The past few months have indeed flown by very quickly for me, due mostly in part to how much I’ve been working. But along the way I’ve had some wonderful adventures with people I love and appreciate that break up the madness that is “bake, rinse, repeat” on a daily basis. It’s hard to believe that in just a couple of weeks it will already be April—it feels like only yesterday I was celebrating New Years with Sarah and Emma, and here I am now preparing for Hanami and a trip to Sweden. For the first three months of this year [View Full Entry]

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This entry is extremely belated and I’ve wanted to post it several times in the past few weeks. But looking at photos that Andrew posted on facebook was all the inspiration I needed to get the words out that I wanted to say.. and really, those words are simply “I’m so lucky”. I have so much to be grateful for this year, and not enough ways to say thank you enough. At this time last year I wasn’t even sure I’d be going to Japan. I couldn’t get the student aid I needed from my university, and I couldn’t find someone [View Full Entry]

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It’s impossible for me to compare my experiences in Sweden to anything else I’ve ever felt in my life, because to do so would be presenting a non-truthful perspective. For me this trip was a homecoming: As I went through the security checkpoint at Dulles International my mother said, “Now you’ll see if this is what you really want to do. Now you’ll know if you really want to move”. And when I was looking back at tram stop at Frölunda Torg I was already certain of where I want to be, and of where I belong. There have been many [View Full Entry]

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A random memory, but it came to me as I was packing my suitcase this morning and looked up to see a caricature of J-rocker I drew about two years ago. For our Japanese classes in university in the first through third year we were required to do skits at the end of each semester to illustrate our grasp of the Japanese language. And for me I always ended up doing the most random and insane things: first semester I was helping my friend who was hungover after drinking too much beer for lunch, second semester Sora and I did a [View Full Entry]

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“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. Happiness is a journey, not a destination.” --Souza For once I will take [View Full Entry]

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A random way to start off this entry, but it will break the ice from being so long at bay from posting. I made this entry over at MySpace and LiveJournal this morning, and thought that it could very well work in the Travel Blog as well (since it deals with language, language barriers, accents, etc.). So this is a small lesson in life with regards to words in Southern American English that differ from standard American English. In other words: see how the South bastardizes American English even further. To me the Southern dialect is much more laid back, sloppy, [View Full Entry]

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Tina, I really wish you had been here today. This morning I made my mom and her boyfriend some buckwheat pancakes with chopped walnuts and a caramelized pan fried apples in substitution of maple syrup. It was one of those moments where as a cook I wasn’t quite sure if I liked the outcome or if something could have been different. But cooking pancakes this morning made me think of the Running Club I was in back at Kansai Gaidai. On our first long run to Yamada-ike Koen the entire walk back all Tracy-Sensei would talk about was pancakes, how good [View Full Entry]

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Interrupting your regularly scheduled seriousness for an update that shows how much of a geek I can truly be! And yes, Felix. I went to Otakon. :P What is an "anime convention"? I sure as hell wish I could give you a proper answer for that one. It seems to be a mishmash of different things all combined into three days of amazing, awesome, and complete insanity. The intended purpose is to gather people of a shared interest together so you can bond and meet other people just like yourself. But really, anime conventions have different meanings for different people. For [View Full Entry]

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A fair warning: this entry is going to be long and picture heavy. :P I talked with Felix a little bit today about guidelines with regards to relationships, and how religions and other personal morals govern them. This not only includes married couples or couples in general, but also the relationships we have with our friends, our families, and people that we meet on the streets in everyday interactions. We each have our own personal morals by which we live; we each have standards on how our life should play out, and we each have our own different ways on how [View Full Entry]

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This entry is dedicated to everyone reading this who continues to care and support me through the changes and different tangents my life takes. I woke up yesterday morning around six am to the sound of gunshots. They weren’t interspersed, but rather came one after the other in a very terrifying fashion. Upon checking the news nearly an hour later I learned that six men had been shot and killed after the hours of ten pm Friday evening in the District of Columbia, and the gun shots I heard no doubt were the last in the string of murders before the [View Full Entry]

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