JCMU is now a deadzone. Walking through the dark hallways I can’t hear anyone making any noise….I feel like I’m in some horror movie where I’m stuck in this haunted building all alone. A majority of the students have either left for winter vacation back in the US, or have returned to the US for good. Some are gone on trips around Japan, as I will be as of 6am tomorrow. It will take me 8 hours to get to Tokyo via local JR trains and then another 1.5 hours to get to Narita Airport (which, is in Narita…..not Tokyo). I will then be picking up Nick, and we will go back to Tokyo to get to the guest house that I have a reservation at for the week. (From the pictures it looks like a nice place, and so far the people I’ve been emailing back and forth seem very nice.) I don’t have an exact itinerary in place yet, and the only things that I have set in stone are going to the Ghibli Museum at 10am on the 21st, and going to the Imperial Palace on the 23rd (the Emperor’s birthday, along with January 2 are the only two days of the entire year that the Imperial Palace is open to the public).

And as for all the suggestions that I’ve gotten on where to go, I want to say いろいろありがとう、たけうち先生.

Yesterday I traveled to Kansai Airport in Osaka with Cassidy and her conversation partner, Kimi’s, family. It took us about 3 hours to get there, since the airport is (not unlike Narita) way the heck away from the city. (In fact, its on a man-made island in the middle of Osaka Bay, which happens to be sinking about a foot a year….oops.) I was jealous and sad at the same time, since I’ve reached a point where I’d really like to go home, and I had to say goodbye to the closest friend I have here (or really…the only true friend I have here). After we saw Cassidy through the check-in, I wandered around the airport with Kimi and her family, and we ran into a couple more JCMU people who were making their way home. We had a nice meal of unagi and udon, and then took a bus to a special observation deck where we could watch planes landing and taking off. Standing on the 4th floor observation deck it was soooooo cold. So I waited inside until Cassidy’s plane started to move towards the runway. Took a bunch of pictures, despite the sleet that started to come down (into my ear!), and after her plane took off we walked back to the train station in Narita Airport and headed back towards Hikone. I had dinner at Coco’s with Kimi (her husband and daughter departed from us in Osaka, since they had plans to go to Universal Studios for 2 days), and once I got back to my room I pretty much laid in bed under the covers until going to bed because it was so cold (though, I did actually turn the heat on (oh no!) for a matter of 10 minutes or so, which helped tremendously).

This morning, I woke up to find a good 4 inches of snow on the ground. I had hoped that it would melt by midday just like it had every other day that it has snowed here, but it continued to snow on and off all day, and right now at 7pm there is still a good amount of snow on the ground. I’ve already called for the taxi that will be picking me up to take me to the station tomorrow, so I’m not too worried about the snow, but I really don’t want it to snow while I am in Tokyo (or rain for that matter, but it looks like it might rain on Wednesday and Thursday…).

While I will be bringing my laptop with me to Tokyo (mostly as a way to dump pictures off my memory cards incase they get full), I don’t expect to be online much or to update my blog for probably a good week. Depending on whether I actually have internet or not (the place has unlimited internet access, but for some reason I haven’t been able to hook up to a LAN line with this laptop at JCMU…lets hope its a JCMU issue and not a laptop issue), I may be able to check email, but for all intents and purposes I won’t be able to contact anyone for a while. So, wish me luck!! I hope to have a lot of fun.

Bye bye Cassidy!!:

This morning’s snow:

And I forgot to mention it in any other posts, but the closing ceremony was nice and short. And they gave us yummy cake afterwards. Here’s a picture of me and my teacher, Nishikawa-sensei: