So Warm Here!

Hi everyone! Its been a long time since I last posted so I will give you a quick update! I still love Japan, but I do get homesick sometimes because its hard to fit in with another culture. Also not knowing the language makes simple things hard too. lol

Anyways I did a lot in November and December! In November I went to Tokyp for three days and it was a blast!. By far the coolest city I have ever been too. It's so big and there are lights everywhere! I went to Tokyo Tower, Osaka Temple, haurjuko (shopping center), a dance club, and the electronic section of Tokyo. Also In November I went to Matsushima which is one of the three most beautiful sites in Japan. Its this huge bay and has a bunch of temples!

Besides traveling a lot, I'm trying to be more active in school activities. I joined a mountaineering club and a ceramics club; both are a lot of fun! Japanese class is still hard and fast-paced but I am learning a lot! :) I really want to be fluent in Japanese.

In December I went to Yamgeta to visit Kazu's hometown and his parents. Wow I definably had culture shock. Its was pretty scary to greet parents in Japan because 1. they don't speak english 2. its formal bowing 3. i was the first foreigner they ever talk to. But overall everything went great and I had a lot of fun. :) :) :)

So basically I have been traveling, going to karaoke and nomihoudai, hanging out with friends downtown, and being a full time student! I really love Japan and the food is still amazing!

Tomorrow I'm leaving Sendai for two weeks! I'm traveling to Tokyo, then Osaka, then Kyoto for Christmas, then Naru, and then back to Tokyo for New Year Eve!!!!! I'm soooo excited but soo nervous.

Check back in two weeks! I promise to update more!!!

I'm Sorry!!!!!!!!

Ok guys I know I have been horrible about blogging but I promise to make it up to you!!! :) I will try to keep this post short but there's soo much I have to tell everyone! So here's what I been up to:

October 10: I went to karaoke for the first time. Karaoke in Japan is crazy!!! The place I went was 6 stories high! In japan you don't sing in an open place such as a bar, instead you get a private room for you and your friends with a huge TV and microphones. The room also had couches to sit on and a phone to call the waiters for food and alcohol. 900 yen for 6 hours! Lots of fun. :)

October 11: The Mori group threw another Welcome Party for the international students. Lots of good food. Later that night the American international students taught everyone drinking games. lol

October 12: I went to Yamadera!!!!! Yamadera is this famous shrine in Japan, thats located about an hour from Sendai by train. We got off a stop early and walked 8 km through a beautiful forest with amazing waterfalls. By the time we got to the Shrine we were exhausted and the Shrine had 1,105 stairs to climb!!! :) We also ate a soba (noddles) restaurant very good.

October 13: Happy Sport Day/Health Day holiday in Japan! I didn't have school so I ate Kaiten sushi at 100 yen a plate!! Sooo cheap. Kaiten sushi is conveyor belt sushi. They also had touch screen computers to use if you can't find a sushi you like and the sushi gets delivered to you by train! After that I went to a museum with rock formations.

October 15: My Japanese Culture Class went on a field trip to Sendai Castle, also know as Aoba Castle, where the famous Date Masamun (a Japanese samurai) lived.

October 16: Kazu and I went to this store called the loft. Its located right next to Sendai Station and its amazing. 10 stories of anything you would like or imagine!!! I also got to get udon noddles for the first time.

October 17 & 18: More welcome parties and eating a lot of food! lol :) Also I went to an Imoni festival, where you go down by the river and cook food over fire. Sooo tasty.

October 19: My Japanese Culture class went on another field trip. Yay! We traveled about 40 mins. outside of Sendai and went to an apple orchard and had fuji apples. So good!!! After that we went to a jr. high school to watch Miyagi prefecture traditional dance routines. The costumes were really cool. I can't imagine my jr. high having such fantastic costumes. Once that was over we went to Mt. Izumi to go hiking. We had to take a ski lift just to reach the top! The view was beautiful but I feel like I'm hiking all the time! On the mountain was this old farmhouse were we learned about the life of a Japanese Farmer 200 years ago.

October 20-23: Regular school life and hanging out with friends. :)

October 24: I went to a dance club called Shaft! It was Halloween themed so people were wearing costumes. The club was kind of funny because no one really dances. They just kind of stand there and nod their heads, which was fine for me because I cant dance. lol The club also played American music the whole time.

October 25: This was a really cool day. My friends and I went to a guten restaurant. Guten is cow tongue and is very famous in Sendai. It was actually really good! Mom and dad when you visit me we are going there! After eating we went shopping for Halloween costumes and we also found this outside market thats crazy. I found a pumpkin (small though) there! Pumpkins are impossible to find in Japan so I was very happy!

October 26: International Food Festival. Music and food from around the world. Very fun, very full. lol :)

October 28: My Dynamics class went on a field trip to a forest were we looked at rocks and shells.

October 29: Another field trip. omg! lol My Japanese culture class went to Sendai Museum. Very interesting! Later I explored Sendai more. :)

Anyways life in Sendai is crazy! The city is amazing and there is always so much to do! It's sooooo different from an American city. My classes are really easy. There's no homework, quizzes, or exams! Just have to go to lecture and listen. The only hard class I have is Japanese and thats really faced-paced so I have to study a lot for that class. After class I go to my research lab for a couple of hours and work on my experiment and hang out with my Japanese lab mates.

So as many as you know I have a Japanese boyfriend, who is amazing. lol

This weekend, all the international kids are throwing a Halloween party!!! Halloween in Japan is not popular at all. Most Japanese don't know what day it is! lol Right after the Halloween party I'm going to Tokyo till Monday so I will write about it in a couple of days!!!!! Miss everyone!!!!!!!!

Classes & More fun!!!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while!!!!! Anyways Sendai is still outstanding. So here's what I've been up to :)

So Oct. 4 (Saturday) was a really fun day. I played soccer with a few of my friends, which was a lot of fun but I was soooo out of shape. After that I went to Yoshiba Camera (the wacky electronic store) and bought a new cell. The cell is sooo advance compared to my old phones. You can watch really high quality tv! Anyways love the phone but hate the process of getting one. In Japan if you are a foreigner (gajin) you have to have health insurance, a Japanese bank account, passport, Japanese address and on top of that since I was 19 I had to get a guardian to sign for me. Ahhh. Later that night the international dorm threw a huge welcoming party for everyone! It was fun to meet everyone. After that party ended the real party began. About 30ish international kids and I went to NOMI HOUDAI!!!!! Nomi Houdal is a place to sing karaoke while getting free food and drinks for two hours. I wished America had this!! It was soo much fun!
(up: Nomi Houdai with friends!)

Anyways the next day (Oct. 5) a bunch of friends and I took the subway to a mall and just wandered around and looked at all the different shops. Later that night my friend Kazu showed me around downtown and we went to Aoba Castle, where you can see the city skyline at night. Breathtaking!!!!!

On Oct. 6, I started my classes which are Japanese I, Kanji I, Dynamics of the earth, Japanese culture A, Japanese culture B, Environmental chemistry, Education in Japan, and Japanese business and economy. All the classes are great. Culture A you take field trips all the time. In Culture C I'm learning Aikido, which is a martial arts where you learn to use the attacker's momentum against them. Really cool. The Japanese I class is very fast past but I'm glade because I want to learn as much as possible!
(up: at the mall w/ friends)

So over the past week I have been attending classes and getting really wet. It rains all the time in Sendai!!! And when it rains it basically rains all day. This whole week there has been rain at some point of the day. I feel like I live in Seattle. lol So after classes on Oct. 7 Kuzu helped me register my bike. Apparently bikes are treated like cars- you need to have a light, good breaks, and go into check ups. When then got ice cream!!! Ice cream in Japan is sooooo good. I want to eat it everyday! :)

After classes on Oct. 8 a bunch and friends and I ate at a sushi restaurant with convey belts!!! Very fun and the sushi here is to die for. It is also much cheaper then in America.

Later in the evening on Oct. 9 (Thursday) my roommates (7 total) threw a welcome part for Anny (another exchange student from China) and we had Tokoyaki!!!! So delicious! It was pretty cool to get know my roommates better and the funny thing is they all thought I was 22 years old!!!

(Up: roommate party!!)

(Below: Typical street in Sendai & All the international kids!)

I love my bike!!!!

Hi everyone! These last few days at my university has been crazy and sooo different. On Oct. 1st my professor picked me up from the hotel and drove me to Aobayama campus (one of the five) which literally means 'up a hill/mountain'. Thats where all the engineering classes take place and It takes 20 mins just to climb up there because its too steep to ride a bike. Also Aobayama is 25 mins away from by dorm by bike. So I will have a loooong trip every day. Anyways I got to see the lab I will be working in and its really cool. I also got to meet the other students working for my professor. There's 15 total and they are really funny. After that my professor drove me back to Sendai Station to meet up with all the international students that were coming in. That was hectic because our meeting place was taken over by this weird game show. lol

So the MORI group (they help international students) drove us to the dorms and we had to fill out sooo many forms! After that I finally got to see my dorm and its amazing. Its only a year old and so high tech! The toilet has so many buttons on it and I'm kind of afraid to try them out! The dorms are arranged cluster-style so there's eight single rooms and we share this big kitchen/living area and bathroom.

The next day (Oct.2) The Mori Group took all the international students to Aboa-ward (alien registration), the insurance building, and bank to fill out many more forms. After that they took us out to a Japanese-styled restaurant. Very nice. We also went to a 100 yen store and that was incredible! It was five stories high and had everything you could ever imagine just for $1!!!!

Later in the day my friend Marti and I took a train from Sendai station to the north part of Sendai to find used bicycles. It was kind of weird because it was kind of in the slums and people would drive past and take pictures. Anyways we finally found some bikes (only $68!) and I think they are way better then American bikes . They are really easy to use and the wheels are much larger. Bikes in Sendai is a necessary. Due to traffic and small roads buses take way too long. Everyone and I mean everyone has a bike.

Later that night a bunch of the international kids and I rode our bikes from our dorms to downtown. Sendai is a really cool city because there's main streets that are really modern but go down a side street or other sections of the city and it's very traditional japan with temples and other cool things. We ate at a pizza place and the pizza is really soft, there's hardly any crust.

So the next day (Oct. 3) I went exploring the city with a few friends and we got lost so many times. lol We finally made it to the Kawachi campus and got even more lost there. It's hard when everything is in Kanji. Kawachi is right at the foot of Aobayama campus so after we were done exploring Kawachi we decided to be brave and climb up to Aobayama. Well long story short- it sucked. I can't believe I have to do it everyday. There must have been a 1,000 stairs. It was very pretty but really hard. After we were done with Aobayama we went downtown for a while and checked out more weird electronic stores. I was the only one with a bike so everyone took a bus (bikes aren't allowed in buses) back to the dorms. At that time it was very dark and I had no idea how to find my way home (it's about a 30min ride) so I called my Japanese friend I met the night before and he picked me up. Thank god because there was no way I could have ever found my dorm.

Overall everything is amazing!



Sorry for such a long post! I will make it shorter next time! Bye!


<---Picture of Sendai from my balcony

First Days

Hi guys I just arrived in Sendai yesterday!

Sendai is crazy!!!! Its so huge and its a maze. The streets are a lot smaller and cars just zoom past. On the other hand, it`s really pretty and really clean. Anyways Christina and I just finished exploring the city (well we only went down a few streets) but there are so many different shops. We went into this electronic store that was behind the huge train station and it was basically Best Buy on Crack. I have never seen so many wacky electronics in one place. The store was huge!!!

Everything with the airports went smoohtly. The frist airplane (from Chicago to Korea) was awesome. It was a 747 so it was really big, but what was really cool was the built in TVs that were in every seat. I watched What happen in Vegas, College Road Trip, and Iron Man. There were a bunch of movies to choose from. They also gave us two huge meals and tons of snacks. When we landed, the airport in Korea was acutally not in Seoul but on an island about an hour from the city. It was huge and very high tech. The second plane ride from Korea to Sendai was also very pleasant and they also gave me a huge meal even though it was a two hour flight. Customs was very easy and Christina and I were both given a cart for our luggage, which we really didn`t need because Mikiko was waiting for us right outside of the baggage area.

After Mikiko picked us up she drove us into Sendai (which took about 40 mins.) and we ate at a sushi resturant. Then she drove us to the University. Tohoku University is very spread out throughout the city. I`m really worried about finding my way around. My dorm itself it over two miles away from the closet campus (there`s five total) and there`s hardly any side walks. Everyone rides a bike so I`m sure there won`t be any problems.

After dropping our luggage at the dorms Mikiko drove us to our hotel. We aren`t allowed to live in the dorms until Oct. 1. My room is soooooo small, but clean. It was about 4:00pm at that time and Christina and I were so tried that we just went to sleep. This morning I was up at 3:00am! I hate jetlag but hopefully tonight will be better.

Tomorrow my Professor is going to pick me up and help me settle in. We have to go to the US embassy so that should be interesting! :)

Hope everything is going well and I miss everyone!!!!

Pre-Departure

Hi everyone I only have a few days left and I'm so excited, but there's so much work to do. Everything is so complicated from getting a cell phone that works in Japan to setting up the correct bank accounts! And packing is a monster. I have two gigantic suitcases filled with clothes.

Ok here's the amount of clothes I'm bringing:
- 5 jeans
- 2 skirts
- 3 shorts
- 10 tee-shirts (mostly for workout and for sleeping)
- 5 pj bottoms
- 30 (!) shirts
- 17 long sleeve/sweaters for winter
- 4 hoodies
- 4 jackets
- 2 things of underarmor
- wintercoat, gloves, scarf
- 4 dressy shirts
- 2 dressy pants
- 5 pairs of shoes
- 3 dresses
- 3 purses

Here's the other stuff:
- makeup
- 3 boxes of hair dye
- 1 bottle of hair product
- toothbrush and small toothbrush
- lots of medicine
- deodorant
- face wash
- extra batteries
- shampoo/conditioner
- converter

Anyways everything is going smoothly and I can't wait until I take off!