of summer...

Well, once again, I have let too much time pass between writing. But well, it’s my vacation, so I think it’s ok if I don’t really feel like writing! LOL. But anyway, I thought I would try out this new Blogger feature that allows me to post from Word. We’ll see how it works. :-D

So anyway, my vacation has been good so far. When I started my vacation I was worried I might be bored out of my mind for most of it, having only day plans here and there. Well, God is good, and He took care of planning my vacation for me.

Right after my last post I went to see fireworks for the first time in Japan. It was fun. I met a new girl, saw lots of yukata (think kimono only lighter weight and a bit simpler). It was great watching the girls in the traditional dress and spikey, trendy hair styles. It’s such a great blend between old and new. I also managed to take a few pictures of members of a biker gang. It’s fun stuff.

Then I’m sure I did other things for a while, and there were about two days where I was just about bored out of my mind. Then Cindy (my director, but still a friend) called me up. She had a surprise houseguest for a while and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out for a while and maybe spend the night. I immediately said YES!! So it turns out this girl went to the same university as I did and although we had never really spoken much, we knew of each other.

Well, I ended up spending the whole weekend at Cindy’s and I had to go to church in Takenotsuka. I got a little sunburned as well. I returned home to rest some, and I had a meeting with some of my students. I was theoretically supposed to clean my house too, but I never really got around to do that (like normal). Well, Tuesday Emily (the girl from Concordia) became my surprise houseguest instead of Cindy’s. It was cool. Definitely kept the boredom at bay. I showed her around my area a couple of days and we did a lot of running around (she ran, I walked). Saturday, there was a huge fireworks festival in the area where I live, so Cindy came up and Tami met up with us and even Hiroki came and we all went to hanabi together. It was a good time. The girls all wore yukata (I can’t wear them, they don’t fit me). The fireworks were great. I took tons of pictures. After the fireworks it started to storm, and we ended up walking something like 40 minutes because they wanted to avoid waiting at the bus stop (two people needed to make sure to get back before the last trains left). Well, I was wet and my shoes had at that point rubbed several places on my feet raw, so I wasn’t too happy at that point. But it all turned out ok.

Next day was Sunday, so I introduced Emily to the church in Japanese. Then we met up with Hiroki again. It was fun. We played a board game in one restaurant and then we went to this really fun theme restaurant called the Lockup. It’s this cross between a jail and a horror shop. It’s really cute. We had our own little “cell” and there were a couple of “performances” where the lights would go out and “monsters” would walk up and down the halls trying to scare people. It was fun and interesting.
After that were a couple of down days, and then Emily left on the 16th to go to her next country (she was on a world tour of sorts. The girl had been traveling alone for 99 days!). I helped her to get on the right train to the airport and then came home to recover.

Not so much has been going on since then. I have had the pleasure to hang out a bit with Tami and that has been great.

Oh yeah, I forgot the whole “Ramen Boy” story. Well, I think I am running out of energy, but I promise to write about him lately. It’s enough to say that Ramen Boy is very cute! (

Anyway, I promise pictures soon, and more interesting things. I’m leaving tomorrow for a prayer retreat, so I’ll be gone for 3 days. I’ll try to write again then. Lata!