I have so many thoughts and emotions inside of me right now about my life in Japan and as I have only been back in the states for 3 weeks (and might I add -- 3 jam packed thanksgiving, wedding, moving across the state, starting my US job hunt weeks) I have not yet fully processed them, so please forgive me if I am unable to fully express myself when you ask, "How was Japan?" If you ask I will most likely tell you, "It was amazing," and give you one or two trite bits about how beautiful the country is [View Full Entry]

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I must be the luckiest girl in the world to have met Emi Sato and her family!!! Today, Emi's mother, Takako, planned a special little day trip for us to Hamamatsu, a city about an hour south of Shizuoka City. We started off this morning at about 9:30 and drove across a couple of different rivers (Tenryo was the most famous one) and through heaps of green tea fields to get to our first stop, a small museum in Hamamatsu dedicated to the importance of Fragrances...kind of random but really interesting. Inside the museum we got to go into a bunch [View Full Entry]

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How much more Japanese can you get???? Oh goodness where do I start? What a crazy two weeks it has been in Japan for Nova teachers! I am currently unemployed and broke as a joke. Two weeks ago on October 26th Nova "temporarily closed all of its schools" and filed for corporate rehabilitation after about 3 months of not paying employee salaries, rent on buildings, rent on employee apartments etc etc etc. Prepare for a lengthy blog because as I said a moment ago, I have no job and no money to go travel and therefore LOTS and LOTS of time [View Full Entry]

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We survived! (sigh of relief!!!) Mixing the travel styles of a 25 year old, poor backpacker and two 50 year old first class travelers (who might I add definitely deserve to travel first class after all of their hard work in life :), is a bit of a challenge but I must say that overall I think we did a really good job. Besides the small finger marks on my neck that still burn a bit to the touch, hahah, my mom, dad and I managed to traipse through the trains, buses and subways of Tokyo, Shizuoka and Kyoto relatively unscathed. [View Full Entry]

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I just got back from a wonderful weekend with some relatives in Tokyo. Before I left for Japan, my grandparents gave me some addresses of relatives living in Japan. When I arrived I sent a small letter to a woman named Yasuko, who I think is my Grandparent's cousin? Am I right Grandma and Grandpa, I can't believe I still can't get it straight. Anyway, Yasuko wrote back promptly and we wrote back and forth a few times exchanging more current family pictures. About a month after our initial contact, Yuka, Yasuko's daughter wrote and invited me to Tokyo to stay [View Full Entry]

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Just a quick update on some of my recent whereabouts... There are festivals galore throughout August in Japan and while I did not make it to any of the big, famous festivals this year, I found a small one in Shizuoka, about a 25 minute bike ride from my apartment last Wednesday. It was held at a shrine that Dawn and I found about a month or so ago on some random exploration of Shizuoka. The shrine is tucked away at the base of a hilly, tree covered mountain and for this particular festival, there were hundreds of lanterns lit up [View Full Entry]

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Summer is in full swing out here in Shizuoka. It's my day off today and I am sitting here writing in a little summer dress, with the fan blasting full speed ahead onto me as I try to avoid melting in the summer heat. It's actually not that bad though, and is far better than it was about a week ago because at least now the heat is dry heat and there isn't as much humidity. Despite the heat and humidity I am enjoying all the little quirks that come along with summer in Japan. (The seasons here are all so [View Full Entry]

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Here are a few pictures of my recent walkabouts and random wanderings through Shizuoka. Last weekend Dawn and I decided to take the Shizutetsu (the local train) to a neighborhood near Ito Yokado (where we work) to just explore a little bit. We got off the train a stop after our stop for work and just started walking. We ran into all kinds of crazy things, Japanese Driving School courses, bamboo forests, Japanese neighborhoods, massive Japanese apartment complexes, driving ranges, a small park which led to a shrine (which I have included some pictures of), a huge cemetery and a [View Full Entry]

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Summer time has definitely begun in Japan, I am pretty sure I am going to melt this summer. A friend and I decided to escape the heat and head for the coast yesterday. We made our way out to the Izu Peninsula an area just west of Shizuoka that is famous for ohnsen and beautiful coast lines. It is also famous for a small town called Shimoda which is where a US consulate was set up in 1856 when Japan first opened its ports to Commodore Perry and Westerners. Leslie is another Nova teacher I met back in March at [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday I had a bit of an internal consumer crisis. You see I live about 10 minutes walking distance from the main shopping street in downtown Shizuoka and while that is a nice convenience at times, it is also really bad for the consumer in me. Every time I walk down the street (which is quite often because it is on my way to work and it is the center of life really in Shizuoka) I am forced to engage in an internal battle ---my desire to live a simple life vs. my desire to impulsively buy every Japanese knick [View Full Entry]

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