For relaxing times...

I will start things off with a picture. As much as the town that I am living in has nothing to do in it, and as much as I miss Tokyo, there is something to be said for the scenery here, including my extremely Japanese outlook from my bedroom window, pictured to the left. I can look out the window and really appreciate that I have made it to Japan, even 1 month after my arrival, even in my middle-of-nowhere town, there is still a special feeling for me about having made it here and just being in this country.

Well, things have been more quiet lately. It rained a lot overnight last night and I think we had a small earthquake/tremour this morning that woke me up (It wasn`t much, but I`m a light sleeper).

School is going well, but there is so much vocabulary to memorize, it has been rather humbling in some ways as any sense of my Japanese being descent is overshadowed by the realization that I am still so far from fluency. I have 3 decks of blank flash cards filled with 110 cards in each deck, and the first one only took 3 days of classes to fill..

As my favorite Japanese proverb says チリもつもれば山となる - if tiny specs of dust pile up, they can become a mountain. This is something I have to keep in mind constantly.

Oh, and a note to any of my fellow YESJAPAN members, I could of sworn I heard Maria Gadget when I was in AM-PM (common convenience store in Japan) this morning.. But I could be wrong..