Because everyone needs a hag.

Phew. I've had a lot of adventures since my last post. This is probably going to be a monster post!

Recap:
Winter Semester came and went
Did a lot of stuff within that span of time
Went to Tokyo
Went to Fukuoku
Went to Awajisihma

I'll start by just saying that winter semester was so-so. The classes went really fast and I'm not sure how much I actually learned and how much was review/wasted time. On the other hand, it was nice to have classes and feel like I'm actually progressing. We used some textbooks that I'm going to try to finish before the next semester starts again, so that is a nice benefit, too.

Alright, I have a bunch of pictures from my phone, so I'm going to post them here and talk a little about each one.

So we're going in reverse order, but here's a picture from the amusement park we went to on Awajishima (shima=island). Jion decided that he wanted to play one of the shooting games, so I snapped a picture of him. An innocent small child holding a gun. Cute, right?

The joy of guns in arcades :) But anyways, I just got back last night from Awajishima last night. My host family and my host-dad's parents had originally planned to go to Okinawa, but the flights were all full, so we ended up going to Awajishima. My friend that I went with to Fukuoka laughed when I told her this and said that the only thing the same about Awajishima and Okinawa is that they both are islands. It would have been nice to go to Okinawa (shucks!) but I'm not complaining about Awajishima :)

We stayed at another Westin hotel, which my host parents keep assuring me is a US hotel and ask me if I know of it. I don't. But the hotel was extremely fancy. We got there on Saturday, spent the night, and left for home around 3 on Sunday. On Saturday we spent our time in a giant park and at the pool. I wish I could have taken a picture of Aoi and Jion at the pool because they were so cute :) For being so small, Jion was surprisingly at home in the water and kept getting angry that I was following him around. Aoi was also a pretty good swimmer. I guess I should have expected that, as both of them have swimming lessons twice a week.

I already told my mom, but when we were in the park I saw a dog competition for frisbee-catching. That was pretty cool. From what I saw, though, Ellie could definitely take on those Border Collies. Maybe I'll have to start getting her to practice seriously and then we'll have her compete. Haha.

On Sunday we went to the amusement park. It was definitely aimed at small children, but I still had a good time following the kids and the family around. There was an interesting area where they had small models of a bunch of the world's most famous sightseeing spots (Niagra Falls, the pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum, etc.) and it was interesting to hear how many of the places that my host parents have already visited. I also realized how many places that my stinking sister has been to (Hawaii, Italy, Latvia) and am a little jealous of that >:(

On the way home the traffic was heavy so we ended up stopping at my host grandparents' house to have dinner. I've been to their house a couple times before, but it was the first time I took a bath there and I'm completely jealous -- they have a giant hot tub and a TV that faces the tub in their bathroom. Crazy awesome. I felt like a celeb while I was taking my bath. Actually, that's kind of been my theme for the last two weeks -- feeling like a celeb. Our hotel was so nice in Awajishima, we had expensive sushi on Sunday and super expensive Chinese food on Saturday (at a restaurant that proudly displayed that David Beckham ate there once). Celeb treatment, right? I'll talk about that more when I talk about Fukuoka, too! ... which is now!

Here's me and my friend from Fukuoka eating sushi at one of Fukuoka's most popular sushi restaurants. The sushi there was really good, but I don't think I can eat sushi for a while now.

About a week before I went to Awajishima with my host family, I went with my friend down to Fukuoka for 5 days. Actually, the we left for Awajishima the day after I came back from Fukuoka. Fukuoka is on the island of Kyushu, the southern-most of the four main Japanese islands. My friend had a job-searching meeting down there, so she took me along and showed me life in Fukuoka.

We stayed at her family's apartment (no hotel fee!) right in the center of Fukuoka. Her parents spend most of their time in Korea -- they both are presidents of companies that deal with iron production and trade in Japan and Korea, but they have an apartment in Fukuoka for when they come back to Japan. Right now my friend's cousin is living in the apartment. Her cousin's current job is simply watching the apartment and taking care of chores and duties that my friend's parents can't do because they're in Korea. Talk about an awesome job. So the three of us did a good amount of sightseeing and eating while I was in Fukuoka.

I'm just going to list what I did.

First, I forgot my contacts so I went to a Japanese eye doctor and got free samples to help me make it through the 5 days. It was my first time actually having an eye exam and meeting a doctor in a medical setting in Japan, so it was interesting.

We ate at a really fancy buffet in a hotel one day, a nabe (remember this?) restaurant, a famous sushi restaurant, a really good French restaurant, and a ramen shop that is pretty popular in Fukuoka. Fukuoka is famous for its good food, so we spent most of our time eating.

We went to Kita-Kyushu to renew my friend's passport. She grew up in that area, so it was fun having her guide me around. The buildings in the area are pretty big, and while it definitely looks very urban, compared to Fukuoka, it is pretty much the country.

I met with two of my friend's friends, who were both really cool. One of them was actually a pharmacy major, so I got to ask her a few questions and see what Japanese pharmacy school is like.

I got my haircut! Here's a picture:


And in the process, I gave my hair stylist an English lesson! Haha. She said she wants to go to the US someday, but can't speak any English, so we had a short English lesson while she was cutting my hair.

There's probably more, but that's all that really sticks out in my head right now... We did a lot of fun things, though, and it was so relaxed and the food was so good that I really felt like I was on vacation. It was also nice to have a small break away from the craziness of my host family.

Alright, that pretty much sums up my trip stories. I still have Tokyo to write about, and I'll do that if I get time. Since I don't write my blogs very often they're starting to become too broad and I don't have a lot of time to go into the interesting details. I'll try to write some random thoughts/funny stories right now. I hope they're interesting.

Well first we'll start with an update on the kids. Aoi is lively as ever. She still thinks we're getting married, though she's started to realize that it's not going to be any time soon. And she's still pretty ill-tempered. Actually, she's the scariest small child I've ever met. I think I could make a horror movie using real-life clips of her screaming and hitting people. It would probably be entertaining.

At the amusement park the other day she decided to stamp a red stamp on her face. When I asked her what it was, she told me it was an illness. I laughed quite a bit, and I think that may have been the first time I actually laughed at something she said instead of being scared and or confused.

Now I'm going to cross over to Jion. Last night when we were driving home Jion started talking in his sleep. First he yelled at Aoi for breaking his brand new toy, then he told her to stop bullying him. Poor child. Can't even escape her when he's asleep. He's doing pretty well otherwise, though. He still has no sense of time (A couple days ago he asked me if I was going to eat breakfast when it was dinner time), but other than that he's good. One of his favorite things to do when I'm around is to have "battles" with me in which he gets a really big running start and punches my butt. It doesn't really hurt, so I'm okay with it, but sometimes it scares the crap out of me when I'm not paying attention. I'm still convinced that he is the cutest 4 year old Japanese child in Japan, though.

Yuta is doing pretty good. His classes finish up next week, he has a two-week break, and then he'll officially be a fifth-grader. He still complains about his homework a lot, and he got really sick for a couple weeks during my winter semester, but he's pretty healthy now, so that's good. For some reason, he absolutely despises going to school, which probably isn't good. Oh well. Hopefully he'll get over it eventually.

Well I can't think of much more to write, so I'll call it quits for today. Here's a couple more random pictures to finish up this post :)


My birthday cake! This was quite a while ago, but I thought I'd put it up anyways. It says Happy Birthday Eric on it. They were going to have it written in English, but they couldn't remember if my name had a 'c' or a 'k', so they ended up having it written in Japanese. And they were worried that my friends and I wouldn't be able to read it if it was written in kanji so they had it all written in hiragana.

Here's a picture from another one of my birthday parties. We were in a booth that makes your eyes bigger in the pictures, so my eyes take up pretty much half of my head. Haha.


Because everyone needs a hag. I saw this and laughed a ton. There's a lot of strange English in Japan (commonly called 'Engrish', making fun of the fact that Japanese people have a hard time telling between 'l' and 'r' sounds) but this one made me laugh a lot for some reason. I might just go back there and buy this and use it as my pencil bag next semester.

Here's a picture of nabe, one of the best Japanese foods :) The food's cooking in the pot, and there's more stuff to add when everything in the pot is gone!

That's it for now!