Two weeks too late

Yes I know I never got around to writing my farewell post in Japan, but the way I see it is that it's not really a farewell even though it may seem like it at the time. Sure I'll be gone for a long time but I'll definitely be back and I'll definitely be visiting most of my friends from all over the world in the future. So it's more of a see you later type of thing.

T minus three days

This looks to be one of the last few posts from Japan. This time in 3 days I'll be sitting on the plane on my way home. I'm still full of mixed emotions even though it's so close to the end of my stay here, I thought I would be ready to go home but it's still hard letting go of everything here. I've said my first good bye to my friend Uka from China since she left to head home at 5am this morning, I woke up to see her off and it was the first of many goodbyes to come.

I've sent off my final package today, it was rather large and I managed to save a bit of money getting it sent home thanks to my friend Daniel who runs jdmparts.rupewrecht. I've also handed down a lot of things and given away a lot more, so my room is slowly clearing out and my luggage is more than 50% packed at this stage so it's certainly hitting home that I'm heading home soon.

With only 3 days left I've been trying to spend as much time out with the cool peeps here as possible and I've still got a few things I have to do before coming back home. So it's not all fun and games but by 4pm Friday it has to be since that's when I'm officially checking out of my room from the kaikan (dormitory). My room is still a mess but that's fine since I think I'll be spending most of Friday cleaning it up and clearing everything out.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit my good friends; Duy and Bonnie who decided to come to Japan for a holiday and to also train kendo at some dojos here in Japan. So tomorrow looks like to be my final time in Osaka where I'll be meeting them.

In regards to my last trip, I took my very last big trip last weekend to Takayama. This for me marked the end of my journey here in Japan since Takayama was the first place I visited when I first got to Japan so it feels nice to complete the circle. Not only that I got to experience Takayama in two very different climates since last time it was Spring and this time it was Winter so it was nice to see things covered in snow. I also managed to get some more Hida Beef Burgers and also managed to find another small restaurant that was very impressive as well. More on this once I get home since I have a lot of photos from the weekend but the internet is cut in my room and I'm using the shared internet where flickr is blocked and also most of my camera gear is packed already.

Something big also happened on Valentine's day which will affect me for the rest of my life but I'm happy that it happened since it will always remind me of the good times I've had here in Japan. I'm still not 100% ready to share this with everyone yet but when I am I'll definitely share it here.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this since I don't want it to be the goodbye post because I'm not ready to do so yet even though I'm accepting more and more everyday that it's time for me to go home. So I guess I'll end it here for now and I'll probably be writing up my final post in Japan on Friday afternoon after checking out of my room which I've called home for the past 11 months or so.

Another thing I'm going to miss

The days when I wake up and it's white outside. Sure it was cold but it definitely beats the heat in my books and it looked so nice seeing things being covered in snow.


Like this tree here just outside my room.


Here it is again covered in even more snow. I love it!

Coming Home: the good and the bad

With it being so close to home time I've been filled with mixed emotions lately, a lot of times I'm happy to go home and there are also times where I'm really sad that I'm leaving Japan and all these cool people which have become more than just friends in such a short period of time.

I've talked about this with a lot of friends here and I guess the main thing making me sad about leaving is that I will never get a chance like this ever again. Not with the same people at least and I think that's the main thing right now, I'm going to miss my friends so so so much and we're never all going to be in the same place at the same time ever again (well at least I don't think so). I think it's even harder than when leaving home since I know that after a year in Japan I'll be coming back to my friends and family again, but once I leave here I can never come back and see the same faces again.

I know I'm just being emo right now but I guess I have to look on the brighter side of things. Now I have so many more places I want to go because I can meet all my friends again, sure they might not all be in the same place but now I have so many more reasons to travel to so many other places in the world and I will have at least one familiar face there to hang out with, which I think is totally awesome. I also hope they come to Australia as well because I would definitely be the best tour guide ever!

The beginning of the end

So with not much time left in Japan, I think it's a good time to look back at what I've done and what I haven't. Within the last say 10 months or so there have been some amazing things I've managed to get up to in Japan, from the top of my head and in not any order:

- Attended Tokyo Auto Salon
- Snowboarded in Japanese powder
- Trained kendo in Japan
- Drive on some really nice touge roads in Japan
- Scored some car parts for really cheap
- Eat horse sashimi! (I've got fugu and whale next, hopefully I can still do it)
- Improve my Japanese by billions since I hardly knew any before coming here
- Travelled to a lot of places in Japan; Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and a couple of other places too
- Watched the F1 at Suzuka Circuit as well as the Super GT
- Met famous drivers (Sebastian Vettel, Nomuken and a couple more)
- Learnt how to cook!
- Ate a lot of food from all over the world thanks to all the good international student cooks.
- I learnt how to do Tea Ceremony
- I made some awesome friends during my time here which I will miss very much

I'm sure there's more but that's all I got right now. There are still a lot of things I want to do as well but I guess it just gives me more reason to come back here, which I definitely want to do in the next couple of years.

Two weeks left

I know my blog has been quite quiet recently and I apologise for the lack of posts but honestly I just haven't really had the time to sit in front of my laptop, process some photos, upload them and write something about it. Instead I've been using my tumblr a lot more since it's just posting up single pictures that doesn't require much else and even that doesn't get updated as much as I would like.

Into the woods

Thanks to Axel a couple of days ago I woke up before 12pm for the first time in about 2 weeks. I was woken by him calling to wish me a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year since he was back home over the holiday period. He also gave me news that he was going to be coming to Gifu for the day and that he would like to hang out, maybe climb a mountain or two so I said why not.


After getting up and doing my morning routine of forums, facebook and blog reading I got ready to meet Axel. I managed to get some other friends to come along as well and the next thing you know we were off on our bikes heading for one the mountain that Axel and I climbed at the beginning of last year.

Welcome to 20 Eleven

Welcome to the New Year everyone, I hope you all had fun New Year celebrations because I know I did. No new photos from me today but let's take a look back at the memorable moments in 2010 and hope that 2011 would be an even better year.

Let's see, in 2010 I noticed that I picked up a lot of new interests some I'm still into today and some I have lost interest in. Here are just the things I got into throughout 2010.

Christmas 2010

This was my first Christmas away from my family but it was still a good day spending it with my friends in Japan. Unfortunately it wasn't a white Christmas but we still had fun playing games, drinking and gambling. Here is my 2010 Christmas in photos.

Some of the New Faces

Since coming back to the Kaikan after my visit back home more than half the people I knew living here in the kaikan (student dorms) had already returned home to their countries so I was greeted with a whole bunch of new faces. I've gotten to know them a lot better of the last 2 months so I'd like you to meet some of the international students. Above is John, one of the many new Americans.

Happy Holidays

My winter holidays officially started at 10:20am this morning but since I didn't go to class it pretty much started at 12:00pm on Monday since I haven't been to class since. So I've now got time to put my feet up and kick back for a couple of weeks, well really just 1 week until the New Years is over then I have to get started on my 1200 Character Japanese report and a 5000 word Research Project for UTS. But until then I'm going to try and enjoy my time in Japan as much as I can since I have less than 2 months left here, can you guys believe it's gone by so quick?! There's still so much I want to do over here in Japan but it just means I have all the more reason to come back here later on.

I also wanted to wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas. I'm sure it's double demerits back home so drive safe.

PS. Everyone pray that I get my first White Christmas, at this point it's looking promising because it's freezing right now and all the weather forecasts predicts snow tonight.

My Diet

One of the easiest things to cook while here in Japan is spaghetti, and because it's so easy and I don't really know how to cook anything else I've been eating a lot of spaghetti and foods which mainly consists of just meat.

But a couple of months back I had a compulsory health check at the university and my blood test's results came back all good except for my higher than normal Uric acid level. Which means I wasn't eating enough vegetables and I was drinking too much alcohol.

Belated birthday cake from Bud.

Bud, one of the new American international students, was kind enough to get me a small cake for my birthday. It was really nice of him because we didn't know each other that much at the time yet he got me cake! Who said Americans were a bunch of jerks?

Time flies...

Time flies when you're having fun and I can't agree more. With just over 2 months left here in Japan it's really starting to sink in that it won't be long before I'm standing in line waiting to board my plane back home.

$2

There's been a lot of times where I feel like this $2 coin.

Much Love

What more can I say...

Christmas Came Early

So I've been scouring Yahoo Auctions Japan every now and then recently something special came up and I snapped them up straight away as an early Christmas Present for myself.

Car Produce ACT

A couple of weekends ago I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Car Produce ACT, a GTR tuning house located in Aichi-Ken, Japan. A long story short I met Chris from jdmstyletuning.com and he picked me up and took me here so I could take a few snaps and hang with him for the day.

Noodle Cups: More than meets the eye.

By looking at this photo could you tell the difference between the two besides size and flavour?

Miniature Dachs

This guy here is a Miniature Dachs or more commonly known as a sausage dog. They're all over here in Japan and they're pretty expensive too. I spotted this guy at Gidaisai last weekend and had to snap up this photo, he's so cute!