Home Visit and Shinsaibashi

Sorry for the long delay! Here, I'm almost always busy studying, sewing, or doing the stuff I'm blogging about. That or I'm being lazy. Yeah, usually the latter. Anyway, About a week ago, I went to my Home-visit Program partner's house! Her name's Sena(the same girl I went to the Mexican festival with), and she is awesome! We made takoyaki, but since I don't eat tako(octopus), her family had prepared konnyaku for me to put in the mix! Takoyaki is an Osaka delicacy which uses a special frier with little hollowed out sections which you put batter and octopus in to make perfectly rounded tako-balls! The stuff I substituted the tako for is a gelatinous substance which is totally vegetarian and also very healthy! It was delicious and (maybe?) tasted like the real thing(but how am I to know??), and her mother kept insisting that I should open up a konnyaku-yaki shop ^^ We ate on her balcony in the open-air of a small Japanese city. The air was chilly, so we went inside after eating and drank tea with sweets. It was so much fun! I hope we can visit each other often!

Making Tako/konnyaku-yaki!

Today, I went to Shinsaibashi, which is a major shopping district in Osaka. Well, to clarify, I went to Namba station, wandered around for  a while with some of my friends, then eventually found Shinsaibashi.  We spent most of out time in Ame-mura, which(did you guess??) is the "American-village" part of Shinsaibashi. They blast r&b in all the shops and sell urban clothes. And there are crepes everywhere!! Afterwards, me, Adam, and Aya went to Sweets Paradise, which is all-you-can-eat specializing in desserts. I AM SO FULL NOW!!! I enjoyed it, although I think the best part was the tea section =) 

Now I'm off to study. Midterms are next week, so I doubt I'll have much to blog about for a while. Sooooo much studying this week!!! But I'm going to Tokyo after midterms, so I think it's worth it. Still wanna go to Kyoto..............>_> But I still have time!