Bye Bye Japan!

The bags are packed, the room is clean, the time is not here yet. I managed to shuffle my things around so both of my bags are just under the 23 kilo limit (by about 0.4 kilos!) Hopefully the person who checks my bags will be kind enough to overlook the fact that I have a ton of stuff in my backpack. I have to carry my 2 pillows, hat, and business suit jacket (or wear them >_<) onto the plane. I don't know what to do now. I have about an hour before I want to catch the train to the airport. I should be arriving at about 2pm, almost 3 hours before my flight.

And now my words have ended...

Packing Woes

It's not the size of the stuff I have, it's the weight! All of my stuff easily fits into my 2 suitcases, but each one is overweight by about 2 kilos. It looks like I'll be carrying some books with me onto the plane. The other problem is that I have too much random stuff and not enough clothes to provide padding. I will get it!!!

Scaling the House

I just went into town half an hour ago and when I came back the door was locked. On top of that, I had forgotten my key and nobody was home to let me in.

Great.

For the first time since I got here I had to break into my own house. It just so happens that my window has been open 24/7 to relieve me from the heat. The bad part is that I live on the 2nd floor. It actually wasn't that hard to climb up to my room. Houses are so close together here that I used the adjacent house as a balance and climbed my way up. getting over the balcony railing was the hardest part.

Anyways, back to packing!

Yep

So I have to finish the rest of my food and sake before I leave. I have a lot of sake. That means I will be super hungover by tomorrow morning.

I also need to find a home for my beetle before I leave. The problem is I don't know anybody that wants one.

So Very Very Tired (and not ready to go home)

Quick update. I will try to do a full update later (most likely on the plane ride home.)

Wednesday - Skipped my last anthro class and stayed home. Rented movies
Thursday - Last class with Okuhara Sensei.
Friday - Last class with Oto Sensei (last class ever). Finished my books at book off. Had dinner with Kishi Sensei and Hajime san. Skipped dinner with Mieon,
Saturday - Graduation ceremony. Said goodbye to everyone at the afterparty. Walked with Steve and Sonja. Hung out with Sonja till 6pm.
Sunday - Disney Sea with Lisa

Monday plans - get something nice for my host family. Send pictures to Niigata.
Tuesday plans - Sushi with host family. Finish packing.

Last Week of School

The last week of school started today. I went to Japanese class as per usual and nothing particularly exciting happened. I did however, decide to start renting movies. More on that later.

For lunch I met up with Steve, Kyle, Milton, and Daniel for some noodles at the nearby restaurant. Good times. Zaru-soba tastes even better when the weather is really hot like this.

I met up with Ryota for the last time today too. He is busy this week studying and things so we probably won't be able to meet up again before I leave. This time Vaso showed up in the middle of our conversation. Chika (Mile's girlfriend) also showed up a little later. We all talked mostly in Japanese. We played with Vaso's dictionary. It has a feature where it will say English words out loud in a computerized voice. There is something really satisfying about having a dictionary curse at you ^_^

On my way home I stopped by the local Tsutaya and opened up a rental account. It sure took me long enough to do it! I want to rent/burn some dvd's before I go home for future watching enjoyment. The reason for doing it here is for the Japanese subtitles instead of English ones. If I watch a Japanese movie with Japanese subtitles I can understand exactly 50% more than without them. It really helps that much with the listening. Today I got L: Change the World and also watched my Tales of Symphonia bonus disk that I received. Tomorrow who knows what I will get!

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.