July 22nd, 2008
Ohisashiburi! It’s been a long time, eh? Well, since it’s coming down to the end of the semester here, I’ve been busy with this and that, but I’ll try to give you all a bit up an update now. There were festivals at the beginning of the month, then a camping trip with my club and the culture festival at my host family’s daughters’ school. Also, in other exciting news, I have successfully applied for an extension, so I will be staying here in Japan until February 2009! One semester just wasn’t enough. Well, without further ado, let’s get on with it!
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June 14th, 2008
It’s been a while since I posted in this space, huh? Well, I just took my first trip during my time here: a couple days down in Tokyo with some of my Korean friends. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first I thought that I’d try to play catch-up and go over what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks since I posted last.
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May 20th, 2008
It’s been a pretty full weekend for me once again. Since Wednesday, I went to the second concert on Thursday (which rocked), went to Aomori with Hwang and Paku, did CPR training with my club, went out for karaoke and finally, on Sunday, spent the entire day with my new host family. Well, let’s get into then, shall we?
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May 15th, 2008
Sorry for taking so long to get a new post up! I’ve been busy with this and that, but I decided that enough was enough and that I’m writing this thing now. Thank you for bearing with me. I also decided that from now on I’m going to use a jump on my posts, since the long pages on this site are making it difficult for some people to load it properly. Click the following link to read the rest of the post.
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May 1st, 2008
On Sunday and Monday, I went out to the nearby town of Fujisaki to participate in some cultural activities intended for foreigners. I first heard about the offerings the week before, Hwang and Paku, both Korean students, came into the International Center at school to ask if I had signed up. I hadn’t, so they gave me the run down. There were a variety of events throughout the week - a welcome party, kimono, visiting local schools, a kite flying festival and making mochi, which are a kind of doughy rice cake. I was able to make the first two.
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April 27th, 2008
I’ve been having another great week in Japan. This past Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended hanami on three separate occasions at Hirosaki park. Situated in the northeastern portion of Hirosaki, the park is home to about 2600 cherry trees, which all have spectacularly blossomed. I’ve been told that over the course of “Golden Week” (which happens next week), about 2 million people will pass through Hirosaki park. I will now do as many other gaijin already have and cover my blog here with photos of pink trees.
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April 20th, 2008
This past week has been one of adjustment - it’s been a long while since I last went to classes at a college level. Like I mentioned in my last post, I last went to classes last fall semester at UMaine, about four months ago. Now I’ve gotten my schedule all worked out and I feel like it won’t take long for me to get back into the swing of things. I’ll talk a bit about my classes, and then about the weekend, which was exceptionally fun - there was a welcome party for the new foreign students and then rafting with the club I just joined, the adventure club, or tanken-bu.
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April 12th, 2008
This one isn’t going to have a day associated with it because I haven’t been able to keep up with writing about everyday. The main reason for this (if you follow my Twitter then you know) is that my MacBook’s hard drive crapped out on me on Monday. However, everything is good and back up and running. So this will be a quick post to get everyone back up to speed on what’s been happening the last couple of days or so.
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April 10th, 2008
I met Lim upstairs at his room exactly at nine o’clock, just as we planned. He was already cooking some rice in his rice cooker, the steam warming the room. He mentioned that he was watching a “dorama” on his computer, but when I went to see what it was I found it not to be a drama at all, but rather a comedy. He was watching the American version of “The Office.” I was pretty surprised. I told him how popular the show is in America and how my brother Will is a big fan.
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April 10th, 2008
It’s been a couple days since I’ve been able to sit down and write a blog post. Being as such, I’m going to make this a quick one (I hope). My first weekend in Japan was one of two worlds: solitary exploration and raucous socializing.
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