First of all i’d like to say a big thanks to everyone who checked out Road2Japan during Korea week.  It was a lot of fun making it happen, especially the video at the end, although my brain WAS on the verge of collapse after editing video for about 1238192873 hours.  For anyone who missed Korea week, it was a series of 5 posts about my trip to Seoul, South Korea.  In part 5, there is 3 youtube clips i made, basically an 18 minute video in 3 parts. Here’s a link to Part 1 of the Korea week posts.

However, as good as Korea week was, I think my timing of it was a bit off, because things happened during Korea week that I felt I couldn’t really mention due to the theme of the week.  So, time to catch up!

Korea week here at Road2Japan was known by another name to the Kansai Gaidai students: “Finals week”.  That’s right, all my finals were last week, and now that they’re done, my first semester here at Kansai Gaidai is over! Time to relax! Blow some money! And prepare for the big backpack trip around Japan.

I think i did well on my finals, i should have passed everything at least, but there is also the possibility for an ‘A’ in there somewhere, so that would be nice.  The finals week format was pretty much the same as the mid-term week, in my case.  That was that I had a Speaking Japanese oral, a Speaking Japanese written test, a Reading and Writing Japanese Oral, and a Reading and Writing Japanese written test.  All of which were tested almost exactly the same way as they were during mid-terms. For my orals, I had to read a passage out loud for Reading and Writing (something about eating turtles…), and apply for a (pretend) Job in my Spoken Japanese oral.  I fumbled quite a bit in my Spoken Japanese oral, but i think it was good enough to get a decent grade.  As for reading, I read that passage than i’ve ever read Japanese in my life (my average reading quality is that of a 4 year old).

Then there were 2 essays due for my other classes, the first essay was decent quality, the second essay was a bit of a joke to be honest.  I was pretty much done with studying by that time, but it should be enough to get the pass.

Ok, so I mentioned the backpack trip before, it was also mentioned by Paul briefly in his first post here at Road2Japan, and also Annie said a few words about it too.  Basically, Paul, Annie and I are going on a trip around Japan.  Destination: Hokkaido.  But we aren’t just gonna rush there, we’re stopping at a few places along the way to check out as much of Japan as we can.  We’ll be on the road for about 30 days.  Here’s the itinerary:

Osaka -> Nagoya -> Fuji -> Tokyo -> Sendai -> Aomori -> Sapporo -> Nagano -> Osaka

We’ll be staying at most places for 1 or 2 nights, but we’ll be staying around a week in Tokyo and Sapporo.  So traveling between these places consist of Highway Buses (A handy Highway Bus website), Shinkansen (Bullet Trains), and even a Ferry between Honshu (the mainland island of Japan) and Hokkaido (Northern Island).  It’s gonna be a big trip, it’s gonna be exhausting, but it’s also gonna be filled with awesome.  Gonna be meeting new people along the way too.  Can’t wait.

Also, 2 days ago (i think), i saw snow for the first time in my life!! AAAAHHHH!!! … … however, it was the dodgy snow ever i think.  They say it doesn’t really snow in Osaka.  But basically, i was walkin with Annie, and this cold thing hit my face, and i thought it was rain.  But there were these little white things floating down to the ground.  For some crazy reason, my brain convinced me it was little white flower petal things falling off trees… until Annie goes “HOLY CRAP! IS IT SNOWING!?”  So I caught one of these things and it was this little ice thing, which melted straight away.  So…. that was snow..? right?  It stopped pretty quickly.

Good times.

Ciao for Now!