Omiya Minami High School

Today we visited Omiya Minami Koukou (Omiya South High School). It's kind of like a sister school, except not, since Mansfield's too not cool enough to have a real sister school. Anyway, it was AMAZING. You have NO idea how excited they were about our visit. We arrived at the school and they had a banner up saying 'Welcome Mansfield State High School' with our school emblem on it. We went and sat in our classroom to wait for the special, full school assembly to start, which they don't usually have, but had organised just for us. Meanwhile, all the students were walking past and waving in the window excitedly. We went to the assembly, and as we walked in everyone started cheering and clapping as we walked up onto the stage. They organised a big assembly, where both schools were supposed to sing school songs and trade presents. We don't have a school song, and we just had a small present, so we did self introductions instead. They cheered us all (and laughed at some of our names - Jonathan is the name of a popular family restaurant over here). Ruby and I had to do a small speech, and then when the parade was over, we left the hall, and all the students down the side held out their hands for high fives, while everyone was clapping.

We went back to the room where we met our buddies, who showed us around teh school (it was lunchtime). Everyone was so excited, we got stopped in the halls everywhere we went, because lots of people wanted photos with us. They yelled out our names and waved as we went past, and just the school itself looked so fun. One guy sang opera for me and Erica in the hallway, and another three did an organised, synchronised dance. At one point Davis walked past and heaps of girls started screaming 'Deibis! Kawaii!' (Davis! Cute) and running up for photos. They absolutely worshipped us, and we all feel bad for how much of a nothing we do every time they visit our school.

In the afternoon we watched a tea ceremony that they do for club. The ceremony was great, but the tea, well... I love green tea, but this was green. Solid, murky, disgusting green. SOLID GREEN. We went with our buddies to see more clubs, then at then end of the day we all stood out the front, while all our buddies ran around excitedly taking photos with us and trading emails. I had one girl come up to me and ask "Do you have a girlfriend?". I told her no, and then she giggle, and her friend nudged her, before yelling shyly "I love you!". It was insane, you really had to be there to understand how excited they seemed for us to be there, they'd been looking forward to this day for so long. As the bus drove off, they all ran after (including the teachers). We looked like rockstars. And that's just some of the things that happened to me, but everyone had stories of how much these kids loved us (one guy followed Tom around at lunchtime fanning the back of his neck).

Disneyland tomorrow, Akihabara and going home on Thursday. We've only been gone for 8 days, but it's been the longest week of my life, we've done SO much.