It's hard to believe that it's August. I have been so incredibly busy for the past month that it feels like years have passed between my last post and this one. So let me give you guys an update.

Finals were torture. I had two term papers due (one four pages and one ten pages), 3 final presentations (2 of which had to be in Japanese), and 3 final exams (2 of which were in Japanese). Somehow I managed to get it all done without going TOO crazy. And then immediately after my last exam I went to pick up my dad at the airport. A couple of months earlier my dad decided that he wanted to come visit with me. So we arranged it where he would come visit me for my last week and a half in Japan and we would fly home together. But I'll elaborate more on that later.

We flew back home on August 1st from Tokyo and got home in one piece. Since then I've been trying to get over my jet-lag and get ready to move back down to Austin. We got home from the airport at 12:30 AM on 8/2 and, of course, I couldn't go to sleep until about 3:30 AM. And then I slept until 5:00 PM! So my sleep schedule has been pretty off lately. I caught up on all of my doctor appointments and yesterday I moved into my new apartment in Austin.

こんにちは！これから私は日本語でも書くつもりです。８月１日、テキサスのダラスに着きました。この間荷物を詰めていました。昨日、オーステンに引っ越しました。これからよろしくお願いします！

Meiji Shrine

A couple of weekends ago I went with some friends into Tokyo. Unfortunately, due to the amount of school work I had, I was only able to visit one temple and a museum with them before I had to go back to the house. But here are pictures from the Meiji Shrine.



And there were a couple of couples getting married at said temple. The bride is the one all in white, and the groom is the one in the black and white traditional costume. Cool, huh?



And here are the pictures from the museum and on the way to the museum.



Sorry for taking forever to update. I only have 8 more days of school left with

Flower Festival

My host-mom took us to a flower festival at a nearby park a couple of weekends ago. They had some really interesting plants on display as well as ikebana (flower arranging) and sado (tea ceremony) demonstrations.



Pretty interesting, huh? The tea was bitter, just like everybody says, but I thought it left a rather pleasant after-taste. Oh and the first picture is my host-mom's car.