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.

Autumn

Hi All,

久しぶりねー(Hisashiburi ne?)　

It feels like it’s been a while right?

Well last week I had a midterm for my history class. Terrible. But here we are again. Some good things have happened though so let’s get to them.

Autumn has finally decided to present itself upon this place and it’s finally looking autumn-like. I generally love the fall because of the colors. The trees upon the decreasing sunlight say their goodbyes in reds, yellows and browns, a mosaic that entertains my eyes and puts me at peace … here I mostly see yellow however (-. –)... Still, I enjoy the crisp wind and last few days of warmth before I’m shoved in the despair of winter, minus the glitter of happiness in the form of snow –that I apparently won’t be getting at this latitude (-___-“). Maybe I’m not as happy as I thought… lol.

We found out that you can rent bicycles for free at the tourist office by Mishima station. Of course we got on that immediately and went bike riding. You can borrow them as long as you like until 4pm. And as often as you like, I’ll be going there frequently. We didn’t bike anywhere new per say just found things we’ve missed before, it was nice and enjoyable.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this but I apparently made an unconscious vow not to eat ramen. Why? I’m traumatized. Had some bad ramen, I was scarred, that sort of thing. I’ve stealthily passed the opportunity to eat it since I’ve arrived here, like a ninja =P. But any way, I finally had ramen. Didn’t finish the bowl but hey it’s a step forward no?

Had to go back to Tokyo for the dance performance lessons. Yeah, I suck. I’m really terrible at it. Given the amount of details in each step and me being like Dory from Finding Nemo…*sigh.

But any way, we used the time after to walk around and soak in the liveliness of the big city when we stumbled upon nothing less than that delicious fattening all-American fast food giant Burger King! *Tear.

I went to a Christmas Party for children of Colombian and Colombian-Japanese decent in Tokyo, hosted and sponsored by the Colombia embassy. The first secretary and consul Mr. Diaz invited me. It was nice. I had gone thinking I was going to volunteer but they kind of didn’t need my help. Billy and I got to meet the Colombian-Japan ambassador Patricia Cardenas, PhD though. Yay!

multiracial kids are SO cute!

We also went to Gotenba, the town over to view a set up for amazing Christmas lights. They are set up in a tunnel that is a lot of fun to walk through.

Highlights

Billy and I found out that here in Japan, the bubbles formed by the soapy water bought to have children play around with, don’t pop! Well they do, but not right away. They last really long and you can hold them!! Amazing, yes. They are actually made of something stronger than soap but we didn’t find out what.

Had a really interesting kind of soba noodle. The noodles were crispy, so fried. And then had a vegetable and pork stew poured on top. It was delicious but quite interesting to eat the competing textures at once.

I found a Churro! Longest Churro ever!

Apple pies here are deep-fried (>_<)

I think this is all.

Later.