I kind of realized I’m going to feel a little dumb posting a ton of stuff from Japan after I’ve come back to the States so… I’m sort of scrambling to publish a lot of it at once. So if this is totally flooding anyone’s feeds, whatever :P

Alea asked me to come hang out one day after school so I drove into Furukawa and we took a walk in a park near her house. I bought some bright turquoise nailpolish and these amazing mint chocolate chip ice cream popsicles at 7-11, and we ate them while swinging and talking about boys <3

Shit, I totally forgot I’d taken these photos. The sakura’s been over for a couple weeks but oh well… Here are some pictures I took at a shrine near my house during the early sakura blooming when the weather was super rainy and overcast. Also… in an effort to improve my Japanese, I’ve decided to try translating my posts whenever I can…

しまった、私はこの写真を取った事が忘れた。二週間ぐらい櫻がまだ終ったでも。。。ここは曇りがちで雨がち日の早く咲き櫻の写真です。そして。。。日本語を話し方を腕を上げるために、ポストを訳すようにする

The sakura is so beautiful here :) I wish we had this in the United States. Everyone goes out and has BBQ and picnics under the cherry blossoms. I went to a multicultural meeting with Alea on Saturday and then went out to a park in Furukawa afterwards.

There was a really cool neighborhood next to the park with cute little bridges and statues and a water wheel~

There was also a really cool little shrine in the park.

I’ve been using this photoframe app that I got for my phone recently… it’s pretty cool when I’m feeling lazy and don’t wanna edit my photos too much— which I totally didn’t since I took like a million photos. Hope everyone is having a good weekend <3

Hooray for short weeks! And hooray for this being the beginning of several of them! Tomorrow’s Friday, but I have it off because IwaChu’s having a test day, so there’s no English classes.

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping myself busy this week. It may sound like I’m a bum but… well, I kind of am. The weather has been really really bipolar though, so it’s not like I could be out and about! So far I’ve watched the entire series of Arrested Development and started reading Mitsuru Adachi’s H2 baseball manga. I also downloaded a sweet audiobook about money and power couples. Yeahhhhhh fiscal responsibility!

This was actually a pretty eventful week for me. Lesson planning was pretty much no stress which was great, and I really do feel like I’m getting the hang of things. It’s funny, no matter how nervous you may think you are for a class, I always end up feeling good and in control when I’m finally there. Guess I’m starting to get good with kids? Or maybe I’m just not afraid of them since, I mean, they can’t even understand what I’m saying half the time and vice versa.

You can see from my pics how it’s been rainy all day here. I actually quite like the rain… and I think it adds an interesting pang of melancholy to the sakura. In fact, I have a sweet post coming up showcasing the cherry blossoms in this gloomy weather :)

I know this post is sort of a cop out, and is just a bunch of random photos from the week. Likewise, everything I’ve said thus far is just a bunch of random stuff that’s happened! Yesterday when I came home from school, I noticed the students of Nakaniida Chu playing tennis on the field right next to my apartment. I thought it’d be cool to say hi and try maybe telling them I know Caleb.

Well, it went alright, but I realized how creepy I must have come off as afterward… Luckily it ended well— I went out to sushi with Caleb at this cute little place in Furukawa called Kappazushi. They had the conveyor belt style dishes that you can take, and also a special automated Shinkansen toy bullet train that delivered special orders. Yeah, pretty much ridiculously cute. I wanted to post pictures but unfortunately my phone’s been acting up a lil and I had to reformat my SD card… along with corrupted photos :(

Today I went to Mayama Elementary School for the first time! (well, aside from my initial visit) It’s pretty far out of the way… it takes almost 40 minutes to drive there. The teachers there are really nice and the kids are just crazy adorable. My 2nd graders even drew a cute picture of me and gave it to me after class :) The 6th grade teacher is freaking awesome too. He’s like an old Japanese hipster, and he knew a lot of English. He also had a sweet Epiphone that he was using to teach guitar lessons with some of the kids. We had an awesome talk about music— turns out he loves KISS and has been to 8 of their concerts.

Though today was awesome, they really worked me over there… I taught every period except first. And after school, I had to stay for a boring hour long meeting… It’s sort of fortunate I don’t know Japanese because I’m obviously not expected to pay attention or participate in these meetings. I got really scared at one point though because the principal was talking in a sort of angry voice and I heard him say “English language” several times… I hope I didn’t piss him off in any way.

These last two images are from my way home… There’s a rest stop outside Mayama Sho with a little shrine housing a giant penis and vagina statue. Yeah… Aside from that it’s pretty nice and peaceful.

I’m really excited to be lazy tomorrow. Oh yeah, I also get Monday off! Hooray for Showa Day :) Can’t wait for all the cool stuff that’s going down this weekend… Hope everyone had a nice week too~