My Travel Blog

Dear all,

I miss you. I've been in Jpn for 2 weeks now and I wish I'm back in Chambana. Jpn is a cool country, my host family is pretty nice, the courses are easy/ interesting and I've made some friends here, but they're nothing compare to Chambana and you.

Commuting here is driving me nuts, it takes me at least an hour to get somewhere, whether it's internship every Wed, going to school everyday or traveling between 2 campuses (one of my classes is on another campus). I miss classes in Allen Hall when I could wake up 10 mins before class and simply walk downstairs. My commuting buddy is Keri from Hawaii. She and I both live close to the same station, so we end up going to school together everyday.

There's another guy, JK who also lives close to us. He's actually from the U of I, but I didn't know him until the 2nd day of the program. He's a Korean, 26 years old and I have a small crush on him :P It surprised me that I have a crush on him, cuz he smokes! Cigarettes and weed!! But don't worry, nothing's going to happen, because he has a gf.

I went shopping in Harakuku, Tokyo today and bought a ton of clothes. Most of them are dresses, dresses that are very Jpn style - all flowery and flowey. They're mostly around US$ 20 and my my host mom and Jpn friends told me that's super cheap. Jpn style is very different, they like wearing a lot of layers and clothes are usually not fitted.

My host family is easy to talk to, everyone in the family speaks good English (relatively speaking), so it wasn't hard to communicate with them at all. But I'm not very used to their eating habits. They eat a lot of rice (main dish) and a few side dishes (like 2-3). I honestly think that I didn't get enough nutrients for the past 2 weeks. But it got much better today. For dinner tonight, I had tofu, stir fry mix veggies and chicken. Hopefully it will be like tonight from now on.

This Saturday, I'm going to the Narita Drum Festival with everyone in my program. Speaking of my program, there's a student council election coming up this Friday, so everyone needed to nominate 3 people for the council. They do it the Asian way: you can nominate yourself, but it's more common that other people nominate you. They don't care if you want to do it or not, people will do it if they're elected, because it's an honor. Well.... I got nominated and I'm not happy about it at all! The student council has to meet at least once a week aka it takes away my fun time! Anyways, I'll send an update of the election after Friday.

I'll be traveling to Hokkaido for 4 days 3 nights Apr 29 - May 2, then visiting Dana in Kobe from May 7-9 (Fri - Sun). Hopefully we can all Skype when I'm in Kobe with Dana.

Good night.

Yinting