not much of an update :)

...."attractive" screenshot ^_^

just some thoughts...

...not really an update, i suppose.

after a relatively expensive day yesterday, i decided to stay in. i woke up late and found the house empty. my host mom had left a note for me on the kitchen table saying that she'd be out until 3pm or so. until then, i had watched a few episodes of the OC and caught up with a couple friends online. 

when my host mom came home, i was picking up my room... but one thing led to another, and i began to "REALLY" clean. fortunately or unfortunately, i found some things reminding me of high school, japanese summer school, and the first month of being in japan.

i realized that many things that i may have been unhappy about stems from issues more deeply rooted in just the "weird ways in which japan works". and i wish that i had tied up loose ends before leaving the country, but i didn't. so now, i have to figure out what it exactly it is that i need to do to "fix" a few things in my life. i won't have the answers before this month is over, let alone before break ends this weekend.

but as always, i'll がんばります。

it's all that i can do.

fall break!

....has begun! ^_^

i've been terrible about keeping this blog updated for a while now. 

BUT, i've been keeping a separate journal so my misadventures don't go unwritten :)

sometime this week, i think i'll post a video blog ~ since i can talk a lot faster than i can type (which i'm sure you all know what i'm talking about...lol)

i'm doing extremely well now. it just took me forever to figure out that there's nothing i can do about the way the japanese go about things sometimes. most of the time, it's practical. and when it's not, i just want to scream in frustration. 

...but i can't. because it's not middlebury. and i can't do random "crazy" things like that.

(the closest my friends and i have gotten to screaming "randomly" is when we saw the election results come in on the computers in the akp lounge. we went out, bought drinks, and raised a toast to obama in the middle of the street ^_^)

oh midd... how i miss you <3

i didn't vote either.

i just read a friend's post about not voting in the 2008 election. i could literally copy and paste her entire post, and that would sum up perfectly how i feel.

i wish i had worked harder to make sure i got my absentee ballot.

i wish i could've been a part of making history.

i wish i could tell future generations that my first vote was for obama.

i have very few regrets in life, and not voting in this election has become one of my bigger ones. can i reason why i didn't care enough to secure my absentee ballot? i'm not sure. like some americans, i had lost hope in our country. for a period of time, i seriously considered living elsewhere in the world after graduation because i didn't see reason to stay. i disagreed with decisions that our government was making. i became frustrated, and i guess i just didn't want to care anymore. maybe i was "certain" that others would vote for obama, and my vote wouldn't have "mattered". i don't know.

three weeks worth of posts are missing. during this period in october, i was not in a very good place mentally. japan was driving me up a wall with some of its strange habits and customs ~ culture shock, i suppose. (maybe it's a matter of "getting used to it". but one thing i doubt i'd ever get used to is seeing girls pile on fifty layers of mascara in a restaurant or moving subway car. this morning, i saw a woman walk onto the hankyu with a mirror held up to her face. she couldn't wait five seconds until she was actually on the train?!) anyway, the point i'm trying to make is that being here in japan has made me realize that i do love america. and i'm ready to see america change for the better. but by the time i had come to realize this, it had already become late october.

it's about time i fly again ^_^

for whatever reason, i decided to practice some cheer stunts (on a wobble board) after stretching at renaissance tonight.

then a trainer comes up to me, and i thought i was about to be scolded for doing strange things on the wobble board in the stretching area. instead, she started to say something about cheer, but then she saw the middlebury cheerleading shirt i was wearing. やっぱり (after all/as it turns out/"i thought so"), she says.

long story short, she's on a cheerleading squad based in osaka and wants me to join ^_^  practices are saturdays and sundays from 11am to 5, 6pm.  if it's both days every weekend, then i might have to reconsider, but it's much better than what doshisha's squad requires.

i had contacted the doshisha cheer angels in september, but all hope was lost when i found out that practices were three weekdays (at three hours each day) and once or twice on the weekend (at six or seven hours) PLUS, having to cheering for doshisha's sports teams at their games. furthermore, practices are held at tanabe campus, about an hour an a half (one way) from imadegawa campus, where i have my classes. it's also expensive for me to commute there because my 定期 (commuting passes) take me nowhere near tanabe.

so until tonight, i thought joining  a cheer squad in japan was pretty much 無理 (impossible)

^_^

my crazy sports club ^_^

another quick post.  

because it seems like it's all i can handle nowadays :) 

and i'll get to "updating" those three missing weeks of october soon.....

so i happily going along on the elliptical when a trainer approaches me---the same one who i had orientation "g" with.  i already knew what she was going to say.  one, i should do more weight-training. i've been avoiding that part of the gym because i didn't do orientation "i" yet. two, there was a period of time that i had been absent. i got sick, and homework had piled up. 

at renaissance, everyone has a file---but it's hardly private. at the end of each session, one puts the file in a separate place for review (and gets filed away by a trainer afterward for easy finding the next time one goes)  so they know everything i do on any given day.  members also take their blood pressure+heart rate and note their weight before and after each session. maybe that's how it's also done in the US, but it seems like this sports club is intensely attentive. they greet you several different times when you arrive and say お疲れ様でした at least twice on separate occasions when you leave; they are always floating around, and meet with you at regular intervals to discuss your progress, goals, etc.

it gets a little suffocating at times, but i think i'll get used to it. i just dislike that feeling of guilt if i don't do a full workout---and knowing that the trainers know i didn't. for instance, i had one really busy night in which i was lucky i was even able to go at all. i only spent thirty minutes on the elliptical ~ so that day's column was practically empty >.<  and it shows... oh well, not my problem :P

a feast every night

quick post about my host mother's delicious food.

i've been meaning to write an entry about this for quite some time now. anyway, it's delicious. and she cooks A LOT of it.

tonight's dinner consisted of:

• a bowl of rice
• a giant (and i mean, HUGE) bowl of ramen
• veggie tempura
• little dumpling-like things with tofu <--they were really good
• chicken wings made with amazing spices
• korokke

i'll never starve so long as i'm living with the nakamura family ^_^