And then and then and then and then and then (aka resto and Nagoya and karaoke and biking and dance)

So, it's been a ridiculously long time since I last updated, and to be honest, I don't even know where to start with the whole update thing. I can't really remember everything that I've been doing.
And thus - brief summaries!

Two (three?) weekends ago, a bunch of us got together and went to this nice buffet restaurant. I, of course, could eat nothing there, but it was still cool to get to hang out with everyone.




I believe, Martin and I took another bike trip around Okazaki, and this time, we went all the way over to Anjo, which is where he lives with a Japanese family.


Martin in front of his host family's house!


There was a cute little temple right by it


with, yet again, super awesome dragon fountain

and very pretty flowers.

And I really don't think I will ever get tired of these gate things.



Some weekend in there, Alexis, Martin, and I hopped on the train over to Nagoya.


Alexis got a beautiful pink donut!


We mostly just walked around and shopped, and it was super cool.


There are apparently ALWAYS festivals going on everywhere in Japan (there was a festival going on behind those things)!

We were for some reason all extraordinarily tired, though. We were planning on getting our hair cut, but we ended up not being able to find anywhere that would do it for us.

Last weekend, on Friday night a group of us went out to karaoke. I of course forgot to bring my camera, so I am sad to say that I have no pictures. We had a FABULOUS time, though! I got to sing "Nichiyoubi yori no shisha" by the High Lows, which is one of my favorite Japanese songs, and I totally rocked it (well, I managed to read the hiragana and sing along - my voice, however, is another story).



Jenny-Lyn, Lynne, and Laura all had FABULOUS voices, so it was embarrassing attempting to sing after them, since my voice is horrible. Lauren kept picking metal songs, which was sort of fabulous. And Alexis did wonderful old school 80sesque songs. Good times.
I will definitely be karaokeing again, and next time, I will remember to take pictures.

Other than that, I had my big kanji test two weeks ago, and I got 100%! Ohhh yeah! All that kanji time with Martin is totally paying off. Then we had our big test last week, and I totally rocked it. I didn't miss a single point for lack of knowledge, just a couple points for stupidity (i.e. writing things in that were already there). Just one more left and then the quarter is over. Time really has been flying by!

Oh, AND, I started doing this Japanese dance class thing. Jenny-Lyn and Jin-Han are the other two Yamasa students in the class with me, and it is super fun. It's good because it's like exercise.


me, Jin-Han, Jenny-Lyn

We already learned one whole dance, and then this past week we started a new one. Yay!

And that's what's been going on. Life is good. Japan is fabulous. Rachel and Josh are coming at the end of June. Guillame is coming at the end of July! And I might just come out of this all being a speaker of Japanese.

And I'll try to update more often, as I've already got things to say about this weekend.