Unfortunately I can't upload photos I take from my camera until I get back to the United States, only the ones taken from my iPhone. I'll try to take more pictures with my phone from now on and update the posts with more photos when I return home.

The first stop on our excursion was to Takayama a town known for its carpentry, morning markets, and Sarubobo - a faceless doll meant to bring good luck to females in regard to marriage and child bearing.

Sarubobo are on a ton of local products.

If you think the Sarubobo are kind of creepy check out this guy.

Statues like this were also all around the town.

The hotel we stayed at in Takayama had an onsen, Japanese for hot springs, but I wasn't able to find any place where I could get a picture of just the hot spring. What I did take a picture of was one of the other students who was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z getting owned by an arcade game at the hotel.

Right before leaving some of us walked around the town to see if we could find anything interesting and we ran into this beauty. All of the decals, figures, and body pillow in the back seat are to my knowledge from a Japanese video game called Touhou.

As a side note hoping to get Grizzly a hand carved bear as a souvenir I memorized the phrase for "Do you have a bear" - "Kuma ga arimasu ka?" My quest was unsuccessful and I'm pretty sure I saw a carved form of every major animal other than a bear. 

Once the entire program had meet and got everything organized we jumped on a bus for a three day excursion before going to Tokyo. 

A few things immediately stood out after the trip began, first that Japan has a lot more mountains then I expected -

- and second that almost anything you buy at a convenience store has an animated character on it.

Apple Juice

Gum with a chance to win a prize (took over ten minutes of a cashier waving her hands around and pointing at things to get that message across to me. Obviously I didn't win.) 

Here is a look at one of my first meals, Takoyaki, which are basically octopus dumplings.

If anyone ever told you that Japanese toilets have tons of buttons and are awesome they were right. Terrifying the first time you have to hit the buttons, but amazing once you figure out how they work.

Hello everyone so I'm here with my home-stay family now and finally have a reliable internet connection to update my blog. If anyone is interested I'll probably be posting most of the pictures on Facebook as well.

Getting ready to land in Narita.