My Last Weekend in Japan

Yeah, that's right. My last weekend in Japan has passed. I only have 5 more days here! It seems crazy! Hmm, let's see what we did.

Saturday, the farewell party went well. I met my host family again, and they said thank you for the thank you card. They gave me yet more gifts. The Japanese are really generous people. We sat and talked for a bit over some snacks. They then showed a movie that we had all individually prerecorded a thank you message to our host family. There were other movies that they had recorded throughout the program as well.

The SGE students also gave us t-shirts and we went around and got them signed. It was awesome cause I got all (but 1) of my notes in Japanese, so I completely love the shirt. I can't wait to wear it at Rose.

We spent the rest of the party trying to sign everyone's shirt. Afterwards, Robyn and I decided to go for that spaghetti that we needed to use the rest of. Phil joined in later and helped us finish it off. We then stopped by the combini to get some desert and such.

We played cards for a while, and then decided to find the bookstore with really cheap books. There's one that had manga for 10 yen a peice (=10 cents!!). We found it surprisingly more quickly than expected and soon I had chosen out 2 manga to try and read. I've never really gotten into manga, but it's a good way to practice Japanese in the states, and at 10 yen, it's practically free.

Then, I made a really stupid act that I'm not going to share about on here, cause I feel like a fool now for doing it.

Phil bought Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone in Japanese on DVD, so we went and watched it on his computer cause he had already changed the region on it. Since we all knew the story line pretty well, we watched it in Japanese with Japanese subtitles to have the best academic experience from it. It was an awesome way to pick up more Japanese and I wish I could afford to buy DVD's and a DVD player here so that I could keep learning Japanese at home, but I can't really do that, can I?

About half way through Harry Potter, I was getting tired and I couldn't focus anymore enough to understand the Japanese so I called it a night.

I slept in on Sunday until about 10 and goofed around reading my book until around 1 when we went to search for somewhere to eat. Because the place where you grill the meat in front of you was closed, we went for some curry for Phil.

Afterwards, Robyn and I took the long bike ride to town so that we could arrange what she was going to do next Sunday morning when she stays at a hotel and has a train leaving at 6 in the morning. We did a bit of shopping before riding right back to campus.

We sat around a while before heading to one of our new friend's rooms to make onigiri. We boiled the rice and then put stuff in it and mashed it up into little balls to put into seaweed to eat as onigiri. I don't really like any of the extra stuff so I just ate a plain rice ball, but no complaints here.

We played a little bit of hearts while waiting for our rice to cook and afterwards, which was fun. We also played some bs before heading our separate ways for the night.

Today I have my final presentation for culture class, and although I have the basic idea of what I'm going to say, I'm really just going to wing it. I practically just have to talk for 4 minutes about something about culture, so I'm sure I'll be fine.

Ah, the excitement of my life in Japan has digressed; I am sorry. 5 days and I'll be back at Rose in a bed!