We had just got on the plane when I found out I was sitting next to my best friend Grant. “This is going to be so boring.” he mumbled as a teacher walked by. Soon we were up in the air. I decided to watch a movie. Of course there was nothing good so I watched tnt for some weird reason. As I watched I think I fell asleep while I was listening to it because I totally forgot the boring story line. After that Grant and I talked for 5 hours. After that I fell asleep.

When I woke up we had gotten to Japan. I looked out the window I saw pretty small buildings. I was kind of disappointed because I had seen all these pictures of huge towers and giant buildings. After we had gotten through security and everything, the entire class went to Kobe. When we got to Kobe we went to this big auditorium where we performed the stupid song we had rehearsed all year (it was really dumb and annoying). The song ended and then we all got on a bus and went to these weird hotel capsule things. These were cramped holes in the walls and our teachers put us in them because they were the cheapest places to sleep.

The next day we went to the Kobe earthquake memorial. We watched this weird video about the changing of the seasons which I have no idea how it’s related to earthquakes. Then we went and saw another video but this one was about the actual earthquake. They showed what happened using little army dudes with the ground shaking and those little toy trains with the faces. The only thing cool about it was the room shook and swayed. Finally we got out of the room and even our teachers looked bored which was rare

Well after all of the boredom we all learned that all of that was just 1 hour. We got in the bus and thought that this was going to be the most boring day ever but when we learned where we were going we cheered. We were going to Kobe tower. Kobe tower is this huge (like 400 feet high) building. It kind of looks like the space needle. The cool thing about it is that there were these telescopes that are super powerful. I put in 25 yen and I could see people in there cars about 90 meters away. There was also a carnival going on and we all wanted to see the people in the giant spinning thing.

But soon we had to go and everybody groaned with sadness. When we got on the bus my friend Andreas came over and started talking about how cool the tower was. I noticed out my window that Kobe is a lot like America because they have all of the malls and McDonalds and donut shops that we have except but in a whole different language. The thing about the malls is that they are gigantic. I mean 3 times the size of a normal mall. And inside you can find anything. Toys r us, borders, jc penny, Macys, and, GameStop just to name a few.

We were allowed 2 hours of shopping every day and me, Grant, Andreas, and Mika (who was kind of Grants girlfriend but I don’t know) went out with our chaperone and did all of this cool stuff. We even saw the newest Pokémon movie because Andreas loves Pokémon.

Fast forward 1 ½ weeks and we were going to check out the golden pavilion and the giant Buddha. When we saw the giant Buddha, Grant said “whoa I wonder how big its boogers are?” the whole class was allowed to climb this hug ladder and see any part of the body. Naturally Grant and I chose to see how big the boogers were. You might think there wouldn’t be any but the sculptors put in very good detail and the snot was as big as your hand. When I came down I told everybody how big the snot was but no one believed me. Grant and I think you could actually crawl through the nose. There was this stand over by the end of the tour and there were these really cute stuffed animal things. I got a moose and it cost me 1000 yen (which is about 10 dollars).

After the giant Buddha we went to go see the golden pavilion. Now you might think that it is not made out of gold that’s what I thought to. When I saw it the thing was huge and it is made out of solid gold. There are even gold statues around it. A pool was around it and there were koi fish and you know what they’re mechanical. Of course you couldn’t tell from the outside.

After all that we got on the plane and headed back home. On the plane I learned that I had to sit next to the abomination of the devil and my mortal enemy charlotte. Actually I didn’t need to do anything because she was asleep the entire time which is weird because usually she’s berating me for not having my shirt tucked in or whatever. When i got back home I fell asleep in my bed and had jet-lag for a week.