January 12th (Tuesday)

Today started out wonderful, as every day has been so far. Woke up to some french toast and strawberries! How did she know?!? I truly am blessed to have such a kind and caring host family half way across the world. I got off to a slow start getting ready as I just barely made my train. I decided to take a different route to the OVTA (Overseas Vocational Training Association), which was much cheaper, but a little bit slower way. I ended up meeting someone from our group who was on the same train and we walked to the building together! We found a Japanese man who spoke English and we found out that he just got back from doing research at Duke University for 3 years on enzyme metabolism.

During class we discussed some basic conversational skills and phrases, what we did over the weekend with our host family, and some others things we have experienced while in Japan. We took an hour break for lunch, which I got on Skype and talked with Matt-Lisa-Brenden, Trey, and then had a good talk with Matt Washington. Then I ran to McDonald's and to the SCEC Building for a lecture on Yakuza, which is the Japanese Mafia. The lecture was very interesting as we covered all the top members and how everything was corrupted.

After the lecture was over I had some time to kill so I went with a group of people to check out the Pokémon Center! It wasn’t something I was dying to do; however is was that or be bored. We hoped on a JR Rapid line to Tokyo Station and transferred to another station, which ended up taking an hour or so for the whole journey. After checking out the Pokémon Center for a while I decided to make my way back to Funabashi-Nichidae-Mae, my home station. I got home and had a deep conversation with my host mother. Her Dad is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, so keep him in your prayers! We had a great dinner and then I took a great Japanese shower.

Yuki and Marin got home a little later and I showed them my iTunes collection and Yuki wrote down about 10 bands he wanted to get. Then Okaasan played the piano for a while, and she is very good! Definitely showed me up :(

Tomorrow I have to get up early and go on a bus tour of Kamakura and see the BIG BUDDAH! Going to be awesome! Miss everyone back home and cant wait to see you all again!