Tokyo Disney :)

It's been a few weeks since I went to Disneyland, but all the same, wanted to write a little something about it.

We left our Hostel around 7:30 seeing as we wanted to get to the park for when it opened to hopefully avoid any long lines. We arrived at the park about 20 minutes before it opened, but our hopes of there not being very many people there were crushed as soon as we got in view of the park. There were more people crowded around the entrance than I'd ever seen in one place before.

We had a friend meeting us at the park and quickly tried to find her amongst the hordes of people. After we did, we got in one of the 24 lines that had formed to enter the park. When we finally got to the front of the line we were disappointed to see that we had been waiting in a line to enter the park, not to exchange our online ticket for a real one. Who knew? We nicely asked the people in line next to us (the line we should have been in) if we could switch over, and they nicely let us in. When we finally did get into the park we wanted to take some pictures with some of the Disney cast, but found huge lines had already formed to get photos. Seemed like waiting in line would become the theme of the day...

We decided not to waste our time and headed inside. Near the front we took turns taking pictures with Mr. Walt Disney himself (seemingly no one else had noticed the statue so there wasn't a line for this XD)

Because we had been so rushed to get to the park on time, we had neglected to get anything for breakfast. We decided to stop at the first place we saw to eat, which turned out to be a hot dog restaurant. Their slogan was "Best in Town. You'll love our wieners. Wrapped in a Bun. They're big on taste and large on fun!" We all had a nice laugh at this. The wieners were surprisingly tasty I must say. After "breakfast" we made our way over to The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was certainly not what I had expected, but fun all the same.

On our way to the next ride, we stopped by a booth to buy some funny hats for the day. Figured if we were at Disneyland, mind as well dress the part too.

As the day moved on, more and more people filled the park. We decided we'd need to make a plan if we wanted to see all the attractions. We set out to get a fast pass ticket for Big Thunder Mountain and then headed for the long line to Splash Mountain. And boy was the line ever long. I believe we must have waited for almost an hour and half. The long wait was worth it though, as the ride was quite enjoyable. Got pretty wet though, as someone (Taylor) had told me people sitting in the front wouldn't get as wet. Ah well:P Another group of friends we were planning on meeting had arrived at the park while we were in line, and we met up with them on our way to Big Thunder Mountain. Thanks to our fast pass, we were able to skip to long line for this ride, and pretty much walked right onto it.

We took some time after this ride to walk around a just enjoy the park. |We eventually made our way to Space Mountain and picked up a fast pass ticket. To our surprise our timeslot wasn't for another 5 hours, so we decided to kill time waiting in another line for Haunted Mansion.

We stopped off in the Queen of Hearts dining hall for a late lunch/early dinner. Their entire menu was that of western style meals, and I had a bacon salad, chicken breast with trimmings and a piece of pie. Very Yummy!

We did some shopping after dinner, took tons more pictures and continued to explore the park. We found ourselves back at the entrance and split off into to a few different groups planning to reconvene for the parade in an hour or so. I went with Taylor into a Penny Arcade were we played numerous hilarious old school arcade games. When we left the shop, we saw someone playing the music on a portable piano. He was extremely hilarious!

To finish off the wonderful day we were treated with a lovely parade celebrating all the Disney characters throughout the years. It was an amazing performance. On our way home, we were not at all too tired to recap all the fun parts of the day to each other, and had a great subway ride home recounting the great day.

Trip To Tokyo!!!!

After months of planning and a great deal of anticipation we were finally going to Tokyo! The original plan was to go with a fairly large group of friends and all stay together in the same place and do the same things but different people wanted to do different things, so in the end it was just the 4 of us, Alanna, Yukiko, Naomichi and myself heading to Tokyo on that day. It turns out we were quite lucky to have decided to go a day later as a pretty bad typhoon hit Tokyo the day before. My roommate had actually gone down that day and ended up coming back the same night because all the trains were shut down and he couldn't get to where he was planning to stay.

I knew going to Japan I needed to ride the bullet train at least once, and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to do so. It was fairly pricey but the experience was definitely worth it! When we first boarded the train it felt as though we were in the cabin of an airplane. As the train began to pull away from the station, the similarities to flying continued as we approached 300km/h. A really nice feature that our train had was that we could spin our seats around and face each other for the duration of the trip. We played some cards are chatted to pass the time. (Though there wasn't much time to kill. We got to Tokyo in a little under a hour and a half!)

When we arrived at Tokyo Station we had the great fun of navigating Tokyo's maze of Subway lines to meet up with our friends in Harajyuku. We managed to get to where we would be staying for the next few nights, Sakura Hostel, with fairly little effort thanks to Naomichi and Yukiko's amazing navigation abilities! For the first night we would be staying in a traditional Japanese style room which consisted of four Japanese futons laid out on the floor. We set our stuff down and set out to enjoy some Halloween festivities around Tokyo.

We came across a really neat festival of sorts which had a couple really spectacular floats. After taking a bunch of pictures we decided to head back to our hostel and call it a night.

The following day we decided to visit some famous places in Tokyo. We started out by going to Asakusa Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Needless to say it was amazing! Afterwards, a couple of friends wanted to do some shopping in some famous shopping district in Tokyo so I tagged along.

We saw many interesting things, but possibly to strangest was a women who was walking a monkey like a dog. I laughed to myself about how much of a pain it must have been for her to be allowed to have one, considering how hard it was for me to simply open a bank account...

To finish off the day we headed to possibly the most famous place in Tokyo, Shibuya. You may know this as the busiest intersection in the world. It certainly lived up to its name. The moment the lights changed to allow people to cross, the streets flooded with people from every direction!

That night we changed rooms to one with 2 bunk beds. It was certainly a downgrade from our previous night, but it was almost half the price so it was not much of a sacrifice. It didn't matter much anyways seeing as the following morning we'd be heading to Disneyland, so we were all in good spirits!

Halloween!!!

I had such a tough time deciding on what I wanted to go out as this year for Halloween. I knew I wanted to be something that at least remotely represented Canada. I bounced around a couple ideas with my fellow Canadian here, Alanna, about possibly being a pair of Canadian Mounties, or possibly a Tim Hortons Cup and Doughnut. While these would have probably looked quite funny we decided they were just too tough to create. Alanna threw out an idea for us to be Lumberjacks and I liked it, so we began our quest to make the costumes.

The hardest thing for us to find seemed to be a pair of overalls that were actually big enough to where. We finally found some in Osu Kannon in a dress-up shop, along with a bunch of other stuff we had fun trying on! Oh, and I forgot to mention that we were doing all this shopping only a few hours before the Halloween party we were going to, so we were cutting it very close!

We headed home to put on our costumes and met a while later. A couple of Alanna's roommates came with us as well dressed up as Mini Mouse (Kristin) and a High School Nerd (Crystal). When we finally arrived at the party, we were greeted by Spider Man and a Ninja to take our tickets. We knew then it was going to be a fun night!

We stayed at the party for a couple hours and left when people started to get a bit out of control. Not wanting to go home quite yet we decided we'd go to an American sports bar by Imaike Station. We must have been quite the funny site on the subway, as we were traveling with Lady Gaga(Whitney), a Garden Gnome (Melody), Stewie from Mad TV (Taylor), Mini Mouse, a Nerd, and a couple of Lumberjacks!

 I remember thinking when I first arrived in Japan how much people would stop and stare at me as I passed by. Let me tell you that that had nothing on the amount of strange looks I received that night!

Nagoya Festival 2010

This weekend is the 56th Nagoya Festival commemorating Nagoya's 400th anniversary.       

"This year is Nagoya's long-awaited 400th anniversary. Nagoya, a City of Samurai Warriors which produced many great warriors in feudal times. I want to make people aware of this unique culture and appeal while developing the city in a way that people can feel a closeness with its history. Nagoya Festival started in 1955, and it is the grandest festival to enliven the city in autumn. Of course, the highlight of the festival is the procession of the Three Feudal Lords. The Three Feudal Lords, Nobunaga, Hideyoshim and Ieyasu are accompanied by around 700 arnored warriors and foot soilders in an intense battle as they march around the downtown area displaying a gorgeous and extravagant procession much like those depicted in old picture scrolls. On top of all that, this year we are celebrating the city's 400th anniversary, and on Saturday, the 16th, there will be a Grand Dashi Float Festival and the Kiyosu-goshi Dream Walk. COP 10 will be help in Nagoya in October of this year, which is one of the reasons the world's attention is focused on Nagoya. Let's come together under the refreshing autumn sky and set the mood for Nagoya to go down in history"

Takashi Kawamura,

Mayor of Nagoya 

 My friends and I spent most of yesturday enjoying this wonderful festival. We started off in Sakae around noon. There were manys different attractions here. From street vendors selling tornado fries to a concert in Oasis to a Japanese style fashion show to a chopstick making stall. After visiting all of these, we went back to the location where the parade was going to pass and waited to get our spot. The parade lasted about 2 hours and consisted of many amazing floats, costumes and dancers.

Part 1

Part 2

Summer in October..

Well it certainly feels that way at least. With temperatures still reaching the high 20s, it sure doesn't seem like it's ever going to be fall around here.

Let's see what I’ve been up to lately...

Last week I went to my International Friendship Club and met some nice Japanese students. The club meets on Mondays and Thursdays, so I’ll be going back again tomorrow.

This past weekend I enjoyed celebrating thanksgiving alone in my dorm. I made myself as much as a feast as I could muster; carrots, potatoes, broccoli and the biggest chicken breast I could find. I had no luck finding any turkey unfortunately. It was quite enjoyable.

I also met with some friends to start to plan a trip to Tokyo at the end of the month. We have a few days off at the beginning of November, so it'll work out quite nicely. I'll finally get to ride the 新幹線 (Shinkansen) =D

On Tuesday I had another class in Japanese Foreign Policy. It’s by far the most interesting class I have. The professor is very insightful as well which really helps.

Today I had shortened classes and went with some friends to do some shopping. I got a hair cutting set, so I’ll be doing that some time soon. Should be interesting...

What A Month!

It's so hard to believe that it has already been more than a month now that I've been here. This has been without a doubt the best and worst month of my life. Every day that I spend here I feel better about my surroundings and worse about not being with Jessica. I know that my feelings are going to continue to be torn the longer I'm here. I just hope that my positive feels for this trip continue to outweigh my negative ones for Jessica.


 

PURIKURA Fun XD



This past week was pretty enjoyable. The weather was in the high 20s which was actually fairly refreshing considering most of the month was around 35. It's a nice sign that spring weather is just around the corner. Yay for finally being able to wear jeans and a sweater! This week I had a full load of classes. I had the first class of my course on Japanese Foreign Policy. It was very neat. The professor was apparently somewhat famous and had lots of very interesting things to say. It was the first class I've had for a while that I wasn't watching the clock. My Japanese classes have begun to pick up the pace a bit, which has been nice. On Friday I had previously been told that my Japanese Economics class had been cancelled because my professor was out of the country but I was approached in my Business class a day earlier telling me that I did in fact have to go to class. I was very surprised that they made the effort to go to everyone who had registered in that lecture's class to tell them that they needed to go. It was a complete waste of my time though. They had us watch one of my professor's lectures that he had done in a previous year. To add to the fact that my professor has a very thick Japanese accent, the audio quality was horrible. I used the time to play Ninjump on my iPod. Fun times... =D

On Friday night a few of my roommates decided to go out to a nomihodai, or an all-you-can-drink bar. I had originally planned on going, if nothing else to simply relax with my friends after a long week, though I decided against it at the last minute. I'm glad I did. It apparently got quite out of control. All I'll say is I had to go out at 1:30 to help my friend from a subway station...


On Saturday I made plans with my friends who had come to Carleton last year on exchange from Nanzan to go to Nagoya Station. Once there we decided it'd be fun to go bowling. The place my friend had in mind was fairly close by, so we just walked. It's truly amazing being downtown in Nagoya on a Saturday night. There's soo many people!!! The bowling alley we went to was actually on the 6th floor of a very tall building. I never imagined I'd bowl in a high-rise. We had a ton of fun! After bowling we went to an English bar named "Hub", got some drinks and just chatted for a couple hours. Fun Stuff. :)



Left --> Right : Me, Naomichi, Alanna, Kristen, Crystal, Yukiko, Brandon



Today I had a nice chance to just sleep in until about 9. Surprisingly this was probably the longest I've slept in here. I intentionally made no plans so I wouldn't feel obliged to wake up early. At around 6 our landlord came by for our scheduled cleaning day. It's supposed to happen every week, but this was the first time we'd cleaned as an entire house. Hopefully this'll become a regular occurrence now. She was nice enough to make us a huge pot of curry, which we enjoyed together after all the cleaning was finished. It was wonderful to sit around the table with everyone. It's a rare event that we have everyone in the same room at one time.

I Spy in Sakae

This was an assignment for one of my courses, and I thought it would fit nicely into this blog.

For my I Spy assignment I choose to visit Sakae. I choose this location because Sakae is located in the heart of Nagoya and as such is one of the main places where people go to shop. I feel that it best represents the overall feeling of Nagoya I’ve had thus far into my trip. It was around midday on Saturday when I came to sit on a lonesome stone bench outside a busy Japanese restaurant. This is what I observed
Undoubtedly the first thing I noticed not only about this location in particular, but about any time I was outside in Nagoya was the heat. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. On this day it was forecast to reach highs of around 44 degrees. And of course, along with this heat came the humidity. It was very interesting to see how people dealt with this. Throughout the hour that I was sitting by the restaurant I don’t recall seeing neither a single lady without an umbrella to block the sun nor a single gentleman without a towel to wipe the sweat from their faces. I even noticed some younger men with towels around their neckline to stop their sweat from ruining their clothing. Oddly enough even with this heat, most the men I observed were wearing suits and jackets.
The buildings around Sakae really caught me as very typical Japan. In every direction I looked, the buildings all seemed to look similar. They were all tall, impressive towers most of which had massive billboards on them. The largest building right above Sakae Station literally had a huge ferris wheel attached to the side of it. One the ground level of pretty much every building is some sort of store. Directly across from where I’m sitting is one of many electronic stores on the block. Along with these are a multitude of restaurants, convenient stores, and clothing stores. On the extremely narrow 8 lane city street in front of me is a seemingly endless flow of small cars and old fashion bicycles, all of who seem to be in an intense hurry to get where they need to be.
From where I’m sitting I can hear people’s conversations as they pass by, all in very casual Japanese. Every 5-10 minutes I can also hear the subway rumble by underneath me. I heard a lot of birds chirping which I thought was strange because I didn’t see any birds. I later found out that they play bird songs in the subway stations. Contrary to what you may think with the high amounts of traffic on the road, I not once heard someone honk their car horns or hear any pedestrian curse at a driver who cut them off.
The smells that I experienced varied extensively throughout the hour. When customers came in and out of the restaurant next to me, I could smell the delicious scent of tonkatsu and korokke. As the subway went by under me, a foul scent of garbage rushed up. And while neither of these were occurring, the constant smell of stale air was apparent.
Although I was meant to be observing everything I was experiencing through this hour, it was clear to me several times that I myself was being observed. Numerous times I would look around and see groups of Japanese girls looking at me and speaking to each other. What surprised me was that even when I noticed them looking at me, they wouldn’t stop starring.

Weekly Recap

Seems like it's been forever since last post. It's hard to find time to sit down and write these, but today I have off so I can do it now :)
This past week has been a bit uneventful as now I'm kind of settling down into a routine.

In my Japanese classes I've been busy writing a bunch of tests and reviewing a lot of old grammar of vocab. 2 of my other courses were cancelled this week. Japanese Foreign policy which I would have had on Tuesday and Japanese Business which is on Thursday afternoons. So from that respect it was actually a pretty easy week. On Monday I finally found the time to go to Sakae and buy a cell phone. It was actually surprisingly easy because the Softbank location there has salespeople who spoke pretty good English.

 Later in the week a few of us decided we wanted to go to Karaoke again. We found a location much closer to our dorms, but found out it was a bit more expensive. Regardless we still had a good time. Rocked out to some Linkin Park and Lady Gaga. Good Times :)

On Thursday it was the autumn equinox which Japan celebrates as a national holiday, so i didn't have any classes. We took this opportunity to do some more exploring. Osu Kannon Temple is a large tourist attraction in Nagoya. It doubles as an amazingly huge shopping center that never seems to end. We were there for pretty much the entire afternoon and still didn't come close to seeing all the shops. I'll have to go back at some point.

On Friday I had a pretty long day. Japanese class all morning and then Japanese Econ in the afternoon. After classes I went to a welcome party for the International Friendship Club. Yes I know it sounds very lame but I had a really fun time. Everyone was really out going and it was a great opportunity to practise my Japanese. I even won a prize from the BINGO game we played. It's a funny looking kite named Baby Bat. I decided I'd hang it in my room.

As for this weekend, I need to get caught up with a bunch of stuff. I've been neglecting my Carleton study abroad course this entire month, so that'll be fun to work on XD. I've also been putting off the readings that I need to do for my other courses. It sure feels like my work ethic decided not to come on this trip with me. Who wants to do homework when your in an awesome new country with so much to explore?!?!

Busy Wednesday

Today turned out to quite the busy day.

I started out my morning with a nice Skype conversation with Jessica. It’s always a treat when we actually catch each other online at the same time to chat.  After she went to dinner I crammed a bit for a Japanese test I had in an hour or so. It was simple stuff which didn’t require much studying.  Following my test I had a short lesson and then was finished for the day. Every Wednesday will be like this which is very nice.  The CJS (Center for Japanese Studies) had a coffee house today at 1:30 to welcome the new international students, so even though I was finished at around 10:50, I had to stick around.  No complaints though. Hanging out with my friends between classes is probably one of my favourite things to do. It’s wonderful to learn more about where they come from and how much it differs from my own experiences.  When 1:30 finally rolled around we were all excited to go meet some new friends. Once there we were split into 12 different groups, according to our birthdays. This made sure we’d meet new people. The first activity we played had us stand in a circle and have one person say their name and a favourite thing of theirs. Then the person next to them would have to repeat everyone’s information that went before them as well as say their own. I found myself at the end of the circle stuck with the challenge of remembering everyone’s name and favourite thing. I tried my best... The next activity was essentially a massive game of Japanese Jeopardy. It was ok, but I found it extremely difficult to understand the question let alone think of the answer. After all the games we done we had a chance to meet and mingle with everyone and some snacks were served.  I had a good time.

After the coffee house was over a group of about 15 of us decided we’d go to Karaoke. The place we went was in Sakae (Pretty much where everything fun to do is in Nagoya). Never having been to Karaoke before I was a bit reluctant to go, but after being there for a while everyone opened up and we had a really fun time. I found myself singing In The End by Linkin Park. Good times XD Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but I think my friends took some pictures which I’ll share soon.

We left around 5:30 to find a place to eat. My friends had been talking about an English Pub that they had been to a few nights earlier which was pretty close and I loved the idea, so we headed there. I’m sure to everyone’s surprise I ordered fish & chips. It was amazing. I didn’t feel like being out too late so I headed back the subway shortly after the meal. This was really the first time I’d been completely alone far away from my house and I had a good time trying to navigate myself to the right subway platform in a seemingly endless maze of subway lines at Sakae station. I made it home in about 30 minutes and promptly flopped down on my bed.

And well that pretty much sums up my Wednesday. Never would have thought it’d be that busy, eh?

Funky Dance =D

Showing everyone my amazing dancing abilities!

Weekend

So it's Sunday night of my second week here in Japan...It sure feels like it’s been way longer than that.
Seeing as I haven’t posted in a while I guess I’ll start with Friday.
I had my second day of intensive Japanese class. The class was 3 hours long and boy did it ever feel like it. We only got about a 5 minute break while the teachers were switching classrooms. Even though it felt long, I feel like these classes are going to be great for improving my Japanese.
Usually on Fridays I would have Japanese Economics from 3:30-5:15 but the class doesn't start until next week, so I was happy to start my weekend early :)
When I met with my roommates later that I day I learnt that they'd planned a birthday party at our house to celebrate August's 20th birthday. I won't go into much detail about it, but all in all we had a good time. My friend took a bunch of pictures which can be found in the new slideshow.
Saturday proved to be a pretty lazy day. My friend Rene decided that he'd like to play some sort of online game together with me. Who knew finding games that work both on macs and pcs was so hard. We literally spent all day trying to get them to work.
At night they wanted to go to a club named Metro.
This is their website. http://www.thenagoyametroclub.com
Safe to say I didn't go...
Sunday was another lazy day. I went to the store around noon to buy some food for the week and walked around for a while. It’s amazing how busy the malls are on the weekends! It's fun to just watch people :P
At night I made myself another stir fry. It was pretty tasty :)

And that’s about it for now. Hopefully I’ll have a bunch of new stories to share this week :)

My House

Field Trip

Yesterday we had the great opportunity to visit a couple historical sites in Nagoya. I was happy to see that my friend, Yukiko, who I'd met last year at Carleton while on exchange from Nanzan was on the trip as well. First we went to the Tokugawa Art Museum. It was very interesting to see all the maps, weapons and armour of the time period. Unfortunately we were running pretty late and only had about an hour to spend there, so we had to rush through.


After the art museum we made our way to Nagoya Castle. It was amazing to see just how huge the castle and surrounding walls were. Seeing as we were late getting to the castle from the art museum we also didn't have much time to spend there.


Today is our official first day of classes. I believe I'll have 3 hours of Japanese every week day from now on. Hopefully this'll dramatically improve my Japanese!

I also took the time to create a short video of what my house looks like and a tour of the inside. Take a minute to watch it if you'd like to see where I'm living. =D

Saturday Night Outing

As Saturday night rolled around, my roommates decided they wanted to go to a club they’d heard about from some of their friends and they insisted I join them. The club we went to was in downtown Nagoya called iD. I was amazed when I got there of how huge it was. It was 5 floors high with each floor having a different style of music. The cover was a bit high to get in at 3000 yen, but we weren’t going to turn around and head home... (The price was so high because it allowed you 4 free drinks...A lot of good that is to me...) When we first got in the club my friends planned to meet some of their friends on the 3^rd floor so we went there. I tried to follow but got lost in the crowd. I spent probably the next 30 minutes going through worst case scenarios in my mind if I couldn’t find my friends again. Luckily I found them eventually and we had a great time.

After the club closed at 1am one of my friends decided for some reason he wanted to see what a gay bar in Japan looked like. The rest of us weren’t particularly comfortable with this, but he was adamant so we followed. After asking numerous random people we were directed to a “bar” in an tall building. When we walked in we discovered we were actually in some sort of transsexual theatre thingy. Thankfully my friend was able to talk our way out of there and we hurried away. Surprisingly to us we were escorted out of the place by someone we later found to be named “小ママ” or “little mama”. (Find pictures in the slide show) He/She was nice to us and asked lots of questions but all we could think about was how awkward the situation was.  Safe to say we’ll never be following that friend again…

Challenges of dinner

If you think it’s tough finding something to make each night, consider not only not knowing what you want to eat, but also being unable to buy the things you finally decide to have.

I had this problem for tonight’s dinner. I must have wandered around the grocery store for almost an hour until I decided on what I wanted to eat. I decided on something Italian. Easiest thing that came to mind was spaghetti. Spent the next hour tracking down all the ingredients I’d need. By the time I finally got home I really had no desire anymore to eat, let alone cook something. But I’m glad I did because it ended up tasting great 

Now what to make for dinner on Sunday...

Saturday

Decided I’d go looking for a place to get internet in the mall close to my house so I left around 9 to see if it was open. The entire mall was except for the single place I needed to go which opened at 10. Very frustrating...

I returned to the mall at 10 and was able to get internet for about an hour at which point a security guard told me I couldn’t use my computer there. I wasn’t in a position to ask questions considering I barely understood him, so I up and left.

It was nice at least to speak with Jessica and Serena for the time while I was there. Hearing their voices made me feel a lot better 

Internet Troubles

Finally found a place close by that has internet so I’m finally able to update this thing :P


Guess I’ll start with my second day of orientation. ... Yet again woke up at 4am. This is getting very frustrating and boring as I really have nothing to do in the morning while everyone else is asleep. On the way to the university today I went with one of my fellow roommates named Rene. We’ve been hanging out quite a bit this past week as we have many things in common. After getting off the subway I guess there was some confusion of who actually knew the way we were supposed to go and ended up getting quite lost. We tried asking some police officers for some help, but they couldn’t be bothered to give us a hand. After wondering around for a while we stumbled on the road we needed to be on and got to the university only a few minutes late. The orientation today was centered on what courses we needed to take this semester. I’m thinking about taking Japanese business, econ, foreign policy and political and social issues of Japan.

Also today we applied for our Inkan which we’ll need for our bank accounts. They’re personalized stamps that Japanese people use as their signature.

For dinner tonight Rene and I bought some chicken and veggies and made ourselves a nice stir fry. It was quite tasty :)

Later that night some of my other roommates decided to have some students they’d met at Nanzan over for a party of sorts. It was nice to hang out with a new set of people. They left for a bar around 11 but I didn’t decide to join them. Too tired from my lack of sleep.

Shopping

Just went out shopping for the second time tonight. Hoping to get some fruit. Melons cost almost 40$... Gonna have to rethink my shopping lists...

To nanzan

Orientation is today. Had another early morning. Still adjusting to the time difference I guess.
First we have our placement test. Not too worried for it though as it doesn't really matter how we do.
We also have some sort of ceremony to attend so that should be fun

First night in Japan

Just got through the first night here in Japan. Everything has been a neat experience. Went to a huge mall that's a stones through away from my house with a student from The Czech Republic to get some food. Couldn't decide what to buy so I got cereal and milk. Big surprise...Milk wasn't as strange as I thought it would be so I was pleasently surprised by that.
I had a tough time sleeping last night surprisingly because I was freezing! My roomate turned on the AC for me but failed to tell me how to use it :S
Today we're planning on taking a trip to my University. Hopefully I won't get too lost

Nagoya

Finally in Nagoya...DOn't think i've ever been this exhausted in my life. Can't wait till i can sleep
/yawn

Longest trip of my life!

Finally on the ground after an epic 13 hour flight. had a headache for pretty much the entire flight though :(  In tokyo now trying to figure out where to go. This is by far the most confusing airport so far. Can't wait to get to Nagoya and hopefully get home to my house quick!

Chicago Airportt

Just arrived after a pretty easy flight. TOok 30 min less than expected so that was nice. this place is massive! trying to find me way to my next flight

Morning of flight

Wow! What a morning! Hardest thing i've ever had to do saying goodbye to my family :( I love you all soo much!
Right now just waiting for my flight talking with a nice lady going to Hong Kong.
This is going to be a very very long day. Already miss my babby sooooo much!
Can't wait to see you in a few months!!

Night before departure

Just finished a wonderful dinner of artichoke soup and beef burgeon with my family. I couldn't have asked for a nicer way to spend my last night here in Ottawa.
What seems like 2 years of planning is finally here. I'm very excited for my flight tomorrow morning though I know it will be a tough day for everyone around me.

Japan Here I Come!!!