Skip to main content

Old News

Nothing much happened today in the way of work. Went to the curio coffee shop to ask some follow up questions and then edited the article I had previously written (we shall see what Ms Morita has to say about it). Accompanied another reporter to a supermarket where the company president was giving a presentation to some university students (he talked for an hour about the competition of convenience stores and the company's policies and then got sidetracked into the 90s bubble economy and economics...it was a long time to wait). Got out early.

Dinner was much more interesting. A Russian woman named Diana had stayed with my host family two years ago and since she and her boyfriend were in Japan again, they stopped over for dinner. I found myself doing a lot of translating: Diana's Japanese was much worse than my own, and her boyfriend spoke no Japanese but DID speak French, so the meal (which was extravagant--tempura, yakitori, and sushi!) turned into a pleasant review session for me.

Anyways, here's the four articles that I've been a real part of in the newspaper. The first two are articles about me: the first is about the two interns from Yale and the second is about me, specifically. The second two are articles that I wrote, the first about flower arrangement and the second is about the shinkansen and Kanazawa station. My picture has appeared so much, I feel like a model.





Tomorrow I get to see geisha, and I have some exciting weekend plans that (knock on wood) I'm going to keep a surprise for all of you!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

文化祭!(Bunkasai--Cultural Festival Days 1 and 2) and Man I'm Tired!

So this weekend was Musashino Joshi's annual Cultural Festival, an event that all high schools (I would assume) have, where the school is open to the public and classes and clubs put on events, or set up quiz games or food booths. Essentially it's like a carnival. Traditional culture...not so much (though there are aspects of it). Mostly it's just good fun. My class was doing a chocolate banana food booth, so on Friday (the school-wide prep day, even though techincally it was another Japanese holiday) we got cardboard and began making our booth, which was Hawaiian themed. And you'd think it wouldn't take very long, but it took the entire day and then about half an hour on Saturday. (Also, what' you're seeing is Summer Uniform Form 1.5, where there's the sweater over the shirt.) But in the end the booth turned out pretty sweet, if I may say so myself: The top says Chocobana, and the sides of the poles are made to look like palm trees with a monkay on it

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds.

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u