Today marks my one year anniversary! It has been one year since I left Japan and moved back to the USA. In the past year, I have moved to the Seattle area, learned to live with a roommate and her cat (both of them are awesome), found a job with a company that I really like, seen two great theater shows, and visited the area zoo, twice. Not bad for ( Read more... )

I decided to get out of the apartment and headed down to Tokyo. It was HOT but the trip was worth it. Before I left for Hokkaido, I had been searching on Japan Travel and Living Guide for good places to visit in Tokyo. While I was exploring the site, I ran into a park section and found that there were some amazing parks in Tokyo. Today, I decided ( Read more... )

After the Ramen Museum the rain had stopped so we decided that it we should still head over to the Yokohama Stadium and watch the baseball game. We arrived to the game a half hour late but we still got tickets. Our seats were awesome. We sat with the die hard fans, they come to every game, have organized cheering (lead by a cheermaster), and some ( Read more... )

Hiromi, Jana, and I took a trip to Yokohama yesterday. Our first stop was at the Ramen Museum in Shin Yokohama. Ramen is one of the favorite foods in Japan and there are over 200,000 ramen restaurants in Japan. The dish first came to Japan in 1900 when Chinese cooks started making ramen in Japan. Since then the food can be found all over Japan and ( Read more... )

I went to Tokyo with Andrea and Katie on Saturday. We went to Ebisu Garden to see a photo exhibit at a museum. The nature exhibit was great, the first part focused on wild life. There were pictures of bald eagles, foxes, brown bears, polar bears, and many other kinds of animals. One of the pictures was of a black bear eating a salmon and it was so ( Read more... )

Here are some more pictures from Nikko. These were all taken by the wonderful Brooke. I hope you like them.


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Brooke, Katie, and I were in Nikko on Friday and Saturday to see the fall colors. I was bit nervous about the trip because I was the one who made all of the arrangements but I think it went really well.

We left Ami at around 6:45 on Friday morning (Thank you Andrea, for the ride to the station) and arrived in Kita-Senju where we had to change ( Read more... )

On Friday, Katie asked if I would be interested in going to North Ibaraki with her to do some sightseeing. One of her teachers invited her to go sightseeing and said that she could bring a friend with her. I am not one to turn down an invitation to go sightseeing so I told her I would love to go. Katie said that we would go apple picking, see a ( Read more... )

On Friday night Brooke, Katie, and Jana came over to watch the newest Grey’s Anatomy. We had a wonderful time, complete with ice cream. We talked about the show after words and who we want Meredith to pick, complained that George may have screwed up with Callie, and about McSteamy…come one that man is good looking. We also looked at Jana funny when ( Read more... )

On Friday, I spent the day working at one of my elementary schools. During a game of Animal Karuta one of the first grade girls burst into tears. The homeroom teacher went and tried to comfort her but the student continued to cry. I thought it would be best if I kept the game going because there were 20 other students in the class who were not ( Read more... )