Mini-Post Wednesday: Let's Go to the Kurihama Perry Festival

Today is just a mini-post because I woke up at 4:30 this morning to pick up Dad from Narita Airport and then spent 8ish hours tromping around Tokyo in improper footwear and now I'm sore and tired so bed is sounding really good soon, especially since Dad and I are off to Nikko early tomorrow morning.

It's summer, which means it's festival season, so what better way to close out the school year than the Kurihama Perry Festival?

Tromping around Kamakura with our Buddhism Professor

School's done! I'm in Japan for eleven more days (seven of which will involve running around the Tokyo metropolitan area with my dad), and then I'm heading home. It's kind of crazy to think how quickly this semester seems to have passed. Regardless, I am really looking forward to returning to the US and seeing my friends and family again soon.

Last Saturday our Japanese Buddhism professor invited the class to join him in running around Kamakura, a city with many old temples (among other things). Though I had a paper due that Monday, I decided to go, since it would be nice to get out of the house for the first time in over a month.

Yakiniku Night in Shin-Okubo!

Sorry for the delay; I'm in my last three weeks as a student here, so things are getting crazy busy in terms of papers and tests and assignments. As a result I haven't been doing much in the way of fun, thus resulting in having nothing to write about. I'm sticking around Japan for two weeks after I finish my semester, though, so hopefully I'll do lots of fun things and write lots of posts to make up for the delay. Based on how behind on things I tend to get when it comes to writing posts these days, I'm fully prepared to be writing posts well into August even though I leave Japan on the 25th of July. So don't worry. I'll keep you updated, albeit a bit late, because I love you.

Day Trip to Kawagoe!

It's been a while, and I'm very sorry about that. Rest assured that this break has been spent paying attention to homework and doing exciting things like going to the grocery store. Truly, I am living the life.

I have a friend from home, Chris, who went on exchange to Tokyo in 2009, and he's been recommending places for day trips to me from time to time. I finally decided to take some of his advice and so on Saturday my friend Jack and I went to Kawagoe for the day!

Golden Week, or That Time I Went to an Anti-Nuclear Power Protest

Sorry for the delay! This week has been really busy, and it's still only Tuesday! There isn't much going on here, really, except homework and room repairs. My water heater broke (again) last week, and right after that got sorted out, my bathroom decided that it would be really cool if it would flood completely after using the shower or sink for only 30 seconds. It's great. I meant to talk to my dorm head today about that, but I was so drained after class that I just came home and crashed, then did homework until 10:00 PM. I'll talk to him after class tomorrow. I'm home earlier, anyway, so there will be more time to take care of it in case it's a major problem. Yaaaaaaay.

Last week was Golden Week, so we had all week off from school. I didn't do much for the first part of GW except for homework and knitting, which was nice and relaxing, but my friend Jenny came to stay with me for the second half of vacation, and that was lots of fun! On Friday we decided to explore Okachimachi, particularly Ameyoko, which used to be the big black market in Tokyo during World War II and the American occupation until around 1953.

Shabu-Shabu in Shibuya!

Hello! I hope everyone's been having a nice week! It's the start of Golden Week, a week with 4 national holidays, so I have the next week off of school. It's rather nice, but this will be my only vacation for the entirety of this semester, and we're only a month in as it is, so that's kind of a bummer.

An Evening at the Neighborhood British Pub, or, That Time I Ate a Plate of Bacon and Had No Regrets Whatsoever

I apologize for the wait; I really do. I've been busy getting back into the swing of things with school. Now that I'm a month in, though, I'm ready to start going out and doing things on the weekends again! I decided to ease into it though, so last weekend all I did was head to the neighborhood HUB, a chain of British-style pubs, with Eric and Margaret.