Finally!

It's Japan time! Finally made it to Japan after a very VERY long flight. After a good night's sleep, I'm rearing to go today.

Currently the to other people in the program and I are staying in a hotel in Ikebukuro (a district of Tokyo). I am lucky enough to be staying in a traditional Japanese room, including tatami (traditional mats made of some type of straw) and futon (basically mattresses that are on the ground rather than in a bed frame). It's small but beautiful! Luckily we have air conditioning (though it took us half the night to figure out how to work the damn thing until I found a instruction sheet in English) but now it's comfy and pleasant.

Today we have to interview for housing so they can try to match us with a host family/dorm that will work well for both parties as well as academic orientation.

It still hasn't sunk in that I'm going to be here for a year....I keep expecting to go home after a week of vacation and go back to Northwestern. But luckily that won't happen :D

And so....the adventure begins...

Where did my summer go??

So....I have less than a month left before I'm off. Seriously, what happened to my summer?! It feels like I've merely blinked and I have three weeks left.

Right now I'm spending my time with my mom and getting ready for the actual departure. Soon I'll be leaving to see my dad and then I'm off! I'm in the middle of getting my visa (I never want to deal with this process ever, ever again...), but overall I haven't pulled out as much hair as I thought I would going into this visa process. I'm puzzling more over what to get for my host family when I go to first meet them. I don't know who they are, nor will I know until I actually get to Japan during my orientation week. So it's really like groping through the dark here. So far I've gotten a deck of cards from Chicago and a coffee travel cup from Mall of America in Minnesota (where I am now with my mother). I was thinking of stuffing the travel cup with Lindt chocolates. I got the idea from the time when I bought some of these for my Japanese professors as a thank you present for writing my recommendation letters for the program...they were thrilled, and said that they were a luxury chocolate in Japan. I've still got to get more from San Diego (where my dad lives and where I was born and lived multiple but separate times) but still no idea what else I could buy. I guess I'll make it up as I go along...

2 months to go.....

I have no idea how I first got into Japanese - I decided to take it my senior year of high school once I had finished French, and all of the sudden I fell in love. I entered college thinking that I would just take it as my language requirement and say goodbye, but apparently it was impossible. So here I am, counting down the weeks (only 10 to go!!!) until I leave the States for Japan for 10 full months. It feels like just yesterday that I decided I would actually even go for it.

Of course, I'm looking forward to it but at the same time, I'm almost shitting my pants XD BUT I'm trying not to think about it now and just get through these months (I'm working on a farm in central Illinois....don't ask how I got myself into that.....)

Stay tuned for more updates as the countdown continues!