It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN

Yes just like the Europe song....but perhaps not as awesome as a Swedish 80s rock band. The title of the blog is of course due to the fact I'll be departing from Narita in less than seven days now.Anyway...I've been down with school for a about a week now and I'm all rested up so I thought this an opportune time to write in the good ole blog.

I know I already talked about my certificate and my presentation but here are a few pics that my teacher sent to me over the weekend.

Top row left to right: Esaki-sensei, Okumra-sensei
Itou-sensei, and another teacher I don't know/didn't have
Middle row left to right: Harrison (UK), Stephan (Germany), Pat (USA)
Bottom row: Martin (Germany), ME (USA!), Rinsan (China), Lydia (UK)

Okumura handing me my certificate.

My best cheese face.

I didn't do much Tuesday-Thursday except for doing a little bit of grocery shopping and figuring out what I need to do before coming back for my stateside visit. Come to find out it's not a lot, just fill out a paper telling my dorm mother where I'm going and then go to the government building in Kofu and get a re-entry visa which will cost me about 35 bucks. Later this week I will also go ahead and by my bus ticket ahead of time to go to Narita next Monday. One of my suitcases broke on the way over but Pat is going to be nice enough to lend me one of his bags since he isn't going to visit stateside for the break.

I also want to thank everyone who helped support my family through a rough time, such as Duke and my friend Tyler. For those of you that haven't heard my father was diagnosed with colon cancer not too long ago. He had surgery last week and was recently let out of the hospital. He's doing great and the situation couldn't have turned out better! So thanks to Duke for helping out with my lil babies (cats) at home, and Tyler for picking me up at the airport come next week while my mother helps my father recover. For those of you who I didn't talk to thank you for your support and I'm glad your thoughts were with us.

Come Thursday, we left for Nagano around 6 or so. The trip was long and the only thing I did was read "Survivor" most of the way. We didn't see snow for the longest time and even when we did it didn't seem like much. Well...needless to say as we started our climb of the mountain that changed quite drastically. The accumulation was already 4.5 ft when we got there. Out hotel room was for 7 people: Ho-san (Taiwanese), Emi (Japanese), Mio (JPN), Martin, Stephan, Pat, and myself. It was a traditional style Japanese room with tatami mats and futons. Here are a few pics:

So like I said there was plenty of snow. By the time we arrived at the hotel it was 9 PM and we were all starving. The two Japanese girls wanted to go to the onsen and the rest of us decided to go to find something to eat atop this chilly mountain of Madarao. We walked about four hundred yards from the hotel to find a very small restaurant where I had huge tasty plate of spaghetti. We went back to the hotel and we all pretty much went to sleep fairly quickly.

The next morning I got griped at because I snored most of the night. Hey, I couldn't help it I had a cold. Patrick was the one that griped the most, but come to find out he snored as much as me if not more, which I found very funny. After having a nice buffet breakfast, which for me mainly consisted of bread and ham, we all went to rent ski clothes and snowboards.

I had to try on a million pairs of pants until they finally found the largest pair that fit me. Gear and all it cost about $77 for both days of playing in the snow. However, after getting on the slopes I found that my gloves weren't that great and I could probably use some goggles as well. I figure it was worth buying all of this seeing as I'd really like to do it again sometime in the near future. However, when I went to buy these things I found the most awesome toboggan of all...it was like a head of white hair with black died tips. Needless to say I was the goofiest looking fool on the mountain that day. I don't' have any pics of the actual snowboarding because we were all doing it and no one wanted to risk bringing along their camera and breaking it, myself included. And to answer your question....no I'm not good at snowboarding. It's strange because I seem to be opposite most people, I can go fast, stay on the board...but going slow or stopping are another story all together. So needless to stay I fell, or rather had to fall, quite a few times and I'm still feeling that pain. Here are a few pics of the view and some things around the hotel:






So after about 5 hours of boarding I headed back to the room on my own. I fell asleep waiting on the others to come back. I was so tired I just laid there as everyone played cards and waited on dinner time to roll around. Finally dinner did roll around it was pretty tasty. It was kinda sad because I ate from the "Kid's Corner" but it had some tasty tempura (fried shrimp), and karage (chicken nuggets). The best part was desert where we were treated to a tasty chocolate fondue fountain :D

The next morning we woke up later than the day before and headed down to the dining hall for the same breakfast we had the day before. However, before doing so we all had to stare in amazement at our window. I have to explain the situating of the room and this hotel for you to understand these pictures. We're on the second floor, and outside our window is an overhang that is on the front of the hotel. As I said there was plenty of snow and the pics above with the nice mountain views were taken from that window. Well...check this out, this was what happened after one night:


I couldn't believe my eyes, and if I ever stay in Kentucky at any point in the future I'll never complain about snow (which I never really have unless it closes stores I want to visit).

After yet another painful day of falling we all went to the onsen at different points in the day and kind of relaxed till we departed at about 5 PM. We took our time going down the mountain as we didn't have chains or snow tires. Unfortunately, right after reaching the base of the mountain one of the girls tells us she forgot her wallet. We were all kind of mad but it's an honest mistake, so we wasted an hour going back up and coming back down the mountain. We stopped at good ole McDonald's where we had some nice greasy food to hold us over until Kofu. The ride back seemed faster for some reason. Probably because I was in so much pain.

I've not really done a ton of stuff since being back from Nagano. I did finish "Survivor" finally, I kept saying I was close to finishing it to people but I had only read one hundred or so pages. I ended up reading the remaining two hundred within the first day of being at Nagano. I also picked up Neil Gaiman's "Coraline" over the weekend because I want to see the movie while I'm back in the states. It's basically a kid's book (although an interesting one) and I breezed through it in a day. Now I'm reading Palahniuk's "Lullaby" and I'm enjoying it. I've kind of put Sawtelle on hold but I'm definitely going to finish it soon. "2666" is way back there on the burner seeing as it's going to take me some time to read, so I may as well save it for the other part of my stay in Japan. I've been looking into purchasing a Kindle because I've gotten so much back into reading, it's pricey but seems quite convenient. The biggest downfall is that the books for it aren't very cheap. However, much like an iPod you're paying for the convenience of being able to carry around so much media rather than having to tout around a brick ton of books. This is especially nice because the Kindle 2 is as thin (maybe thinner) than a pencil. So all you good friends and family out there that love me, BUY ME THIS! Just kidding....maybe....

As I said before I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone since it's been pretty much half a year already, although to me it doesn't feel like it. I'm ready to get my Street Fighter 4 on with all my peepz!

First off, it's been quite a few weeks since I've posted anything. To be honest not a lot has been going on of late. Starting from where I left off the only really cool thing I got to see was a end of the season festival known as "Setsubun" (節分) which means seasonal division. They are on an older calender here and spring officially starts quite early. Although, you can tell from the weather that it's really still winter here....albeit we did have a few really nice days here that were like "t-shirt weather".


Anywho, this particular Sestubun theme is letting the bad spirits out of the house and let the good luck flow in. To celebrate kids usually throw nuts at men dressed in Oni (demon) outfits whilst saying "Oni out, happiness in". I tried to take a few pics with my cellphone but unfortunately none of them turned out. The best part were the really small children getting pictures with the Oni, it's like they were making the child cry on purpose. It really look detrimental to the kid's health, but hey it's their culture.

Other than that I've not really gone out and done anything that warrants pics or awesomeness. As a nice present for our Japanese class coming to an end our teacher, Okumura-sensei, was nice enough to drive us and pay for our meal at Red Lobster!

One thing I did really enjoy was that we were given a special caligraphy class one day where we were taught how to paint different kanji via brush and ink. I really enjoyed it and it's great kanji practice. Here are a few pics of the work I did during the class (I'll probably be taking the actual class next semester):

This is the kanji "Ryu" for Dragon that I asked
the teacher to do for me.

I've been doing a lot of prep for a presentation for my class that we all have to do at the end of the semester. I ended up doing mine on Akira Kurosawa, who I believe was and still is one of the most influential directors of film. It went rather well and afterwards I recieved a certificate of completion in front of everyone, which was a good feeling.





As far as filling my time I usually just come back to the dorm and chill out of late because of all the test prep as well as my speech prep. Though, school is over now and I hope to be able to get out and do a lot before the break is over. Although, besides playing too much DOTA (a mod to Warcraft 3 for PC), I've been reading a lot and piling up books to read after I finish the ones that I'm already reading.

As I said before I'm reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" which is progressing rather slowly. I truly enjoy the book but for some reason it's taking me a while to wade through. Another book I picked up shortly after getting the aforementioned book was "2666" by Roberto Balano. Tis a weighty read of nearly 1000 pages >.< I've not read too much into it so I can't really reveal anything about it. Since I thoroughly enjoyed "Knockemstiff" by Donald Ray Pollock, I decided to pick up it up because author Chuck Palahniuk thought really good of it. However, then I recently started thinking while I loved the movie Fight Club, and enjoyed the recent Choke, I'd never read any of his books.




So I decided to start off with "Survivor", needless to say I was blown away, with fiction like this I find it very hard to put down. So I caught the Palahniuk bug and ended up purchasing all of his fiction works except for "Snuff" which I cannot currently find in Japan.

While the lack of "Snuff" does make me sad, I'll be able to buy it soon because I'm going to be on a plane back to the states in less than two weeks. I'll fly from Narita at about 5 PM on March 2nd here, then travel back in time and arrive in Louisville at 8 PM March 2nd. Not a bad three hour flight if I do say so myself....I wish....my trip will actually be like this: 3.5 hr bus ride to Narita, 2 hr wait before flight, 13 hr flight to Houston, 3.5 hr layover, and then about a 2hr flight to Louisville...jet lag cometh.

Needless to say I'm glad I get to come back and see my family. Next on the list will be my friends :D But then of course there's my prized possessions....MY KITTIES!
It's going to be a well deserved break and I'm really looking forward to everyone, so if you're reading this blog and wanna get up with me when I get back either dial my old digits after March 2nd or send me an email!