Winding Down

I got my stuff shipped today!!! It was a total of three boxes instead of the original four. I woke up early this morning to pack up everything and clean my room. Once I got everything out and put into the final box to ship, I realized that I didn't have anything left to put in my luggage. Therefore I threw the box in one of my suitcases (yes it fits) and proceeded to fill them up with clothes and things. After putting everything in it is still underweight and good to go. Japan postal has a really good service where they will come to your house to pick up boxes for free. This guy came to our house, weighed my boxes, put on the packing labels, then gave me the payment slip. It was easy and painless. All I had to do was carry the boxes down the stairs and give him my money. Speaking of which, it was cheaper than I was expecting by about $40.

This weekend I have not been doing much. On Saturday I went with Nathan and his friend to the Square-Enix store in Shinjuku. It was pretty small but they had some cool merchandise. I would have bought tons of stuff had I had the money and room for it. Instead I settled on a cheap key holder and a figure. Sunday I went to the luncheon for all the exchange students. Only about half of the people showed up. They were however 5 or 6 little kids running around. They were fun. Steve got to be the bus and I got to be the demon. There was pizza for lunch and tons of desert. I ate my share of donuts. Afterwards I went walking with Milton, Sonja, and Steve down to the Tokyo dome. We had a nice walking chat. Near the Tokyo dome we sat down at a California Kitchen pizza restaurant. Steve and Milton splurged on beer and pizza while Sonja and I were content with the endless supply of water that the waitresses kept bringing out. At the end of our meal we received coupons for 500 yen off our next purchase. We asked our waitress if we could use them now to get desert and apparently it was alright. Sweet! I got some sort of brownie / ice cream type desert for only 400 yen! It was probably the best desert since I got to Japan.

Shortly after Sonja went to Ikebukuro to meet up with a friend, but we stayed and chilled a while longer. On our walk to the train station I spotted a park and we decided to investigate. They had one of those jungle gyms with a bunch of metal bars intertwined to create a fortress-like structure. We sat on top and talked about life for at least an hour.

Today I finally got a hold of Hirai Sensei down in Niigata. It seems that this years kids are doing good. She really wanted me to come down to participate in some sort of camping trip with the kids as well as a festival next week, but sadly I can't make it. I've thought about that place every single day since I got back to Tokyo...

This week is the last week of school! Things are finally winding down. I have all of my exams over which means I don't have any class besides Japanese. The last thing to do is a speech about Takabashi Rumiko Thursday. Should be fun.