This time, it's not chronological.
This weekend the sakura blossomed. It's beautiful! Saturday, we went to a park in Shinjuku and I took 214 pictures there. There are 75 different kinds of cherry blossom, who knew? Not that I saw 75 different kinds... A lot of my pictures look the same, I mean, a cherry tree is a cherry tree.... so it was easy to edit which ones to put up. There were tons of people there because it's traditional to take a picnic and drink while gazing at the blossoms, called a hinami. Granted we didn't drink or picnic. It was still a lot of fun.
Instead of taking a picnic we went and spent a good deal of money (and by that I mean more than $7) at El Torito (go figure...). It was pretty good, hit the spot after having talked up the mexican food on the way there. The portions were really small compared to the US, but the hot sauce was pretty tasty. And who thought it would take me a month in Japan to appreciate guacamole. Regardless of the odd timing for Mexican food, it was fun and pretty good. I just thought it was ironic that we would eat Mexican food before viewing cherry blossoms in Japan...
Friday night we went to a pub in Ikebukuro called Hub, it's pretty famous and there are a bunch of them. There are also a ton of gaijin there. I think I prefer the company of Japanese though.
My Japanese is getting better, and thus my confidence in speaking is slowly increasing. I started a conversation with Ta-kun, probably our first one on one. It was really exciting, to me at least. I had taken a picture of a billboard of Full Metal Alchemist because I had tried to tell him about it on my first or second day with my family, but the name is really different in Japanese, so it didn't get across. So I showed him the picture and asked him if he knew it, and I told him that's the one I was talking about before. He knows it, and likes it. yay!
Tomoki the PA, Lucy and I went to Akiba to return my DS, which worked out smoothly thanks to Tomoki. I'm going to buy the older version sometime next week. It won't be green, but I'll get over it. Maybe I can buy a cute cover for it or something. I can get a Japanese-English dictionary program, which would be sweet. I'm excited.
Yesterday I did what few, if any American tourists to Japan have ever done... I attended a middle school band concert. Ann is going to be in band club next semester, so we went so she could get an idea of which instrument she wants to play. I think she decided on clarinet. I would have guessed flute. It was just like any other band concert except the kids were wearing japanese middle school uniforms. I was really tired, so I kept falling asleep. oops. I was able to read the kanji of one persons name, yay! 10 kanji down, 1990 to go to be able to read a newspaper.
I got straps for my kettai finally. I got a Shikamaru from Naruto, Hitsugaya from Bleach and cream puff, which Shikamaru is eating, and a piece of pizza for Hitsugaya. Oh Japan.
I went running today. I found a paved path that goes along the river for a long time, through rice fields. It was fun. I'm going to check out the pool my okaasan told me about sometime soon. I sure could use a swim.
Something I've noticed: if the sun is out, i automatically think it's warmer out. however, it usually isn't, but I have already convinced myself it is, so I don't notice how cold it is until way later.
Wednesday: Ghibili museum with film class.
Sunday: Disney Sea maybe
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