Today we visited Toyota City. It was pretty neat to see all the cars being made and tested and even more amaizing to know that robots do 93% of the work. We also got to see some new futuristic cars and alot of hybrids. We even got to see a robot play the trumpet (I know thats not really car related but Toyota made a whole band of robots) Anyway I think my best part of the day was the ride back to the youth hostel from the Toyota plant. We had a 3 hour bus ride through the mountains and the veiw was amazing! You really know you are in a different country when you look out the bus window and you see miles of rice patties with a tiny town in the background and towering mountains in the distance. The mountains out here are huge rolling mountains covered in japanese pines and various other trees I have never seen before. But just when I thought they view couldn`t get any better the sun began to set and the whole picture was glazed in orange. The tiny houses on the outskirts of the rice patties had their lights on creating dots of lights in the distance. The sky was so clear you could see the clouds hovering on the tops of the mountains. I have to describe this because no pictue I took could do it justice. It was absolutly breath taking! Then Sara had her i-pod and decided to play Death Cab Transendentelisim (I can`t spell sorry). So basically I felt like I was watching a movie. It was awsome!

Well tomorrow after class we get to go meet our home stay families. We already got sheets describing themselves. My family is a mom, dad, 18 yr old daughter, 16 and 10yr old sons. But it sounds like the 18yr old daughter is the one in charge of me because she filled out the sheet and said she would be showing me around. Most of us our staying by ourselves with our families because they have so many host families. I am a little nervous because she mentioned she does not speak much english but I think it should be fun none the less. We will let you know how it goes when we return from our weekend home stays.