No Place Like London (Home)

Arrival, Settling in, Sumo, Random:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017965&id=1230390045&l=fe935f12ae

Yabusame:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020088&id=1230390045&l=e7e5b19b1f

Night Stroll!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020137&id=1230390045&l=93ef55fb67

Performances and First Night Out!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020615&id=1230390045&l=0b59e150e5

Halloween!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021650&id=1230390045&l=7d04beda4e

More Miscellaneous:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022079&id=1230390045&l=319d3e2ac2

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(Currently listening to Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street soundtrack. I find it amusing to put either song lyrics or song titles as subject liners when I cannot fathom one better. I will do this from now on, if I can't think of something relevant. The last one is from the soundtrack of the movie Paprika - which my gooooooooooood friend Carrie advised that I watch. I finally got around to watching it and I loved EVERY minute of it. Anyway, I digress...)

My plane ticket home has already been bought, courtesy of my mother. There goes my iron will to not come home until August. There are foreigners (such as some of the teachers at AGU) here in Japan who have not been home in years - I'm not ready for that yet, I suppose. It's just a three week visit from the middle of February to the beginning of March, and then back in Japan until I come home for good.

Only thing I'm not looking forward to are the people who will think I've become fluent in the time that I've been here. I'm not a genius and Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn, so says tons of sources. There are several times during one of my Japanese classes where I look at my assignments or just trying to process what is being said to me, and I wonder to myself: "Why did EVER I think this was a good idea?"

I could have kept up my Spanish and probably be a lot less stressed out. But no, I wanted to take Japanese. It certainly has lead me to meet the most interesting people though. My friends and I have discovered that the secret prerequisite to studying Japanese is that you must be at least little weird (in both good and bad ways). Japan seems to attract people like this, you see, for some reason. You can argue against this, but due to the intensity of the trend, I will stay true to my theory.

But as with most challenges, it's worth it right? Ganbarimasu...

In other news, today, I got to play with babies! Two little 2-year old boys who speak Russian and Japanese (Japanese fathers, Russian/Uzbekistani mothers). and the point was to start instilling English into their little heads by playing games, reading, singing songs, and other things of that nature. I was in my element. They were a little uncomfortable with us at first but they warmed up after a while and we had lots of fun. Honestly, it's Cat's job but she invited me because she knew how much I love working with kids.

I effectively got one of the children to definitely say "circle," "giraffe," and "oops."
I feel like a winner.