So I've less than a month left in Japan. I'm starting to throw stuff away, pack things up, send last letters to people, and party even harder than usual (which has been catching up to me). We're at the end of the rainy season right about now, I'd say, though Mother Nature sure did dump a lot of water on us. One day we got more than three inches. Three inches! I didn't even try to go outside that day, even though I had classes. I wasn't about to go out in the pouring rain, get drenched on the way to [View Full Entry]

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I bought my plane ticket back home the other day. I'm leaving the dorm on the 29th of July, spending the rest of that day and that night in Fukuoka, then flying out of that airport at around noon on the 30th. Then to Narita in Tokyo, then to Seattle. From there, I have about a seven hour wait until I get on a plane to Helena. My parents and I were playing around with the idea of them driving from Montana to pick me up, but in the end we got a cheap flight, which will save them 20 hours [View Full Entry]

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Over Spring Break (which is equivalent to Summer Break in America for uni students) I traveled to Hiroshima and nearby Miyajima on my own, and then to Tokyo with a dorm mate of mine. I'd suggest going to the former, and staying away from the latter. Hiroshima was a cool town. Not too big, at about 1.3 million or something, and not too small. Downtown was readily accessible by foot, and all the major touristy things (the castle, the atomic bomb museum, art galleries, etc.) weren't horribly far away. I got around the city by foot over a few days just [View Full Entry]

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I've been on Spring Break since about the 19th of last month, and I don't start school until April 8th. The last few weeks have been ages coming and going, a big difference between the seemingly speedy passage of the days of school last semester. I haven't been doing much lately at all...staying up really late, becoming nocturnal, partying less than during the semester, playing a lot more video games (I love Diablo II) and reading quite a bit. I've also been exploring vigorously on my bike, riding for two or more hours in one direction starting from my dorm and [View Full Entry]

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So. It's been about two months since I last updated. Oops. Good thing that I talk to most of the people who read this on a regular enough basis that a blog really isn't necessary anyway. Suppose this is mostly a place to dump photos. I do however have some interesting stories. I went to Osaka and Kyoto over Winter Break with Rory and two of his Aussie friends that came to see us and travel in Japan, travelled around that area for about a week then came back to the good ol' Kumamoto. Osaka was alright. It's a big city, [View Full Entry]

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So I haven't updated in ages, but that's alright. That means I've been busy, and being busy is much better than being bored. Also, please forgive any bad English in this and future entries - I'm focusing so much on Japanese that I'm forgetting English little by little. Things have been going pretty damn well here in Japan. My classes are difficult, but I'm learning a lot in a rather quick manner. I'm beginning to understand more and more of what's said to me, no matter what the context or conversation topic might be. I'm still having trouble speaking Japanese quickly [View Full Entry]

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So you remember when I said that I didn't think I get stared at too hard? Well, I lied. Here's a story: I went downtown yesterday with John and Spencer (both from Montana) to look for some awesome shirts. (I found one, by the way. It's the most wicked awesome Daft Punk shirt I've ever seen. 28 bucks, but well worth it.) I decided that since we were going downtown, why not wear my "looking for a Japanese girlfriend" shirt? Seemed like a good idea to me. My gods was it a good idea. Literally 90% of the people we passed [View Full Entry]

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The dorm had its kangei (welcome) party today for all the new ryuugakusei. It was pretty cool. A lot of people showed up, and for some reason I got peer pressured into wearing my "looking for a Japanese girlfriend" shirt again. The funny thing about this is that about 95% of the people that came were Japanese girls. I was told by at least two girls that they were "hunting" for a boyfriend. Maybe I'm being to forward... But to the main point, and this is dedicated to Vince Arnone, the only person I know who will understand fully what I'm [View Full Entry]

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First of all I'm typing on a public computer in the international dorm here at Kumamoto Gakuen University, and the keyboard I'm using is a Japanese one, i.e., the keys are either in weird places or really, really small (the space bar is about the size of a regular shift bar, and the shift bar is the size of a letter key, way too small!) This is because my laptop is out of commission right now. Therefore, no Skype, no MSN/G-Talk/whatever for a while til I can get it fixed. I had never been to Canada before I flew up there [View Full Entry]

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