I'd like to be, under the Sea. But I'm going to Utsunomiya!

So, on what seems like a long, long time ago on the 21^st of January, I woke up to a pretty cool email from Helen at AIIU that read, simply, “Dear Lucie, I am happy to tell you that your host school will be Utsunomiya Bunsei Girls High School”. That was the first time I’d ever heard of the existence of a Japanese city called Utsunomiya, and let me tell you, at first, I could hardly get my head around the name (“Utsu-whatta?” I thought, leaving very little time to check the spelling as I excitedly punched into Google words that seemed to vaguely resemble “Utsunomiya” but were more along the lines of “Utsonuminomoya” and “Utsonumiya” and “Sddjsjsddsj3565kss” as my fingers mercilessly mashed the keyboard).

But now, I can finally very proudly say that the name ‘UTSUNOMIYA’ is firmly planted in my mind (that’s right! It’s lodged right in me’ cranium! I’d sooner forget the name of my first born child!). And the Sunday after next, on the 27^th of March at Utsunomiya Station, I’ll be meeting up with my first host family. Yep. I’m excited. Airpunch here.

A little about Utsunomiya, first, though!

For all you out there without a clue where the heck it is (like me, before the great all-knowing and ever enlightening Wikipedia graced me with its divine knowledge), Utsunomiya lies in Tochigi Prefecture, apparently only about one hour from Tokyo by Shinkansen (Bullet Train), and is not only the prefecture’s capital city, but is also the capital city of THE MIGHTY GYOZA.

That’s right! According to my trustworthy friend Google Search, Utsunomiya’s apparent claim to fame is the deliciousness of its gyoza, and there are, apparently, “as many as 30 specialty shops”, all dedicated to gyoza in the area. Which is great, because I do love me some good gyoza, and it should be interesting to see how Utsunomiya’s gyoza compares to the gyoza my mum and I buy at Bondi Junction. There’s also supposedly an annual Gyoza Matsuri (Gyoza Festival) in Utsunomiya to celebrate the humble gyoza (you can read an interesting and quite hilarious account of it here, at a really interesting blog :D) and, quite bizarrely, outside Utsunomiya station lies (wait for it) a stone statue of Venus De Milo (we’re still normal) wrapped in a gyoza (OF COURSE! ... wait... whaaaa?).

All in all, Utsunomiya seems a very quirky place that I can’t wait to get to know, so I look forward to stepping out onto the train platform, meeting my first host family and looking around the area for the first time. <3>

Well, I was going to write about my host school, but I’m a tired and lazy bugger, so tomorrow I’ll post about it (why did I leave writing this blog up to the last minute?! Raaagh! ... oh, yeah. The lazy bugger thing, right).

Host family post should soon follow suit! :D Just yesterday I was contacted by email by my first host sister... and she wrote back again, today, so I'm so excited! But I can't get ahead of myself here, so more about that later!

Thank you very much again for reading my mind numbing ramblings! ほんとうにありがとうございました！＜３