Sunday morning in Japan

whew.. sorry for the long delay, it has been pretty busy around here.

Here's a pic of me at the bath, and Yoshiyasu-san and I at a bar, and Shige-san and I ate a restaurant on a lake.

Our school work has really ramped up for the last week, leading up to a final exam and presentation (for group 3, at least). It's pretty scary stuff for me, because all of the vocabulary is new and presentation format is kinda specific.. so I'm spending every morning sorta rehearsing the lines of my 'script'. As well as all the other stuff for school that are unrelated to the presentation.

Anyways, life outside of school is pretty great! Friday night we went to Emily's host family's friend's bar, where we were treated awesomely, given a little private room with food and drinks, and even a guitar, haha! So we played a few songs (though we were a bit embarassed) and it was nice to be able to play a bit.. it's been 3 weeks or so, and thats tough. Afterwards Emily and I explored Susukino some more, looking for live music - which is surprisingly difficult. Eventually we found a tiny little jazz club, and I think they were more or less wrapping up as we walked in, but they went ahead and did another set, mostly for us (i think..)

Because we're so obviously foreigners, we get a lot of attention.. so at this cozy little club we got to talk with everyone there. Pretty cool.. most of them were musicians, and one of them loved doing card tricks, so we saw lots of neat sleight-of-hand stuff, and then played some Japanese bridge games (emily won once).

Saturday I went to another public bath with Yoshiyasu (one of my host brothers), this one was like a spa, i think (having never been to an American spa).. it had a lot of tubs with different temperatures, some outside, as well as these rooms that are like saunas, but without the steam.. just hot rooms. They were awesome, especially after a night of drinking.

I skipped over a whole week of stories (and photos).. I'm sorta bummed about the website stuff, and it sorta tempered my enthusiasm (unfortunately). Only a week left, so we'll try and do better..

Aaron