Alright, school is over.. and Emily and I both survived, which is pretty cool. The whole evening ceremony was pretty great, with a bunch of food and drink (they just put beer everywhere, so you never have to go to the bar to get it! wow.)

My speech was alright, I think. I was kinda nervous so I spent most of the afternoon practicing with Emily, and my host family said it was fine (but they're pretty nice, and they seem to like me..) a lot of people ended up crying over the course of the evening, which I guess is good. I'll take credit for some of it. ha!

Afterwards we partied pretty hard.. drinking at the park (which is perfectly acceptable in Japan) then an hour of karaoke, then a trip to Susukino where we hung out at a bar with some new Japanese friends, drinking and eating meat on a stick. That stuff is apparently pretty universal, and you don't need to be fluent to have a good time.

Today my host family kinda led me around for some food and sight-seeing.. After a full day of adventuring, we went to another hot spring/public bath, which is always awesome.. This one had a nice outdoor section, which is probably my favorite, but it's hard to choose when everything is awesome. I hope/imagine Emily has something similar going on.

I'm not entirely sure if we'll see each other before Monday (at the airport!) so I'm planning on taking it easy, slowly packing and cleaning up over the next 24 hours.. then home!

Aaron