On Friday after school, I went to the pizza party at school. Maybe it was a fundraiser because it was 5 dollars. And don't feel bad, American readers. We only have this once every year. 

I went specifically with Thomas and Chris but many of my friends, like Man-chan and Mackay were there. This was held in the gym. The K-2 were from 3:45 ~ 4:30. Grades 3-5 was from 4:45 to 5:30. We danced for 15 min and ate for 30 min. Then, we kept dancing even though, the party was technically done. 

Before it was 5th grades party, Thomas, Chris and I went to Thomas's house. At his house, nothing really exiting happened. We just did Nerf wars and that stuff.

 

In the gym were U shaped arranged mats that walled of the dancing area. Outside the mats were 3 food tables, one for each grade. On one side of the dancing area was the DJ's office. It had piled up mats to protect Mr. Suzor (teacher/DJ) and the computer. On the mats were 2 color lens disco balls and one pinwheel light thing and a blinking blue spotlight. On the ceiling was a mirror, spinning disco ball with 2 spotlights pointing at it. On the balcony, there were these things that make tiny green dots go around on the floor, walls and ceiling. I never would have thought that the school owned this stuff.

I had 4 slices of Domino's pizza. I also had 4 cup cakes. The cupcakes were made by some of the parents. The food was really good. The pizza was either, cheese or pepperoni. If you think that I ate a lot, then think about Chris. He had 11 slices and 1 cup cake. They also served juice boxes. I had 2x peach. 

When we got there the principal was making a speech. Then she said, "let's get the party started". The music had not started yet but one of the 3rd graders started dancing like an octopuss and said"come on, let's dance". Then the music started and we all started to dance. When I say dance, it is not one of the couple dances. It is rock and rollish. 

After the party it was just Thomas and I at his house. We watched some videos and wrestled a bit until my dad came to pick me up.

The pizza party was very fun. I would make them longer though. Last year it was and hour 30. In middle school we have dances more often. I with they did this more often.

Ski trip (this year's)

This year I went to ski trip again. Ski trip is with the school and is 3 days and 2 nights. We went by bus this year and it took like 3.5 hours. This year was really fun.

The main things that we did were:

Ski: A couple weeks before the trip we had to do a form to see what level you are in and what sort of stuff you can do. The levels are 1~9 (1 = lowest) . At the trip you get put in a group. The groups are 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, 2b, ... 4b, 4c, 4d (4d = lowest). I was in 3D, get it?

My ski group was OK. I had a lot of 4th graders and a couple 5th graders. One of the 4th graders got moved down instantly. And another 5th grader joined in the first day. We had four sessions within 3 days. The first session was mostly testing. The second session was a fun session. We got to go to the top of the mountain and come down. Then in the third session, nothing really exiting happened. In the fourth session, it was cool conditions. There was soooo much powder you couldn't see your skis sometimes. On that day lots of interesting things happened. 1: We went to the ski area where you go in long turns around these things that have 2 poles and a net connecting them x 7 and you ski around it (if you know the what this is called, please comment it so I don't have to write the giant, on-going sentence I just wrote). And everyone crashed at the bottom. 2: [ My favorite part :) ] We went in this SpongeBob obstacle course where you duck under these arches and hit these poles with your pole. It was really fun (but our teacher said it was "rubbish" because he was British).The skiing part was really fun and helpful. I learned how to do parallel skiing.

Sled: At night we got to go sledding. We had to take a short hike up to a really fun spot. We had to go over the rules "don't walk up the center, ladada, sled down the center, don't go past here, that stuff" Then most kids ran off with there friends saying "lets race" or stuff like that. I personally liked the snow-play better then sledding because the first night, you couldn't see because it was foggy and the second night the snow was so wet I could go about 2 meters and I would stop. On the second night, a 4th grader found an ice boulder stuck to a wall. So we tried to get it un-stuck. We got it off and tried to push. It was too heavy. So he got a bunch of others to help and we pushed it down the hill. Then we needed the P.E. teachers help because it was flat ground. We got it on the slope where everyone could see it. In the mourning, it was gone!

Skit: This year, we (5th grade) had to do the skits the first night. My group's skit might have been the funniest. It was about a guy in an Italian restaurant and he gets sleeping pills in his pizza. Then 2 detectives come and arrest (Deleted for spoiler alerts). Another funny thing was the entry skit for the second night. One of the teachers and student's parents put on a concert at the beginning.

Ski trip was really fun. I can't wait for the middle school ski trip. We get to go for 5 days!

Max Brenners

This week on Thursday (which was in mid-winter break) I went with my mom for a morning snack to a chocolate café called Max Brenners.

Max Brenners is in Hiroo, a station very close to us. There are 3 locations in Tokyo and this is the least busy one. People are always lined up for the one in Omotesando (wherever that is) but there is sometimes a line here. We didn't have to wait because it is not an international holiday and almost no one was there.

Max Brenners is a really good chocolate café. It basically only serves chocolate. We got the European style fondue. (Fondue is something dipped in something else, in this case, melted chocolate.)  My friends would have liked to have gone but they are skiing. The fondue had 3 sauces, white and dark chocolate and a carmel sauce. My favorite sauce was the white chocolate. But you can swap dark or white for milk chocolate. There was a bowl of cookies and brownies to dip. It also came with strawberries and bananas to dip. It included a mini stove that was lit by a lighter. And we cooked marshmallows!

 My favorite was either the toasted marshmallow in white chocolate or the brownie in the white and dark chocolate. It was a bit too much for my mom and I. We had a couple bananas left.

Max Brenners also had a lot of hot chocolate, tea and coffee kind of stuff. But they had chocolate pizza, chocolate burgers and awesome stuff like that. I don't know for sure but I think that the chocolate-burger is a cookie bun, chocolate patty and white chocolate cheese.

( Fun fact; Max Brenner, the guy who started it {in Israel by the way} was bald. On a cup it said, "Chocolate from the bald guy, Max Brenner.")

Max Brenners was an amazing café, I think all of my loyal readers should go there (of course if you are in Chicago reading this it might not be worth it but...)

Setsubun

Last week we had setsubun. This blog post will be different then the last years because I got to do something special.

If you haven't read the last years Setsubun post, this is the main idea of setsubun: setsubun is on the 3rd of February and is a festival about good luck. You throw soybeans at the oni (who are translated to ogre) because they represent bad luck. While you throw the beans you chant. To chant you say "oni wa soto. fuku wa uchi". This roughly translates to "bad luck get out. Good luck come in".

At Nishimachi the new teachers dress up as the onis are who have masks, special cloths and really broken brooms. But the new principal did not be an oni. One of the oni did a handstand in front of everyone. I thought that oni was a new middle school teacher (male) because it looked like his brown shoes. Nishimachi has a big cutout oni that you throw the beans at, so the teachers don't get annoyed.

This setsubun I was playing the taiko because I am in the music SAFA. SAFA means sports and fine arts. It is like a class that rotates every month or so, so you get to do PE, music, art and drama every year. In music SAFA we got to practice taiko. We have been doing taiko for 2 weeks but we only have SAFA once a week so we needed to skip recesses once. On the day we played outside in the cold with no coat for almost an hour. We played while the oni danced and while the kids were throwing at the cardboard oni's mouth. There were 10 kids playing at setsubun and only 4 have played taiko before and I am the only one who is still playing taiko. The other 6 have learned really well.

Setsubun was really fun. It is sad that the middle schoolers don't get to do it.

Saturday sports

Yesterday I went to Saturday sports. It's held at the school in the gym, for all of elementary school, but there are different sessions. The session for 4-5 grades is at 11:30 ~ 1:00. The person who runs it is the P.E. teacher and some other person who also helps with soccer. There were also some other guest people that I will talk about later. Saturday sports is free and optional. Saturday sports is not every week. A bit inconvenient.

There are about 15 kids that went. The kids that were there were, Thomas, Angus, Gabby, some kid I had never seen in my life, a bunch of 4th graders and I.

The game that we played this Saturday was handball. Saturday sports is not always handball but it sounded like there was a handball workshop some weeks back. The one other time I went, we played basketball. For handball we used a dodgeball and 2 small soccer goals. The guest coaches were some guy that I don't know about and an Icelandic pro handball player. This is a very high achievement because Handball is Iceland's national sport. He was like 7 feet tall. The guest coaches were there mostly to teach us the rules and ref. Handball is a bit like soccer and basket ball. This is because you can dribble, pass and shoot like in basketball. But we used the soccer goals. There is a keeper, and in this case, 6 other players on a team. The positions are keeper and everyone else is either all attack or all defense. No real positions. We played one loooooong game that was 1 hour long. I was really tired because all we had was half time and there is only one half time

The scoring is really interesting. The "penalty box" is not in-bounds for everyone except the keeper. You need to score from outside the line. For each goal you get one point like soccer. My team lost and the score was 3-4. I had played a game called handball in the US but it was very different. I liked handball but I like soccer better because you don't have to shoot from so far away.