I got a new camera!

It is now Friday, May 22 at 4:54 pm and I am trying in vain to upload new photos onto facebook! So far, no luck! Everytime I try to, it never adds the photos. It's a shame too since it's pictures of all of us in kimono. But, my friends have put up pictures of me in them and have tagged me in them so you all should be able to look at them.

On the bright side, I got my new camera today! So, now I can take my own pictures once again. The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful. Everyone is worried about the swine flu and Japan is running out of face masks rather fast.

Karaoke on Mother's Day was a lot of fun. We sang for about 3 hours or more with the English speakers singing in Japanese (horribly) and the Japaense singing in Englsih (wonderfully). Our friend from Taiwan, Aki, surprised all of us by singing a Chinese rap/rock song. We're going agin on May 31st with our friends from Latvia and whoever else wants to come.

After karaoke, Aki, Sara, Rachel, Zaiga (from Latvia), Aki (from Taiwan) and our new friend Jiro (Japanese) went to this plant festival. It was really cool and we got to eat a lot of really good food! We were actually given samples to try for free!

For the most part though, I've just been going to school. Midterms are in a few weeks, but it feels weird because I feel like I haven't been in school for that long yet. I've participated in a Japanese Tea Ceremony and last week, we got to wear Kimono! It felt like Prom/Senior Pictures, with Sara getting "married" to our Korean friend Gon-san.

Sara has also gotten a lot of interesting texts from our new friend Jiro-san which have been really funny and awkward. He texted her about a week or so ago asking for pictures from karaoke. He then went on to say that he only wanted one's from karaoke and nothing else because even though "we are cute, he has a very cute girlfriend..."

What other pictures did he think we would send him?


The CSU/Yamagata video project has been coming along; we got to watch some of the finished product today. On Sunday, we'll all go to Yamadera and film more about Yamagata. However, we have to climb a thousand steps until we make it to the top! Afterwards, we get to go drinking! This should be interesting since the Japanese are not known to hold there liquor.

The weather has been getting warmer and the humidity is getting worse. Everyone wears a lot of layers around here as if it's a)cold or b)like they can't feel weather. Luckily, last weekend Sara and I found the indoor swimming pool along with running into "The Power Rangers"!

We don't know if it was for a TV show or a group project but the outfits were intense; they hade all the different colors, helmets, bad guys, and even synchronized posing! It was really cool.

We still get stared at on a regular basis along with people talking to us in English or about us in Japanese. We actually meet some new people on Tuesday when one of them came up to me and startled me. It's so interesting to have people want to talk to you just because you can speak English. I feel bad for our friends from Latvia who can also speak English but since they are not American, it's like they don't matter as much.

Tonight, a bunch of us are going to eat sushi and hangout. Hopefully, I can take pictures with my new camera and find a way to post them since facebook wants to be tempermental.

Hope everyone is enjoying there summer!

Golden Week is over!

It's now Wednesday night, 10:12 pm on May 6th. Today is the last day of Golden Week (which is Japan's version of Spring Break) and I have to go back to school tomorrow and Friday. Last week, we had Wednesday off which was spent working on our palaquin for the race held on Monday. The theme was "Gaikoku Cats", which means "Foreign Cats" since all of us 8 in the race were white and either from America, Estonia, or Latvia.

On Saturday, the three of us (Sara, Rachel, and I) went back to school to practice for the relay and the after, we walked around town with our friend Aki, who is from Taiwan. We ended up going shopping and then hanging out back at the dorm. On Sunday, we all meet my tutor/friend Risa in Yonezawa for a big festival that involved a battle re-enactment towards the end. It was really fun and half way through, we had lunch at a make your own "okonomiyaki" place. Everyone's turned out well, except mine was like a blob. Monday was the race, which was fun but harder than I thought it would be. We ended up dressing like cats and being interviewed so I made it onto Japanese TV! My team ended up winning a "special award"- so we got a trophy, certificate, and some food. We were quite the spectacle.

During that time, my camera decided to fail on me, with the LCD scren going white meaning I couldn't see what I was taking a picture of or look at any of my pictures. After contacting Kodak and learning that I would have to wait until I got back to the States to get it fixed, I decided to buy a new one, have it shipped to America, and then have it shipped out here to me. Today, the three of us went bowling with all of our Japanese friends (Risa, Rina, Anna, Natsue, and Hideto) with everyone pulling out mad skills except the Americans...we then made all of our friends play Dance Dance Revolution since some of them had never played it before (shock!).

On Sunday, a group of us are going to do karaoke which is very exciting since this is the first time during this trip for us to do it. We already have some songs picked out to sing! Hopefully, no records it.

I have pictures up on Facebook and Photobucket so go check them out if you can!