Wheeeeeeee, I'm Back.

Heeeeey, unintentional hiatus is no longer in session.

Sorry. Again. *looks down at the ground in shame*

First things first: Pictures!

Recently, my friend Midori and her son Ben came to Japan for three weeks. When I was fourteen years old, my mom signed me up for classes at the Japan America Society in Washington D.C. and Midori was my very first Japanese teacher. Then, I started taking private lessons with her and my friend Kamille. Although we didn't keep up Japanese with her for the longest time, we still kept contact with each other, and we became more like friends than just a student-teacher relationship. I also became the babysitter :)

In short, I'm super happy we were able to meet with each other in Japan. She always made learning Japanese fun, with watching TV, eating snacks, and fun activities. I owe a lot to her for where I am today.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027095&id=1230390045&l=d6749b940e

The following are just more pictures of random times in Japan.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2024618&id=1230390045&l=bf2794838a

So basically, I've finished the semester....except for a paper, which I'm in the midst of writing. It's due on the 30th, so just a few more days!

The last day of classes was celebrated with karaoke and eating out at a nice Italian restaurant.
I'm eagerly awaiting my Paramore concert on February 13th. Once I see them, I will have seen my top three favorite bands EVER. I can't express how much glee this brings me.

And three days after that, I'm heading home for a break! I need to figure out also whether I'm going anywhere else, namely Hong Kong and/or Korea. I hate planning things.

Oh, and thanks to Midori/my mom, I have been able to enjoy the classy cuisine of Easy Mac right here in my own dorm. I have yet to find macaroni and cheese in this country, so despite it not being anything as good as my mother's, it was delicious. I also now have my special chai tea and Swiss Miss hot chocolate. Things are doing pretty swell right now.

I have to go to the Immigration Bureau and apply for a re-entry permit so I can come back here after I go home during the break. That's my mission on Monday. It's been sort of like this for the last few days - missions. Friday was getting medicine. I learned a while ago that sending 3 months of prescription medicine is illegal (oops) so my medicine was confiscated. After sending in a thousand forms and only getting a little piece of paper saying that I did something wrong, try again later (thanks for playing), I tried again. No response.

Sooooooooo, I had to go to a clinic to get some medicine. Fortunately, again thanks to my mother, I was able to get to a clinic where the staff and doctor speak English. This was the sort of thing I didn't want to be struggling in Japanese, so it went well....expensive, but I got what I needed.

Saturday's mission was getting my hair taken care of long after it needed it. As usual, my hairdresser Ikko was friendly, happy to see me and eager to talk to me in both English and Japanese. He told me that he recently ordered two volumes of One Piece manga in English so he could practice reading. I told him I do the same thing! A while ago, I bought three volumes of "Yostuba&!" manga (much cheaper here than in the US) and was able to understand about 90% of it. It was satisfying. I think I'll pick up a volume of One Piece for him when I go home.

And so far my break has consisted of re-watching the first season of Pokemon episodes with Elizabeth every night. The cheesiness is beyond overwhelming but it brings back good memories and other parts of it somehow more hilarious than before. We talked about how amazing the human brain is and how it can recall things that haven't been brought up, watched, or listened to in years. Like the PokeRap. Yeah. I remember parts of it still.

We're tempted to watch it in Japanese after we finish watching the English dub. We've also noticed how much Japanese culture is in that show that we weren't aware of when we were kids and how some things didn't translate well (for example, onigiri turned into donuts....ehhh? Not even close 4Kids!).

I live a simple life.