aaronintokyo

[aaronintokyo]

There's a lot going on but the videos have still not been uploaded! As a random side note, I realized today that I haven't seen a fly in over 7 months. Though I'm pretty sure I prefer them over the shrieks of the 10,000 cicada that lived outside my window in the summer :p

[aaronintokyo]

Whew I've been busy lately! I have been spending a ton of time with friends from my club (practice, 12am-6am practices, going out etc) and studying in extra time aside from that. It's fun but very tiring. I took a trip to the neighborhood sentou (similar to an onsen) after practice in Saturday to relax my achy muscles. Our big performances are this upcoming weekend! I'm really excited though a little anxious, there are still quite a few sections I need to work on before Saturday, the first performance of 3. Midterms will be coming up in a few weeks too, which I'm not too excited about. Luckily I'm not worried about that Japanese midterm! Speaking it significantly every day has helped put me in a good position where I'm usually not too worried about needing tons of study time for that class. How I'll do in my literature and history classes is a little bit more bothersome. I'll link to the videos of the performances as soon as they're done and uploaded!

[aaronintokyo]

Before we headed to the airport we checked out some cliffs by the ocean. For the last picture I'm actually standing on a substantial ledge down there, but it made for a fun photo!

[aaronintokyo]

Recently I've been spending most f my days practicing for the sophia festival at the beginning of November so I don't have too many pictures to show. I'll add more in the future but right now a day of class, practice, sleep or class work practice sleep doesn't have too much to post about.

[aaronintokyo]

We had all sorts of tasty foods on the last day. We had pick apart pineapple, lunch at a really cool looking restaurant, and then ice cream! At one ice cream place you're allowed to enter the ice cream freezer, which was really cool!

[aaronintokyo]

We stopped by a nice restaurant for our last dinner in Okinawa. The restaurant was quite dim but it really added to the atmosphere. We ordered a ton of food and cooked the meat and vegetables in the pot in the middle.

[aaronintokyo]

We stopped by the aquarium on one of the days, it was really cool with tons of species I'd never seen before.

[aaronintokyo]

More food and stopping by the beach! Okinawa fruit is delicious, but a bit expensive. Nowhere near as crazy expensive as buying fruit in Tokyo, though!

[aaronintokyo]

We got some shaved ice (Mango and Matcha flavors) and then drove over to meet the mother of a good friend of ours who invited us all over for dinner! She made all sorts of delicious foods, though I only remembered to take pictures of a few things unfortunately. The food was amazing and we ended up staying there and chatting until quite late. Afterward we headed back the the hotel to get some sleep and get ready for the next awesome day!

[aaronintokyo]

We went to check out Shuri Castle next, it was amazing! We got to explore all over inside, but it was against the rules to take pictures in most places inside. The grounds around outside were really cool, too! I also got a can of coke only sold in Okinawa with a really cool design on the outside there.

[aaronintokyo]

First thing in the morning we got up and went exploring through the nearby area a little bit! We found all sorts of foods being sold (That's a pufferfish in the picture) and then went to a small restaurant to get some lunch. I decided on taco rice, which was ridiculously delicious. The sour seaweed was served with the food, too. Afterwards we hopped into the rental car and went exploring! We found a gorgeous view of the ocean nearby, and then headed over to a memorial.

[aaronintokyo]

Here's the first pictures from the trip! The 4 of us took a few pictures together before we got on the place (We actually rode a bus between the terminal and the plane!) and it was a smooth ride to Okinawa. By the time we arrived it was already dark outside, but we were hungry so we grabbed our luggage and headed to a restaurant near the hotel before we checked in. I tried a pig's feet stew (Delicious!) and a sour type of seaweed that seemed to be served with most meals I had while in Okinawa. It was a great local style meal to start out the trip! After we checked in we went for a little exploring, there were a lot of "American" style things, though the american cream soda didn't taste anything like american cream soda! The last picture reads: "America: Okinawan food". Yeah, I have no idea why either! The stone statue is of Okinawa's mascot, Shisa.

[aaronintokyo]

It's been a while since I updated! I have a bunch of pictures from Okinawa coming up (Starting at 4:30 EST today!) First I'll say a little bit about the Summer training camp! We went to Nagano this time for 3 days and 2 nights instead of 2&1! We got a lot of work learning and cleaning the performance for the Sophia Festival (November 2-4) and had a ton of fun at the same time. Sophia festival is coming up fast, I'm super excited!

[aaronintokyo]

Quick update(off of my usual 4:30pm EST update time too!), currently in Okinawa looking at the stars and out toward the ocean. There's a slight breeze and it's just cool enough to not need a jacket. It's paradise. I'll update with more pictures from my camera and such after I get back Saturday night!

[aaronintokyo]

There was a mountain behind the shrine that I visited, so I decided to climb it for a while. There was a shrine at the top of a huge staircase near the base which was cool. On my way back down I saw a group of wild monkeys sitting around eating some sort of nuts or something. I was really surprised to see them there!

[aaronintokyo]

I got breakfast with Ashley in the morning before se left for work and I left to go adventure around some more before heading home! I ended up going to a small shrine about an hour bus ride away from Ashley's place and it was really cool!

[aaronintokyo]

So there was a typhoon while I was visiting Ashley, but luckily it was no problem because most of it went by late at night so we were able to check out the beach! We found all sorts of life on the beach, like crabs, hermit crabs, jellyfish, yen coins, a washed up buoy, driftwood, and TONS of starfish! We must have found 50 starfish along the beach, including a mutated one with 7 legs!