First of all, sorry about the major lack of updates. I really am bad about keeping up with these things. Secondly... I FOUND MY BRAVE FENCER MUSASHI MANGA. After many months of searching... and an enormous amount of Book-Offs... I found them. And I'm so happy now. Very, very happy. Anyways, today will mainly just consist of a bunch of random pictures from the many things I've done the last couple of weeks. Pretty much just my favorites. I took millions more, so when I get home, everyone can see all of them, but for now, it would take me about [View Full Entry]

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So I went to Tokyo this last weekend. Talk about an adventure! Some of you probably already know that... my plan was to go to the Tokyo Game Show! Color me excited! It was certainly the experience. Extremely busy, as in... SO MANY PEOPLE that you get in a crowd and you absolutely cannot MOVE and you're just getting pushed along with the mob. Crazy. But overall, it was a ton of fun, even though it was tiring. The weekend started off on Friday night after archery club (oh yeah, did I tell everything that I joined the archery club? It's [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the lack of updates. The combination of my only being able to get online at school and all the stuff I've been doing making me extremely busy has made it a bit hard, but I've finally gotten a good chunk of time where I can sit down and type an entry. Hmm... how far back do I need to go...? Oh, oh, two weekends ago. Asuka trip. That's the last thing I haven't written about. So we had a class field trip to Asuka, which is a very historical section of Japan. It was a big bike trip! It [View Full Entry]

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So, I've done quite a number of different things since my last entry, from routine things to pretty amazing awesome things. I've experienced okonomiyaki, which... I must say... is absolutely DELICIOUS. Everybody should have some okonomiyaki at some point in their life. Yum. Plus, they cook it right in front of your table. Like, well, ON your table, as it were. Let's see, what else have I done... this weekend was Casey's 20th birthday, so we had a whole big day planned that was purdy fun. We went to Den Den town in Osaka, which, if you know what Akihabara is [View Full Entry]

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A collection of facts that I've learned in Japan so far: 1) English music is everywhere. Commercials. Playing from random stereos outside stores. And it can be in many forms too, sometimes without words. 2) English *celebrities* are everywhere. Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johanssen, Tommy Lee Jones, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley... tons... 3) Just about everything you can buy, you can find at a store somewhere for very cheap. Go to the mall, clothes are expensive. Find a local Avail shop or other equivalent, clothes are extremely cheap. And books? Books are already cheap, but find a u [View Full Entry]

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So I had quite the exciting and full weekend for the most part. It was fun!! We didn't have school on Monday either, which made it even better. It was Respect for the Age day, or something like that. Not really sure. But anyway, I will probably split it up into two entries because both days that I went and did something were quite long!! So anyway, Friday night... not a whole lot of new things going on. Though apparently, Otosan came back that night! He must have come back very late. Okasan waited up for him, but both Mai-san and [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's been another few days. Not a whole lot of real new stuff going on. I'm actually starting to settle down into a good routine, which feels pretty nice for a change, ahaha. My walk to campus is quite pleasant, my classes are all going well... I think they're going to be pretty fun and interesting. Plus, it's Friday! And it's a three-day weekend this weekend! It's like... Respect for Age day, or something. Not really sure. But we get the day off on Monday, so it's all good. There's quite a number of random holidays that I don't quite [View Full Entry]

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So things are starting to get a lot easier overall here. I'm getting more accustomed to my schedule, I'm getting used to my host family and their home, I'm getting used to my classes... yes, I can say that I'm really starting to get settled. Which is nice. Definitely. It's not very fun feeling like everything's coming at you at once and nothing is familiar, let me tell you that!! Food continues to be an adventure. So far, there's only been one thing that I've really... just... and I mean *really* don't like. Which was this strange thing that Okasan put [View Full Entry]

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Whew! It's certainly been a lot weekend, and now... Monday again. Back to class. All that jazz. It's also been quite the exciting weekend! On Saturday, we went to check our placement for Spoken Japanese, and I got into Level 2!! I'm so excited!! That made me quite happy. The rest of Saturday, we didn't have much to do, so explored around Hirakata Station for a bit (and found the biggest bookstore to date!) and then went to a new karaoke place (and by we, I mean Casey, Ellen, Dave, Alex, John and I). Vicki and Laura had already moved into [View Full Entry]

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Ahhh, the last day of orientation. It's both extremely nice as well as nerve-wracking at the same time, because that means it's almost time to move in with my host family!! Which I found out won't be until Sunday at 4:30. Ahaha, wow... now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do until then!! But ah well, it will give me some time to relax and make sure I have my bags all packed and ready to go. Today we had the last of our briefing... meeting... things... there was some more good information to be learned there. [View Full Entry]

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