'Tis the season. Final entry for 2010

Hi All,

This will probably be my last entry this year, because well, we’ll have this wonderful 2½ -week break and lots and lots planned for it. I think it’ll be a fantastic break.

So... q(☆｡☆)p

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays ... in advance

This bamboo "Christmas tree" is in front of Mishima Station, lit from the inside with Christmas lights though it gives the impression that it's lit by candles.

This week nothing extravagant happened (again saving for the holidays), We had dinner at a very western-style restaurant called “Newton’s”? to catch up with some Japanese friends and just for the heck of it.

Our multilevel Japanese class devoted a class to calligraphy. That was a lot of fun; I truly do love calligraphy, both the Roman alphabet and Chinese characters.

It looks important but he's just writing (お酒 osake) alcohol.

Our Mongolian friend Khaliun Khailka celebrated her 21^st birthday this week and we celebrated at an Izakaya (Japanese style bar) –of course. Then we went to karaoke –of course. We met a lot of new people… and not so new people; two of my Spanish class students were there (>__<”) awkward lol. But a lot of fun nonetheless.

Even if I tried to explain this I am not sure I could.

We found an Anime Café called Aprecio near school. It has deals for students so it’s like a cheap lounge. It has a library of manga volumes, computers, billiards, darts and slot machines. As well as deals on unlimited soft drinks and ice cream. We went for the billiards. It’s great.

Everyone's unique billiards pose.

yup! that's mine lol hahaha

you know in my defense, I'm not terrible at billiards.

We met up with Yuriko, and went to Numazu (the next town over) to eat somewhere new and also to walk around. We ended up just going to karaoke (again). Sigh =\ lol why I must I conform to socializing butchering songs? When I sing maybe dogs cry somewhere.

This was soooo yummy! Mango syrup, this would be in my heaven.

Highlights

Billy and I went bike riding and too a detour to new streets. Our little adventure paid off as we found some fishing grounds we had never seen before and a splendid scenery that included Mt. Fuji –of course.

Damien, Billy and I walked around again feeling adventurous and found some random house that got carried away with their Christmas decorations. lol

And finally!! Try number 2 at joining a sport activities club!!! The club is a more social? type of volleyball club, much more laidback than the previous one we tried. So they are definitely not a team (Thank the forces that be) and they have agreed to try to speak to us only in Japanese (break through). And I think it’s a wonderful group of people, we ate dinner with them after practice =). I met like all 12 club members at once so don’t bother asking me names.

Well that's all for now.

'Tis the season to be jolly. Enjoy (^__^) so until have the holidays are done,

Later.

Line After Line

Hi All,

We are in December

(１２月 jūnigatsu)

wow!

The first decade of the 21^st century is coming to a close—scary (O__O)

Mt. Fuji is finally majestically fully covered in snow.

The semester is not over for us just yet. We will get about a 2-week break for the holidays and then have our finals in January. So good luck to all of you back home, as they say here: 頑張って! ganbatte (Try your best/Good luck).

Not much has happened because we are saving some fun (and money) to really go nuts during the holidays, especially since in late January we’ll be losing more than half our crew. The semester study abroad students will return to their perspective home institutions, Damien to France, Billy and Ka Lai to New York, Heather to New Jersey. We’ll also lose some Japanese friends studying abroad to the States… But! That’s not for a while longer.

We rented bikes again and visited Rakujuen Park. It’s quite nice. The park seems like it would be a good place to have Sakura Picnics in the spring. It offers a view of a river and a barely “autumn-like” scenery (-__-)

We went back to Tokyo for our dance lessons- Sigh. It’s gotten more difficult and I haven’t gotten any better at it, at all (T^T)… well 頑張ります ganbarimasu.

But after a hard lesson we walked around Tokyo again. Billy met up with two friends from SBU and Dale and I joined them with Mio who was in Tokyo also. We walked around Harajuku and Dale got some Japanese limited edition converses, or so claimed the sales person lol. We ate and walked to Shinjuku.

Not sure you can tell, but that's A LOT of people!

Christmas!

Highlights

Billy bought the coolest bento box for just over $5! and it was so pretty.

Billy’s friends took us to a café, Bear Pong No. 8. Which if I’m not mistaken originated in Brooklyn. And the atmosphere and interior design of the café was modeled after it.

Heather and I joined the calligraphy club after we were granted permission to do so (as you may recall you need permission from the presidents to join clubs here, and it’s generally seen as a long commitment and thus they normally don’t allow study abroad/exchange students to join because it’s not a good investment for them).

Any way…

Calligraphy is great. It’s a small group of students, Heather and I make it a total of 5 people and they don’t speak English (yay!). It’s as difficult as (insert unpleasant word) but I like it a lot. We practice making a line (一 ichi), that’s ONE line for over an hour! And did it look nice and pretty in the end? –no! And may I mention that I am left-handed and kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) strokes and brush stroke orders are designed to look pretty when drawn by a right-handed person!! (>___<”)… I can’t say I’m terrible at it, but pretty bad, and crooked and uneven…

Granted, Heather isn't much better than I am ='P

Well that's all for this week I suppose.

Again, Good Luck with finals for those of you back home.

Later.