日本世こそ！(Welcome to Japan!)

Here I am, sitting at my computer, and typing away my thoughts before I have to crack down and finish some last minute summer homework. You could consider this my procrastination. Almost everything is done; I just have a few loose ends to tie up and then my life will have been compressed into one 27" suitcase, one carryon, and one backpack. My life is now portable!

A lot of people have been asking me if I'm excited and the answer to that is yes. People have asked me if I'm nervous and the answer is yes. Scared, worried, happy...yes, yes, yes. I've got a little bit of everything inside right now.

I've also been asked a lot where I'm staying, so here are the facts: I'm staying in Sayama-shi in the Saitama prefecture, which is just northwest of Tokyo (yes! weekends in Tokyo!). I'm attending Musashino Joshi Gakuin Buddhist school, which is an all-girl's school that goes from kindergarden to college. My host sister, who is 18, is attending their college and studying to be a pharmacist. My host mother is a nutritionist, and my host father works in another city and apparently doesn't come home much. Their grandparents live in the same apartment complex, but on a different floor. I can stay with them because my host brother is staying in Germany for the year, so his room is open.

I think this is all the procrastination I can think of for now. I'll leave you with two fun links that I've found.
Translation Party - this one is a lot of fun, the crazier the sentence the more amusing the result!
Your Name in Japanese - technically most western names wouldn't appear in kanji, but this is just kinda fun.

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Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

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Homecoming

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As some of you may have known, this past weekend Typhoon Hagibis blew through Japan, specifically the Kanto region where Tokyo is. It had the grim distinction of being the strongest/most deadly storm to hit the region since Typhoon Ida in 1958. Typhoon classification scales are confusing (and, interestingly, the only difference between a "typhoon" and a "hurricane" is the naming convention of the region in which it occurs ), but at one point Hagibis was classified as a "violent typhoon," the strongest category the Japan Meteorological Agency has, roughly the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Fortunately it didn't make landfall at that strength, downgrading to a Category 3 equivalent storm. Personally, although Typhoon Hagibis (which means, appropriately, "speed" in Tagalog) was not the first typhoon I've (pardon the pun) weathered here in Japan, it was most certainly the most extreme. Most typhoons don't directly hit Kanto, inst...

Rice and Ramen

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