I am home for the holidays and my trip seems to be heavily impacted by the weather and yet not at all influenced by it (at least in terms of mood).

As I was walking to the bus station Saturday night I had to go through a massive rainstorm. Yuck! But I was too excited about going home to be as wet and miserable as I would normally be. It was sunny and dry in Tokyo on Sunday (yeah!) and I even saw the emperor's morotcade! Terribly exciting. It rained Sunday night in LA, but I was at a bar drinking with friends and who really can be bothered by rain when you have a beer in hand and good company? Certainly not me. Monday I went to lunch with friends and went shopping with my sister so once again not at all bothered by a little rain (up to that point LA certainly couldn't compete with Fukui in the rain category). So here is the semi-exciting part:

Tuesday. 5pm. Chelsea and I are nearing the end of our shopping extravaganza. We decide we are going to stop in one more outlet store before heading home. We have trouble finding the address because of all the rain (and being on the wrong side of the street) we finally see it and dive into the parking lot. We sit in the car for a few minutes waiting for the torrential rains to stop. They don't. We decide to make a run for it and dash into the store. We very quickly realize that it is the wrong store- an Army Surplus Store! (I got my new shoes wet dashing into the wrong store! grrrr). We felt a little out of place, but walked around quickly hoping to dry off before another mad dash in the rain. As I walked past the side doors I pointed out to Chelsea that the water level on the side-walk had risen very quickly. As I said that, a car went past on the street and the wave pushed water against the door and it started leaking in. The whole front street and sidewalk looked like a lake and the water kept coming in the store. Chelsea and I were a little concerned, but we didn't think her little car could swim home so we stayed. The waterlevel came 10 feet into the store (not up, just in) and finally Chelsea and I decided that we were going to try to find a back entrance (or maybe we couldn't handle being in a place that offered no shopping and had to escape). So we made our escape after 30 minutes of panicing over the impeding flood only to find that we had been in the middle of perhaps the only flooded block in all of LA! The rest of the streets had no problems at all. It did seem like quite an adventure though (at the time) and I am always up for an adventure. So here is the next adventure:

We got home from our flood adventure only to find out that lots and lots of snow was predicted over the Donner Summit on Wed and Thurs (we had all been planning on going home on Thurs). Chelsea has her tiny non-aquatic non-snowmobile car and thought she should go at whatever time had the least amount of snow, which we decided would be today (Wed) around 3pm. We decided that last night at maybe 11, so there was some mad car packing. We left LA at 7am and figured we would hit the Pass at 2ish (although snow was predicted over the Grape Vine too). The Grape Vine snow was a joke (far more rain than snow and nothing more dangerous than your typically bad LA drivers). We made it to Auburn in good time only to get stuck in hours and hours of traffic (people were walking past us on the side at various points we were so slow). Then we were sold the wrong size chains for Chelsea's car. Then we had to pay an arm and a leg (Chelsea may have also promised Luna's first born) to get new chains and have them put on in front of the chain control. So we got in and although there was some snow and it was probably good to have chains on, it wasn't nearly bad enough for all the fuss that had been thrown all day (on the radio, in traffic, by parents). I kept waiting for the really bad part and it never came. Not to say it was a cake-walk, but I had a good time with Chelsea going over the pass. We even managed to get the chains off by ourselves! I am hoping for some weather free adventures for the rest of my trip, but I am sure it will be fun no matter what the weather gods decide to throw at me!

Soooo cold! It was supposed to snow last night and I woke up early this morning and thought there was a layer of snow on my balcony and was terribly excited! Then I realized it was just the sun glinting off the rain. Grrrr. The cold would be so much more bearable if it was at least pretty (and not raining). I suppose I will be home in a week and can just look at all the snow there.

Speaking of which... YEAH! I am so excited about going home. I have spent the whole week packing and trying to get everything organized. Another thing I love about Japan- I am having my suitcases picked up at my apartment tomorrow morning and they will take them to the airport for me, then I can pick them up near where I check them with the airline! So easy! It means that I don't have to haul the suitcases across the entire country (I'm flying out of Tokyo Narita which is an 8 hour drive from Fukui). It is cheaper to ship the suitcases than to get a bus ticket there, too bad I can't pack myself as luggage and have them take me too (it is almost as fast as the bus).

I am a little nervous about going home. I've been hearing everyone's reverse culture shock stories lately and it doesn't help. When I was in Kyoto for the Japanese Language Exam I was a bit shocked about being around so many foreigners (non-Japanese) because it was more foreigners than I had seen all together in one place in over a year. Fukui is so small that seeing a foreigner (especially a foreigner you don't know) is fairly strange. I see maybe 2 foreigners a day (other than Sean), but some days I don't see any. I also remember last time I went home I didn't have huge culture shock, but the sizes of food threw me off (I ordered a medium coke in a fast food place and they handed me a bucket and were insistent that it was a medium size, while I thought it looked more like a jacuzzi). So although I am excited I am also wondering how I will respond to everything.

I am going to start referring to my neighbor as "The Incessant Vacuumer" He started vacuuming before 9am this morning (long before my alarm clock went off) and was at it for over an hour. Vacuuming my apartment takes less than 2 minutes because it is so small, so I truly don't understand how he could find things to vacuum for an hour (the airconditer? the walls? the ceiling? his clothes? the TV?). There is always strange thumping coming from his apartment also, like he is jumping rope or throwing balls around. I have only seen him once on the day my apartment flooded. He doesn't look crazy, but the strangest sounds come from his apartment, so it makes me wonder what he is doing over there (chopping vegetables really loudly). I'm always tempted to go knock on the door when I hear the thumping and see if I can't figure out what he is up to. My own personal mystery (although probably not novel worthy).

When it rains it pours (literally):

I have had a difficult week, I wasn't feeling well and went home early from work on Thursday and Friday (the 2nd and 3rd sick days in the last year). So this morning I get up and am determined to go to work (Saturday's are my most difficult day- 8 classes and 10.5 hours long). I get to work and I'm still not feeling great but I am managing, lunch finally arrives and I am looking forward to going home and relaxing for a little bit. I arrive home to find.... my apartment covered in water (I was a little suspicious about the puddle of water outside my front door). The ceiling panels in the shower room and the bathroom (toilets are separate from showers in Japan) both somehow leaked water and it flooded over into the kitchen. I'm not feeling well and don't want to deal with it, but I start mopping up the water (I can scrub after work). Then I knock over a glass that I was cleaning paintbrushes in, it of course shatters. So now my shower is covered in broken glass and water and I'm hungry and don't know if I can be bothered to deal with any of this. So yeah, when it rains, it pours. Literally. From my ceiling.

What artist would paint me?


You have the Rossetti girl look. You are the kind
of girl pre-Raphaelite painters admired; tall,
slender, and fair as a lily flower. The
pre-Raphaelite girl had dramatic beauty; long
neck, large soulful eyes, full shapely mouth
and masses of wavy hair. The pre-Raphaelites
painted girls like this, they showed them in
dramatic situations dressed as famous
characters in legends, plays and poetry. The
favourite colours of the artists were russet,
green and gold. The following artists would
have loved to paint you; Holman Hunt, John
Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, William
Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

'Pretty As A Picture' - Which Artist Would Paint You?
brought to you by

This is the middle of one of my current art projects (the overall Kanji is for "Love") but I have discovered that the walls of my apartment are not large enough.. just another 2 feet and I could finish it! Arg! Maybe my manager will move me to a new apartment when I tell her that this apartment doesn't facilitate my artistic ambitions. Maybe not. 

Saturday night Sean and I went to Kyoto and stayed in a place called the Gojo Guest House (we didn't want to get up at 4 in the morning on Sunday to get to the test). Gojo ended up being a really cool place to stay! http://www.gojo-guest-house.com/ We got up Sunday morning, followed all of the other Gaijin toward the test (we figured that almost all the foreigners out and about in Kyoto on a Sunday morning at 8am were probably going to take the test too). The test was difficult, but not impossible. I think it is possible that I passed (cross your fingers for me) but I am really close to the cut-off line at any rate. The test people were so serious and made the whole thing more stressful. Many times we had to sit there in dead silence for 10 minutes waiting before starting the test because every single test site in Japan had to start at the exact same moment! The proctors didn't even speak, all the instructions came over a loud speaker, even the 5 minute warning. It was strange (but then it has been awhile since I took a standardized test). One bit of excitement though: The reading/grammar section was really easy but they gave us 70 minutes, so I finished really early, checked all the questions several times and was still waiting for the 5 minute warning. I was getting a bit bored when all of a sudden they come into the room and accuse the Russian girl several seats behind me of writing funny things on her test (they thought she was cheating). She wasn't taking it though and starts yelling back at them in Japanese in the middle of the exam. They finally dragged her outside the room where we could all hear her yelling for another 5 minutes. I feel bad for her, but it was a great break in the tedium of the test. I also sortof think that if she could yell that well in Japanese she probably would have passed the test.

After the test I went to Osaka to do some shopping (but after trying on a few $300 shirts I decided that maybe shopping in Osaka isn't all its cut out to be). I met up with my friend Anja and we went to a restaurant called Cafe Absinthe. It was so cool. They have 7 or 8 different kinds of absinthe and have nifty absinthe cocktails (I had absinthe with burnt sugar and chcampagne poured over the whole thing). The food was fabulous too! (Musakka, Tapas, Kabab- so much more ethnic than you can get in Fukui). The woman who worked there kept chatting with us and answering all our questions about Absinthe- she even brought out a bottle of Russian absinthe that is made with wormwood still (the smell is so different from the Prague absinthe). She then gave us a suggestion for a club called Noon (formally called Dawn, but apparently dawn had passed and moved on to noon). http://www.cyberjapan.tv/contents/osakaclubguide/noon_e.html
They had DJs from Kyoto that were doing mixes with Jazz. Then there was a live group that came on and played. The club was great because it was funky and so small we kept running into the same people over and over and chatting with the DJs and the people who worked there. The only thing is that it makes me want to live in Osaka so I can go all the time! The trip back to Fukui at 6 in the morning after dancing all night was not a fun one.