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!