Closing Ceremony, and Farewell Party

Well, the program is finally over. I can't say I'm not at all sad. I had so much fun I can hardly describe. I just thought I'd like to post some photos and tell you a bit about the people I met and what my plans are.

This photo on the left is of my host family, my friend's host family, and three good friends from America that I made while here. The guy in the Blue is Padraic, kind of a Goofy Texan. He's studying Japanese at the University of Texas(I think in Austin but I forget). But, he's also in the Navy so he's studying Japanese in the hope they will place him someplace in Japan. The redhead in the middle is Sophie from Las Vegas, sometimes I just call her Vegas. She is studying at George Washington University and wants to become a diplomat or something similar I believe, something having to do with the government. The girl on the right is Heather a book worm from Virginia. Studying the English language and one or two other subjects I forget at the moment. She was living in a Japanese house at her college apparently. This was her first trip out of the country ever, which for your first trip I think going to Japan is somewhat daring. The little girl in the front is the rediculously cute Hime-Chan, Sophie's host sister. Well, her actual name is Himena but in Japanese Hime means Princess so they shorten it to Hime-chan. All I have to say is that the name fits, that's for sure.

This next photo just happens to be of the two COOLEST guys in Japan. ;-) That's me and my friend Shigeo. Shigeo is a freshman at the school where I was studying abroad. We just sort of randomly met through a friend of a friend. He tries to speak English but he's not very good at it. If I speak really slowly he can understand most of what I say (I think). He's my official source of dirty Japanese words and all the things you want to ask your host family but don't because it's just too awkward. One day I was reading a Manga called Gintama and I found this word that wasn't in my dictionary that I couldn't understand. I usually ask my hostfamily what words mean but they weren't around so I send a text message to Shigeo which was the equivalent of this but was in Japanese, "What the heck does lolicon mean? I'm trying to read this manga but it's not in my dictionary." His reply, "You must be reading something really interesting ;-), It's Lolita Complex man!" I was pretty grateful I didn't ask my family that one :-) Other interesting ones include: Tennen paama(天然パーマ), and no-pan (ノパン）try and guess them, the second one is easier because the first one uses some Japanese.

This next photo is of me and a girl I met named Shiori. Her name means "Bookmark." Kind of an odd name huh? Apparently it has something to do with leading the way. Today it translates as bookmark but once upon a time apparently something similar was used to mark the way for people. I met her randomly one day while I was just walking to the train station. She was locking up her bike and just stopped me dead in my tracks asking me if I was a student as Nanzan University where she goes to school (the answer is yes I was). She is studying English and wants to study abroad, so I would meet her on the trains every day on the way to school. She helps me with my Japanese and I help her with her English. This photo was taken when we went to Meiji Mura together. Meji mura is a place where they have a lot of old buildings from the Meiji era. It was pretty, but really it was just a a bunch of buildings :-)

This next photo is of Aiko and Allie. If you're one of my friends from Minnesota you might recognize Allie, She's from Minnesota and has friends at the UofM so I'll probably be running into her from time to time. Best I can describe her is a short, rambunctious, redhead. We were in the same program together. Aiko is a crazy but very polite girl from Koube. Her Japanese is crazy, she speaks really quickly and speaks in Kansai-Ben which is a dialect of Japanese. She's awesome and really easy to get a reaction out of. She is the person I ask if I want to know what the good manga are.


I've made lots of friends while I've been here. I've only listed some of them here, but if you talk to me once I get back I am sure to talk about these guys a lot. We had a ton of fun. Unfortunately America is so big I don't know when I'll see my American friends again. But, I had so much fun I can't wait to come back to Japan to at least see my Japanese friends again.