Sunday was the best day I've had over here. The local elementary school was having its fall Sports' Day, and I went with another family and their host student, Sora (lucky him, Sky translates directly into Japanese). So I got to see a traditional school festival that all schools in Japan have, which fits into my interests. I participated in one event, which was trying to toss bean bags into a tiny 12-foot-high basket. My hand-eye coordination sucks, so I couldn't get a single one in. Most of the events were some form of relay. I guess in order to have over twenty wide participation events there's no choice but to put running in most of them. There were four overall teams, separated by which area families lived in in relation to the school. There were some government officials that came and gave speeches at the opening and closing ceremonies, but I was glad to see that they were paid almost no attention :) Just because politics are more prominent here doesn't mean that people have to care about it.
After the morning events we got some bentos and left instead of waiting for the afternoon ones. This family like to drive, and we went up into the mountains (real mountains this time) north of Kyoto to Biwako, or Lake Biwa. I had heard of this lake outside of anime references because it's famous as the largest lake in Japan. From the shore, though, it looked pretty tiny. That was because a bridge in the distance was cleverly disguised to appear as the other bank. It is actually gigantic, I've only seen lake Pontchartrain as bigger. There was a large mountain to the west that looked like a nice two hour hike, but I knew we couldn't do that (this couple is elderly).
We did however, get to drive up it. And it was not, like thought, a simple mountain. It was none other than Hiei-zan, the legendary mountain of the origins of Japanese Buddhism. And it had only looked average because of the distance I was from it. This thing was huge! Even with the elevation differences, I bet it easily beats the height on the Appalachian mountains. The whole thing was like a bunch of mountains had gotten together and just piled on top of one another, because it extended farther than Asheville's city limits (which are deceptively large). The sides were lush with forest and as steep as the Pyrenees, and they just kept going up and up. At the first outlook I looked north and saw the second peak easily towering over the one I was on, and I was only 1/4 the way up then. In looked like a scene out of a Miyazaki film.
In case you haven't guessed, I love mountains.
Yesterday was a slap back to earth. With two tests and midterms coming up, there's just no way I'm going to be able to go to that festival on Thursday. I did all of my Japanese homework yesterday, just to be able to have enough time to study everything for Friday. This put me in a bad mood, which only compounded when my new tsume carved ridges into my fingers. And I really want to kill one of the dogs. I mean really kill. I've always held that animals are just as intelligent as humans, but now I've revised that to some animals. That little rat-thing is the very epitome of everything negative about canines, and it's not housetrained despite being with this family for over three years. Everytime it barks I want to kick it across the street.
I've got two months of this left, and I just can't see how it's all going to be filled up. We've only got two more chapters in the Genki book, and those will be gone in 2-3 weeks. What after that? Intensive review? We could sure use it.

Observations:
Everywhere I look, someone has a t-shirt with engrish on it. According to one: Garden Mosters-die by their own swordi dig their shoes they are like a child
What is it with bats and my hair? There's a colony living near me, and this isn't the first time I've had run-ins with one.
Apparently, it's just the middle-of-nowhere towns and big cities that are ugly. Once you get up by mountains, the small towns are really beautiful (I guess the same could be said of our cities).