hairfish

Hayleigh and her new amazing DS that takes pictures!

Red Japanese maple leaves

My close friend Hayleigh, with her host sisters. Her host mother invited me to dress up in kimono and take pictures at a Japanese garden in Koshigaya.

Cheesu!~

More leaves! I gathered a bunch of them to dry in my travel journal

Hayleigh-chan~

Hayleigh's host family being adoreable

YELLOW!

Kimono covered bottoms.

the Garden was just gorgeous

Me.

I just finished a ten page history paper. Tomorrow is my last day of work and of school. Two weeks from now, Ieave Japan. To go home, that is. Crazy.

So, I’m in bed dreaming and all of a sudden, I’m feel my futon moving, as if someone were pushing it across the wood floor. In my half awake-half asleep haze, I look up to see the curtains swaying a bit, along with the girls’ desks, and my table covered in books and homework. When I awake fully, I notice the entire room is swaying and I pop up from under my covers, thinking, “WTF?!”. All of this, I am certain, happened in the span of maybe three seconds — if that. But I think just experienced my first Earthquake/tremor. It wasn’t as cool  as the ride at Universal. And now, it’s 7:30am and I can’t sleep.

On top of that, I noticed two nights ago when the typhoon was coming through, that I felt very swirly. Everything was sort of dizzy; my head, the way I walked, the house. Just thought I’d mention that.

Koyuuki the Akita Inu, taken by Mii-chan

My host parents

My host sister, Mii-chan

Koyuuki, our puppy Akita

A little doggy rabu rabu

Today, I went to Dog Park Satte with my host family and their puppy, Koyuuki. Before hand, my host mother taught me how to take the bus to the Kita-Koshigaya eki (you pay after you arrive at your destination!), then she brought to my attention a clothing shop called Marche, the 100 YEN shop where I bought a laptop case for 525 yen or approximately 4.83 USD, a bento box for my lunches, some girly stuff, and a pencil case for 1,050 yen total. I’m in rabu (love).

Also at Marche, I found these very nifty diy ear piercing kits that cost about 1000 yen each but then I found a magentic earring converter for non pierced ears for 100 yen.

I met another homestay student in my area and we marveled over the immense amount of kawaii all over the place. Then our respective host sisters coaxed us into doing purikura which is stupid amounts of fun as it is an interactive photobooth that you can decorate with all sorts of art and what not.The girls went wild, and I had a lot of fun too.

Tomorrow is my first day of classes. Oy.

And so it begins…