of a typical "American" I was until I started craving things like pizza and hamburgers. Now I realize why their pretty much stereotypical American foods. The downside is that I know I'm really going to miss Indian food once I leave here (I know right? So random to miss from Japan...). I'm also going to miss all the sugary breads they have and the heat-up giant fried potato things that I get myself once a week. Eating with chopsticks will be missed a lot too.

I've started going ahead in my book so I can be fully prepared for my Japanese class back home, seeing as how we won't be taught the full chapter because I was on the short-term program. I'm kind of angry that 2 weeks of our time was dedicated to review and placement testing, but I'll get over it. I got to be in Japan for 7 1/2 weeks and I'm totally okay with that :D.