What Happened to November?
Sorry about the lack of updates. I haven’t been updating as much mainly because of how busy school is keeping me and because of the lack of any real interesting stuff lately. It’s not that I don’t have any free time, but after getting all my schoolwork and studies out of the way, the last thing I feel like doing is sitting down and writing. I did, however, take a trip with some fellow dormmates to Kansai last month. While that could probably deserve its own blog post, honestly, I think that the photos I took while on the trip could do a lot better job of telling the story. You can see them on my Picasa site (link at the bottom of this post).
Anyway, it’s December in Japan, and the Christmas lights and music are out all around the city… even inside the convenience stores. The temperature right now around 3°C/37°F, probably the coldest it has been since I got here. It’s uncommon for the temperature to drop below freezing in this part of Japan, and even more uncommon for it to snow (only happens a few times each winter, and it doesn’t last.. or so I’m told). However, when it does, I’ll be the first one to run out the door with my camera in hand.
Classes for this semester ends next week, and our finals week follows right after. At that point I’ll be off school for nearly a month. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do during that time, but I suspect a trip to Tokyo will occur at some point. During our upcoming spring semester, there’s no school for a week in almost every month, which means there’ll probably be a lot of travelling coming up. I’ve been spending my money a little more conservatively lately because of that.
Sadly, a lot of people will be leaving Japan later this month (the ones who are studying here only for the fall semester). A lot of them I’ve become friends with, so it’ll be tough to see them go. However, there’s a slew of going away parties/events coming up, so at least they’ll go out with a bang.
Anyway, I’ll wrap this one up for now. Yesterday I got a lot of great fall foliage pictures of my campus and of the surrounding city. The campus is set upon a pretty tall hill, so you can look out and see all of Nagoya if you’re in the right areas. Check them out, along with my Kansai trip pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/freematt/
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Tags: Japan, nagoya, Study Abroad, travel, winter
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I know the feeling, seems like Nov. just flew by. We should be able to be conscious of Dec. tho, we have a blizzard warning for tonight and tomorrow and it sounds like it will be a doozy. Should be memorable in any case. It will probably reach Milwaukee mid-week.
There have been a couple of cold nights here so far, below zero a couple of times, I think once it got to -18 but it was a quick down and back up the next day. This system that is coming is supposed to get us into the -40 wind chill area and stay that way for most of the week. Oh well, it IS December.
Gma has been working at putting up Christmas decor about the house and other holiday tasks. We went out this morning and put the outdoor lights on the tree in front, we figured we better get to it as we probably couldn’t do it after the storm.
Patches has a favorite spot by the furnace vent when it is running, she is slowing down but crabby as ever. She never used to mind winter but now that she is older I think it is not her favorite season.
We hope all went well with your exams and you are now kicked back into tourist mode a bit, have a good Christmas time, we will be thinking about you. We really enjoy your blog.
Gpa & Gma