Yes yes yes!!! I might be getting my hands on a free Japanese high school biology textbook!! Ha ha ha life is good life is good! So I e-mailed five or six high schools in the area where I studied abroad, asking if a science teacher could recommend a biology book to me, and I got a response tonight from a teacher that's willing to GIVE me a book ( Read more... )

So last weekend Kansai Gaidai University had its annual Culture Festival (Bunkasai), from Friday to Sunday. I skipped Friday to finish my long-neglected history paper, but I caught Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning at 10:00 me and the other Soran Bushi dancers assembled in front of Kansai Gaidai’s international student building and performed ( Read more... )

I haven't felt well since Sunday. At Universal Studios (Saturday) I started getting a cough in the afternoon, and on Sunday I woke up with uncomfortable drainage in my throat (the kind where your throat is raw and it's hard to swallow because there's so much mucus), that sick kind of fuzzy feeling in my head, and I felt really tired. But I took ( Read more... )

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to Universal Studios Japan (USJ) with my Japanese friend Marina. When I met her 3 weeks ago she asked me if I knew about the "Hard Rock Cafe," and I just so happened to be wearing a Hard Rock Cafe: Niagra Falls T-shirt that my friend had given me. So Marina told me that there is a Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka, next to ( Read more... )

So on Wednesday I went on a field-trip to a Japanese elementary school with my Japanese speaking class. It was fantastic; meccha tanoshikatta! Our class met next to the Kansai Gaidai library at 9 am, where we were brought to the elementary school in taxis (less than 5 minutes away). When we arrived at the school we took off our shoes and slipped ( Read more... )

Since coming to Japan the language barrier has been my adversary. In the past six weeks I have managed to butcher the Japanese language in more ways than even a Japanese person could come up with. There are just so many syllables it's easy to slip up. For example, "thank you" is "do-u-i-ta-shi-ma-shi-te." What a mouthful! And conjugation only ( Read more... )

Ever since I met Nori at Moffitt two years ago and mentioned that I'd like to study abroad in Japan, we've been talking about him coming to visit me while I'm in Japan. This weekend was the culmination of that planning: my weekend with Nori; one of the best of my life. He showed me around the historical cities of Nara and Kyoto, the first and ( Read more... )

Last week ended on a really bad note, but this week has begun on a really great one (Ninja!). So I'm going to write about the bad part first, just to get it out of the way, and write down my plan to change the things I don't like because I think writing it down might strengthen my resolve, and finally I'll get to the juicy ninja bits. So you can ( Read more... )

Hi, everybody. Another exciting update from Japan ( Read more... )

Wow, today was one of those days where I just have to sit down and write about it... in the future I want to come back and read this entry and be reminded of what a cool day Wednesday, September 27, 2006 was! I may be building this up a bit, but what happened today is what I've wanted to happen since school began 3 weeks ago, and since the ( Read more... )