When I got ready for the trip I kept just thinking: it's only for a month. I'll go, I'll hit up bookstores, I'll try and do some research, and maybe if I get my act together I'll try to email those professors I need to. It's going to be weird to be there for such a short time, but before I know it I'll be heading back home.

( now, about how I was going to get enough money to there...that's another pain in the ass )

Decided again last night that I was going back to the sushi place - in part because apparently lots of restaurants in my neighborhood are reservation only (or are filled with reservations) on a Friday night. Which, hey, cool! It means I'm not the only one that thought the food was good ( Read more... )

For the first time that wasn't on a class jaunt or a trip to a fast-food like kaitenzushi restaurant, i had sushi. I had yummy, yummy sushi ( Read more... )

It's 11 pm local time, and I've been in Japan for all of two days, and I'm so glad I'm back! I got off the plane and the air was so humid I felt like I had to chew through it, but I'm slowly feeling more and more acclimated to that crazy humidity (well, and it's fluctuated a bit so I don't think it was quite 90 degrees with 90% anymore either ( Read more... )

over the last month I've been absolutely buried in work, in life, in Bones and Leverage. No. Seriously ( Read more... )

Well, i didn't actually mean for it to go this long in between postings, but I suppose all that prepping for the end of the year just got the hell away from me. Things, in bullet(ish) form ( Read more... )

No, seriously, I did. On the streets of Omotesando (one of the neighborhoods in Tokyo). We were getting Lindt dark-chocolate soft cream after having hamburgers and mojitos and spiral cut fries for lunch at this awesome open air food cart circle Sam knows, and this guy just walked around the corner with a cappuchin monkey on his shoulder. I ( Read more... )

And we got to read a sci fi story for my last class, which was doubly awesome! I'm already starting to get nostalgic though - this whole year has been an isolated bubble of tons of homework and very little other responsibilities and all of that? pretty awesome ( Read more... )

Ok, so, I have to say at the outset that this is all me meandering because Mom has all the pictures from the first half of our trip. My camera battery died and I didn't nab a new one until we got back to Yokohama.

( so, the word for 'lake' in Japanese is 'ko' when appended to a name like Kawaguchi )

I had a Mom in Japan for two weeks! We galavanted hither and yon (as much as we were able) including bullet training to Kyoto at the height of Golden week and running out to the Fuji lake district to get (sort of) up close pictures of Mt. Fuji from lake Kawaguchi. It was a great visit and I was sad to have to say goodbye at the airport this ( Read more... )