Blogs from Japan, Asia - page 805

Happy belated Canada Day!!!!! On Sunday I invited some of my Japanese friends over to celebrate Canada Day. It´s funny how being in another country for an extended period of time can bring out the patriotic side of someone. When I am in Canada, it feels like any other day except I have the day off from work and there are some fireworks in the sky at night. Not so this year, in the week leading up to Canada Day I found myself gabbing away to myself to my classes about Canada and Canadian culture, thankfully Japanese students are so polite they let me yammer away. I think most they were amazed that a country that has the second largest land mass in the world is only inhabited by 33 million people while their country is ... read more

On Danny's 4th day here, which also happened to be July 4th - although not really a big deal here in Japan, we went to Asakusa. Asakusa is known for its famous Kaminarimon Gate, as well as it's beautiful temple and 5-storey pagoda. Unfortunately though, when we visited the temple and got our fortunes this time, Danny and I had bad fortunes, but Larry had "best fortune" twice in a row!! NOT FAIR! After visiting Asakusa's history, we decided to search for another conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, because Danny could just not get enough of it! Well, after a few phone calls to the Japanese girls that Larry works with and many attempts at asking the locals on the streets, we finally found a place. A good place too....In fact, one of the plates that Larry tried ... read more

July 3 Today I’m okayama. Tomorrow, I’m traveling to Takahashi before Kurashika. Beyond that, there is not change in my schedule. So I opted out of taking the bullet train this morning because of how expensive it was. About twice as expensive as taking the local express train, which takes about 3-4 times as long. So I was on the train this morning for about 3+ hours when it really shouldn’t have taken nearly that long. O well. Also, the express train was running about an hour late. This is the first time I’ve seen any train in japan be more than 1 min late. According to my guide book, in Okayama, there is a third best public garden in all of japan. The Korakuen. After exploring the gardens, I decided to buy a ice cream ... read more

Well, the quarter had finally begun to wrap up - it seems that the SCTI midterm season is virtually contiguous with finals season. Which is regretful, because it lumps virtually all of the graded assignments into a few super-stressful weeks. Which, for me, are over with my last final (EE) having just wrapped up on Tuesday. Finally! After that, I have three intense days of summer vacation, followed by moving into my new apartment (!), followed by going to work on this upcoming Monday. And thus will begin the summer. Hardly anything of note has happened in the last few weeks: I worked hard, got a lot done, learned some academic stuff, but had very little time to party. I gave a presentation on J-Pop as my final presentation for Japanese class, and wrote a 1200-character ... read more

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