I swear I've caught a million colds since I've come to Japan. So tired of being sick. The move went pretty well but we still don't have internet. I don't have school this week which is pretty nice. I have plans like every day though. Busy busy. I should probably stay in and rest but its a beautiful day and I want to enjoy it!!

Moving tomorrow. Caught a cold. Had a bad dream last night where my mom and brother died, and then I was sent a text from someone that told me to go to Mercury and die. Yeah weird...No school next week though, and I'll be doing a lot of fun things, so looking forward to that!~

Almost 21!

Can't believe I'm turning 21 tomorrow...yeah.

Having a birthday party tonight, so that should be fun. Though I'm pretty tired since I've bee out for the past three nights. Thursday night there was 50円 beer at an izakaya...which is really cheap. And last night I went clubbing with friends for another friend's birthday. So yeah, pretty tired. And the weather was beautiful this whole week except for now...lol

Moving Soon and Classes

Only one more week left of living in Jingumae...sad to leave. Going to check out my new neighborhood tomorrow though since the two times I've been there before I haven't actually gotten to explore the area or anything. 

Having been seeing much of my host family lately...I've been busy, they've been busy, but mainly I've been busy. Oh well.

Classes are finally figured out (for Waseda at least, Earlham is another story...)

Monday: 

The Art of Mime and Pantomime: Okay so I wasn't planning on taking this class originally, but the other class I signed up for at first was really boring and some of my friends were taking this class so I was like sure why not. The professor is pretty funny and interesting, and I don't really have any interest in mime (and I have to perform with a group), but hey, I guess I get to learn something new?

Tuesday: 

Postmodernism: So this class is pretty cool. We started off by talking about the Beatles. Would be a better class if it wasn't for two periods in a row. Dying by the end. Mime is also two periods in a row. Dying. 

Wednesday:
Photo Essays about Study Abroad Experience Level 5: So I'm only taking themed Japanese classes this semester. I'm not sure how much I'll actually learn, but this essay writing class has been a lot of fun so far. Basically we are just going to write about our study abroad experience (in Japanese) and make a book (or something) out of it.
Appropriate Phrases 2-3: A 1 credit Japanese class. I picked it because I wanted an easy class, but it's too easy so it's super boring. Whoops.
International Role of Japanese Business: Knowing nothing about business, economics, politics, etc., I wasn't sure how this class would be, but I'm actually liking it a lot. The professor is this old, stylish, funny Japanese guy.  But actually most of the class is not him, presidents and other super important people from Japanese businesses come in and give lectures. Today we had the Chief Equity Strategist from Mizuho Securities come in. His English wasn't great, but I learned something!
Thursday:
Pronounciation 3-4: Just registered for this class, so who knows how it is.
Friday:
Essay class again!
Reading Picture Books 3-4: Okay so I signed up for this class because I thought we would just be reading picture books in Japanese and that would be fun, but actually we have to present on a Japanese picture book which is also fine, but then all of a sudden we have to use Excel to make graphs and shit about various things like the facial emotions in the pictures and get real intense with picture book analysis.

So an interesting schedule? And basically no homework and absolutely no text books. Yay!~

Also tonight my study abroad program had presentations on everyone's cultural practicum. It was fun getting to hear about what everyone did, but it was so long and now I'm so tired...always tired.

It's Hard Keeping a Blog When You Actually Have a Social Life...

Wait, did a week really just go by?? This is scary, time is going by too fast. I don't want to go back yet..

Anyway so classes started last week. I wrote about Monday and Tuesday was pretty much the same. Class was ugg but might be interesting? Ate dinner with friends and had the best omurice of my life. Delicious. Wednesday there was a Niji event for the freshmen that I went to (I helped translate some of the power points they used!) and helped out with a bit. Was supposed to go to this umeshu bar with people afterwards, but ti got late so we just ate dinner at a friends house instead. Thursday I only had one class but I actually wasn't able to register for that class in the end so now I'm not sure what I'm taking. Had lunch with two girls who studied abroad at Earlham which was pretty fun. Ate dinner with two of my good Niji friends, and then after that all of us spent the night at our friend's house (the one with an elevator in it). It was a lot of fun, but I was pretty exhausted the next day since I had class first period the next day. Also saw my host family for the first time in a while on Friday (I had had plans every night that week except Monday and Friday).

Saturday I was one of the organizers for the Welcome Party that Niji was throwing, so I pretty much helped out with that all day. It was a lot of fun getting to help organize and work with everyone! The actual event was pretty fun too, 240 people came! After cleaning up and putting stuff away when the party was done we all went out for more drinks, and then after that I went to get abura soba at like 1:30 with Jhanus and two of my good Niji friends (Shiori and Ryushu) who traveled with us during break. And since the trains had stopped running we just stayed at Ryushu's apartment since he lives close to campus.

Sunday I just basically slept. I got to see the new place we are moving into as well! It's pretty nice, but I'm really going to miss living here....oh well...

Today I had class (the art of pantomime lol) and then went out to eat hamburgers with some friends.

And now I'm just dead tired. My list of things to do keeps getting longer though...oh well.

It's only 9pm but I want to go to bed already but I have been so busy lately and still have so much to do on my list of things to do but overall I have been having an amazing time with my friends here. Leaving Tokyo in August is going to be one of the hardest things ever...

Forever Tired: The Story of Emma's Life

So incredibly tired for no reason, but it's probably because I have been dealing with Waseda classes, and Earlham classes, and finding work for Earlham next year, and helping out with the freshman events for the club I'm in, and having a real social life, and spending time with my host family, and trying to figure out when we are moving, and yeah. So I'm a little tired, but overall I'm still having a great time haha.

Sunday I went to Niji's hanami event for a little bit, but I was tired/antsy for some reason/had to meet Becky and her brother also so I left early. Walked around the Harajuku area with Becky and her brother and her brother's friends and showed them to this cool cafe and talked. I'm really glad I got to meet Becky's brother, but I had to leave early to help one of my Niji friends with a power point. So from Harajuku I went back to the Waseda area were I met my friend and we went to another friend's apartment to work on the power point. I was translating Japanese for them (at least the best I could). It's weird because sometimes there are phrases that I understand the meaning in Japanese but have difficultly translating into English (also kanji is still difficult..). But I'm glad I was able to help them with it. It's fun working with everyone :)

There was a lion at this fashionable cafe!~

After that I went to another friend's apartment in the area where people who went to the Philippines and Korea and other random friends gathered for a takoyaki party! It was a lot of fun, we were there form like 7 till 11pm. Ate a lot of food, helped with more English translations, and just talked and hung out with everyone. So much fun!~

This is what a takoyaki party looks like!

Today was the first day of classes for the new semester. I didn't have class until 1 so I ate lunch in the Niji lounge and hung out with everyone for a bit.
Class was incredibly boring. I knew a fair amount of people in the class which was nice, but the teacher was pretty boring and the material was like a class I took last semester so during the break (the class lasted for two periods with a break in between) and I went to go check out another class about Patomime which I also have friends in and seems really fun, so I'm going to drop the boring class and take the fun one. So yeah, skipped the second half of the class I'm dropping and got ice cream with friends from my study abroad program and went to the garden on campus and ate ice cream and practiced juggling! After that hung out with Niji people again but started to feel really spaced out so went home where I ate with my host family (which was like the first time in forever since we are always eating out).

And if you can't tell from how poorly written this is I'm pretty tired but yeah!

It's Been One Week (Or More)!

Okay. Time to recall what I've been doing this past week...
Last Friday and Saturday:
Went to a house party one of my friends on my study abroad program was throwing. It was actually pretty fun and I got to meet some of the new people studying abroad for half a year! On the down side I only got like 2 hours sleep before I ended up waking up to help reserve a spot for hanami. It was my first real hanami, and I was super excited to go. I can't remember if I have explained what hanami is yet, but hanami is basically the best thing ever. Hanami consists of sitting on a blue tarp under the sakura trees from morning to night, eating, drinking, and talking. Basically just a day to be lazy. Usually the weather is nice, however, but when we did it it was freezing. Seriously. Thankfully my host family let me borrow a blanket or else we would have died (and I was already dying from lack of sleep). Even though it was cold though, it was fun to just hang out with my friends from Niji, especially the ones who I traveled with! We were there from 9:30-5:30pm somehow, and after that a couple of us went to another friend's birthday dinner then I went home and slept.




Sunday and Monday:
Went on a trip with my host family, and my host mom's siter and parents. We went to a place called Tateyama in an area called Chiba. There we went to a strawberry farm and got to eat some strawberries! We also stayed one night in a nice hotel by the ocean! I didn't get much sleep though sadly...The next day we went to a "German Village" which was a really large park with rides for kids, German themed buildings, and flowers. I got to try archery there which was pretty cool (and hard)!

Tuesday:
 I can't remember what I did during the day (jog?) but at night I went to a nomikai for the club I am in. April is when the first years enter college so there has been/there are going to be a lot of events for the freshman to try to get them to join our club. There were about 100 first years there which was pretty crazy. And it was nice to see some of my friends I haven't seen in a while.

Wednesday:
The weather was horrible Wednesday (rain and wind) but I braced the forces of nature to have lunch with my friend Dre. We ended up catching up a bit and went to Waseda to see the clubs in recruitment mode (though it wasn't really crowded sine the weather was bad earlier in the day). We also had a competition to see who would get the most fliers (clubs pass them out like crazy but since we are foreigners we don't always get them). That night I also went bowling with some of my friends on my program.

Thursday:
Had my English conversation job for the first time in a while. I mainly help her look at jazz song lyrics and explain to her the meanings or context, etc. (which can be really hard sometimes since jazz songs can have a lot of hard to explain expressions). After that I went to Waseda again to help Niji recruit new members. I walked around and passed out fliers, explained to people what the club was about, and ended up joining a huge group of people jumping up and down with their club signs to the sound of this Latin Music club's band which was a lot of fun. That night I also went drinking with a friend for four hours...and then when I was walking home I ended up going to this bar in my neighborhood that was having a special event with a DJ and a fortune teller. I got to meet a lot of random Japanese people, some girls from Finland, and got my love fortune told. LOLOL. Seriously it's nights like that which make me love Tokyo.

Friday:
Yesterday I ended up showing two of my Japanese friends around the Harajuku and Omotesando area, close to where I live. It was a lot of fun! we ate pancakes, did purikura, went to a nice cafe, and hung out in Yoyogi park. I was also pretty tired since I stayed out late the night before. But I mustered up my strength and ended up going to another nomikai for the new freshman. This time I got to talk to some of the new members a bit more. I was surprised since a majority of the ones sitting at my table had lived abroad for some years and could speak English really well! I exchanged facebooks with some of them too! One my Japanese friends though ended up drinking a bit too much though, so me and two other of my Japanese friends ended up walking her home, but on the way one of them offered to let us stay at her house instead (since the last train would be gone soon) so we all went there. Her house was incredible. It was huge. There was an elevator in the house (for her grandparents). And she was really nice. I had only hung out with her a bit recently (the other two I have hung out with a lot more) but she let us borrow pajamas and we all stayed up late talking. It was a lot of fun!

So basically this week has been marked by a lack of sleep and by being incredibly busy. Still have to figure out exactly what Waseda (and Earlham) classes I want and prepare for Waseda classes since they start next week, have to apply for jobs next year, and have been trying to figure out what my host family is doing since they plan on moving but plans keep changing. Yep.
Hope everyone is doing well!~

I really love this picture!~

So I had a dream last night where I got a free ticket to a SNSD concert and then I was married to a guy whose house was a spaceship and we ended up going to space but running out of fuel and had to ask his family for help but they didn't know we were married.

Anywayyy, I've been super busy lately (with mostly fun things thankfully) and will continue to be super busy until next weekish. So once I get less busy I promise to write a real update!~