Spring Holiday = Travels ^_^

Well, having got back from England there was still a few weeks of Spring holiday to go, so I figured I might as well make use of the free time to see some more of Japan ^_^ First up was a brief trip to Fukui, where I visited Eihei-ji with my tutor. It was very nice but I had the minor problem of complete lack of sleep which meant I couldn't really concentrate on speaking Japanese, couldn't eat & generally felt kinda ill. Couldn't meet Sayuri's family either which I had been looking forward to :( But I guess that's just how things go sometimes! At least I've cured the insomnia now, yay.
Other than that, 2 main trips ^___^ First, Nagoya! Bit of a spur of the moment decision to go see James basically, as well as seeing some more of Japan, so all fun. Nagoya was pretty cool really but not amazing just for tourism stuff I guess. If I hadn't had James & Simon to meet up with I think I'd have got a bit stuck for stuff to do. Nice city in general though, had some fun exploring :) Went to the public aquarium down by the harbour which was cool, despite falling over a bench & hurting my knee right before going in, much to the amusement of small Japanese child XD
Anyway. I also went out for foods with James & his friends, had yakiniku etc, fairly simple Japanese stuff. One restaurant actually had raw whale but I decided not to try it... I'm not really big on seafood anyway, let alone raw stuff. Also took a trip to Nagoya Castle, which wasn't that exciting but the view of the city was pretty cool. Plus the blossoms had just come out so very pretty everywhere, good times :) Wandered into a Noh theatre exhibition, went to an arcade, had curry with Matt & Simon, so lots of stuff to be doing really :)
Final day of the holiday I actually made a day trip to Osaka, which was really good, because I went back to the school I did homestays with whilst at school which was fairly nostalgic, especially walking out of Korien station as though I was going off to lessons. I saw my Japanese teacher from senior school as well as a couple of people I use to go to school with - Phil & Yuki - so that was really good to see them ^_^ The thing was that the school trip I had done previously was happening that week, which is why my teacher was there, so I thought it would be great to go visit then. Pity it was less than a day though, considering I had a nice long bus trip there & back from Nagoya XD

Trip two. Finally, I went to Tokyo! I hadn't really intended on going to be honest & it's never really interested me in terms of somewhere I would like to visit, but my parents were due to be coming out to visit and of course, Tokyo tends to be the main tourist destination, so I ended up going down too. Unfortunately, my mum's been ill recently and was actually told by doctor's that she wouldn't be able to fly so that really sucked, but my step-dad came out anyway and I met up with him in Tokyo for a few days. I have to say that I wasn't overly excited by much in Tokyo, it's just all too big, too many buildings & way too many people for me, but it was nice to meet up with a few people like Lisa, and was nice to wander round the Imperial Palace gardens, see shrines & particularly visit the Museum for Emerging Science & Technology in Odaiba where I saw Honda's ASIMO robot which was pretty cool! I stayed in Shinjuku but also visited Shibuya, Harajuku, Iidabara, Akihabara etc... I finally met my economics teacher's sons, Duncan & Selwyn which was awesome, having been talking to them via the internet for nearly 4 years as they work in Tokyo. Was nice to chat to them about life in Japan & whatnot, plus we went for a nice work in a park with the blossoms yay :)
So basically, I packed in a lot of sightseeing into the past few weeks which was pretty cool as I won't have too much time now we're back to class! Hope everyone's good, will try & update this more often & closer to the actual events perhaps, but it's nearly up to date now yay! The trees are turning from pink to green, it's still a bit rainy, but overall, should be a good second semester, so here goes... :D Kou x

England!!!

Well, yes, I did give up on staying in Japan for the whole year and made a 2 week trip home which was really awesome, was great to see my friends and family as I'd really missed lots of people! Like Timm :P
Flight back was pretty cool as was all daytime so got some amazing views of Siberia! First few days back I was pretty tired but at that time and in the final weekend too I was able to see some family like my parents, grandparents, aunts, sisters, godparents, cousins and second cousins... So was pretty nice really! And especially nice to be home and to see my mum of course! Only thing weird to start was the food, everything seemed to be incredibly sweet in comparison to Japan XD Ah well... Anyway, after a few days home I went to Sheffield! Yay!
Arrive Sheffield Sunday afternoon. Walk into house, hug Timm, spill his tea over him XD Luckily it wasn't hot... Thus commenced AWESOME week and half of seeing Timm, Elmo, Scott & Tizzy, working TSC and catching up with friends :D:D:D

Overall lots of things were done I guess, such as visiting the museum with Matt, dinner at Wokmania with Dave, 2 trips to Nandos with lots of different friends, trip to the Dev Cat, going to town with Arkady & Wil, seeing Sammo, falling asleep on Elmo, hugging Timm, visiting peoples at NoDDSoc, meeting new housemates, getting my house for next year and also seeing my Japanese teachers! I think I spoke ok but I was still somehow nervous talking to them in comparison to people here. Explaining Ohi pottery was kinda difficult but hey, otherwise I felt I had improved so that was good!
Then there was TSC... Meetings great fun as always, particularly the first week when we were playing with a laptop & projector that had been left to make a PowerPoint and accidentally got logged out leaving a giant screen of "Shut the fuck up Arkady!!!" for the next person to sign in... Which happened to be the University AV people... So we ran out pretty quickly when they came in :P

I ended up doing 4.5 events in total, not so terrible really :P In for Population was fine, I made a new friend by the name of Ed yay! And later on more friends, like Tom for example - yay for nice new juniors! Tuesday both weeks was pretty good, in fact the second week we finished really early so I went home during the event & saw some Cool As Folk at the Fox & Duck where Timm was working and had a nice time talking to Elmo yay! Space was fine as per normal, but I think the best one was the Headphone Disco as the set up was easy & it was hilarious watching people dancing to no music & singing really loudly to themselves! Hehe...
So of course the major highlight was seeing my friends & being with Timm, but there was another thing that was particularly cool... Laser training! After a 2 day course with stuff like health & safety, basic laser info & demonstrations I was able to programme & run my own laser show and I'll be able to do it for events next year so I'm really looking forward to that :D Apparently I need to be quicker with changes but I was told that it was obvious I had experience with lighting as I knew what effects and timings I wanted to use... I didn't bother to say that actually I normally do DJ sound & AV XD

All in all therefore was a great holiday yay! Even the return was not so bad, I actually made a new friend at the airport in fact, as I had to stay there overnight and there was an American guy to talk to who'd missed his flight! Only got to wait until August till I see everyone again now, so not so bad really :P Kou.