ddr_rowen66's Xanga

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:47:14 GMT

It's my last day in Saijo and I leave Japan on the 17th. Almost home :)
And I just realized my profile picture is almost a year old

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:54:50 GMT

Well it's been a few months...time for an update I guess.
Started school again in April. Golden week was fun. Zach and Alana came down to Hiroshima so it was nice to see people from home again. I went to Tottori and Kobe, and thankfully didn't catch any swine flu while I was there, although it was all over the news and everyone had masks. I only have a little over 2 months left here :( but I really just want to get this semester over with already. We have midterms now so I've been pretty busy.
Registering for fall semester at UH was shitty. But I ended up getting all the classes I need to take next semester except one.
EALL372B- Modern fiction
JPN350- Japanese Linguistics
JPB407E- Fiction
MICR130 (thankfully this will be the last science class I have to take).
Anyway I'm not sure when I will be coming home yet. I'm taking a standby flight so hopefully I will be back sometime in the week before school starts.
Tottori Sakyu, Kobe Harbor, Mt.Rokko Pasture, Mt.Shosha:

春休み

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:34:08 GMT

Well I'm finally back in Saijo after being home for a month and traveling for 10 days. Spring semester starts in a couple weeks so I have nothing to do here. Uploading pics to facebook soon. I went to Tokyo, Nikko, Yokohama, Himeji and revisited Kyoto. Overall the trip was totally worth it, except when our train was an hour late on our (10 hour) journey to Kyoto =/
It still feels like winter here (it's still in the 30s...wtf?!) but hopefully more sakura will be blooming by next week.
Shibuya, Lake Chuzenji and Kiyomizudera:

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 01:33:06 GMT

Well spring break is almost here! I'm finally done with at least one of my classes, but I still have 3 more finals, 2 next week and one the week after.
We've been getting some snow in the past couple of weeks but not enough to actually build a snowman or to prevent me from riding my bike, which is good, but I'm hoping to see some good snow before I leave.
So in the past few weeks I've: visited Iwakuni, went bowling in Saijo (cheap! 500-yen a game with cool automated shoe dispensers), niku-no-hi, manekineko x2, and bought my plane ticket to tokyo (almost 10,000-yen cheaper than shinkansen =/) so I'm pretty broke now. Won't be getting my scholarship money for another 2 weeks so I'm trying to live off 10,000-yen until then.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:34:38 GMT

Winter break is over...
I've done a lot of traveling in the past few weeks and I'm actually glad to be back in Saijo. Beppu and Kumamoto before Xmas, Osaka, Nara and Kyoto for new years. And I'm so broke I'm happy I'm getting my scholarship money on Friday. I actually still have one space left on my seishun 18 ticket so hopefully I'll be going to Himeji next week.
Well only a month left of school before finals and 5 weeks till I go home and start spring break. It feels weird that we'll only be in school for a month and then we have a 2 month long vacation before our spring semester starts.
Kyushu trip pics have been uploaded to facebook. Kansai photos will be uploaded eventually. Just a few pics:

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:09:31 GMT

I'm so happy I'm finally done with midterms! I technically still have class on Monday but I'm skipping class to travel.
So tomorrow I'm planning to go in to the city to do some last minute shopping and then I'm off to Beppu and Kumamoto on Saturday morning. I leave at 6:30 and will be on a train for a good 12 hours or so =/ but I'm sure it will be worth it. Next Friday I'm going to Osaka, Kyoto and Nara till Janurary and I will probably be really broke by the time I get back to Saijo :(
I guess I will update this soon when I have stuff that's worth writing about.

First snow!!

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:52:33 GMT

So I had just finished eating dinner at the cafe and looked out the window as we were leaving to see snow falling. It didn't last long and it melted really quickly, but it was the first snow for this year (and it's still fall). It was about 37F earlier, now it's about 42F but it's supposed to snow again tomorrow so I'm pretty excited.

Update!

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:13:17 GMT

So this weekend I did a homestay in Kuchiwa-cho which is a couple hours north of Saijo. It was probably one of the best experiences I've had here so far. The family I stayed with was quite big (7 people total, grandma/grandpa, mom, dad and 3 boys). The house they had was huge and was over 200 years old, from the Edo period (which apparently even in rural parts of Japan, is quite rare these days). On Saturday we drove all the way to Matsue, (capital of Shimane-ken) which took about 2 1/2 hours. We went to Matsue Castle and took a boat ride in the castle moat (which was fun even though I couldn't really understand the tour guide), and drove to Izumo to go to Izumotaisha (shrine). But we didn't get to spend much time there because it was already getting dark and the place was closing anyway.
I went to Miyajima a few weeks ago which was really fun (although i spent about $35 on transportation alone -_-) and went shopping in Hiroshima city last weekend. I'll probably be going to the city again next weekend. Yeah and that's about all I can remember from the past few weeks. Pictures will be uploaded to facebook later.

肉の日 10/29

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:56:03 GMT

So while I'm waiting for my food to digest I'm going to write about dinner.
We went to a yakiniku place for dinner tonight. Today was the 29th so dinner was 20% off (1600-yen) for all you can eat/drink for 90 minutes. It was probably one of the best eating experiences I've had here despite how much food we burned and my odd bathroom experience. I think we went through a plate and a half of beef, pork, chicken and sausage as well as miso soup, salad and veggies. I think everyone is set on skipping our 845 class tomorrow as well, but I'm going to my 1030 class and I have to turn in my homework. Anyway I just got back and it's almost 1am so I really have to go to sleep soon.
All you can eat ice cream too:

Some of our food and burnt cabbage from the other table:

some pics

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:23:12 GMT

Well I finally got internet in my room so hopefully I'll be able to update this more often. School this week was alright. I finally had a full week of classes and officially hate Thursdays because I have 3 classes and I'm out from 8-5.
I've been staying in the dorms studying and cooking dinner this week to try to save some money. I've been cooking a lot of pasta (and tacos too) with some of the other students. I don't think there's a huge difference in cost between cooking dinner here and eating out every night.
On Wednesday I went with some other students to a latin dance circle meeting on campus. It was really fun and we're thinking about taking salsa lessons at a place in Saijo. Last night there was another lake party. The weather was horrible but everyone went anyway and it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We went to Sukiya at 3am to get food which was great because I was so hungry. This morning I woke up at 11 because I had to meet my tutor on campus at noon. H er friend needed my help to fill out a survey but she didn't show up so I have to meet her again on monday. I went to Saijo to pick up a package at the post office and came back here and did nothing for a good 3 or 4 hours. We rode our bikes to this sushi place by Fuji Grand for dinner. Everything there is 105-yen (even ikura and uni) and it reminded me a lot of genki sushi, except everything on the conveyor belt was labeled and they had tons of fresh fruit too. I ate about 9 plates and paid a little less than 1000-yen which I think is a pretty good deal. I don't really have anything planned tomorrow except this halloween party tomorrow night.
Genbaku dome, Peace park, Hondori

View of Hiroshima City from the top of Hiroshima Castle