Tokyo DisneySea

On the way to DisneySea - Tokyo Sky Tree

Ben's souvenir. About 5 minutes later, he says 'I have a strange feeling that someone is following us.' I turned around and sure enough, the actual genie character from Aladdin was following us!

My cute Minnie Mouse hooded blanket!

Venice!

Tower of Terror...no thanks!

Seasonal special for dessert. This may or may not have been the cause of our food poisoning later that night...

Being dorks at 'Dinner with the Characters'

Indiana Jones, Japan style!

Good night!

Life, recently

With only a little over a month left in Japan, I've been starting to prepare for my return to America. Last weekend, I packed 3 boxes of clothes, books, CDs, souvenirs, etc. to send home. Today, I worked on translating my goodbye speech into Japanese. I'll give the speech one month from today at my base school, to about 600+ students and the teachers.

And my schedule for July has been finalized: at least 4 farewell parties have been confirmed, plus I'll visit my special education school once more, and finish preparing materials for the person who will start my job in August.

And the intense summer heat has finally come. This is the one season in Japan when I allow myself to have dessert before dinner. Ice cream is so necessary after walking back to my apartment from school on a really hot day. Today I had Haagen-Dazs Orange Creme Brulee. It was expensive, but REALLY good. So maybe this heat isn't so bad after all...

Old beer vending machine by my apartment.

I walk on this path everyday on the way to school.

Gyoza, fried shrimp, and vegetables for dinner on June 14th.
Made by my Japanese teacher.

Sunset at my apartment.

New poster on my bulletin board!

June 19th - Apartment weed pulling day. Done and done.

Tokai Station.

I found this on the sidewalk in Tokai.

...

Flowers for my Japanese teacher. The lady at the flower shop insisted on giving me a new sunflower because ONE petal was missing from the original flower. I'm going to miss Japanese service.

Some houses are still being fixed from the earthquake.

Homemade sushi from my Japanese teacher - June 21st.

41 days left in Japan!!

Nikko is Nippon

Here are some photos from the day trip that Ben and I took to Nikko last Saturday. Everything was so green. I loved it. And I'm glad we drove there from Hitachi (it took about 3 hours) instead of taking a train from Tokyo. The drive was beautiful once we got off of the highway and got closer to the entrance of the park. On the way out, in the main town near the train station, we found a small wood carving shop filled with handmade wooden products made in Nikko. The lady that worked there was really nice and she personalized a bunch of souvenirs for us- definitely a highlight of the trip!