Whoops

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything the past couple weeks, but since classes have started there really hasn't been much going on. I'll give a quick synopsis of the past couple weeks.

After the chaos of orientation, classes began and I finally got to meet my teachers. I'm taking a total of four classes, Spoken Japanese 6, Reading and Writing 4, and two economics classes. My Spoken Teacher, Mr. Okawa, is a wonderful teacher and can speak impeccable english, just not during class... no english allowed in Japanese classes. My Reading and Writing teacher, Mr. Miyauchi, is also a wonderful teacher and keeps a pretty fun class. This brings me to my economics classes, which are both taught by... Dr. Campbell... and for the Woodberry guys, it's obviously not the same Dr. C. I have a very hard time calling my economics teacher Dr. Campbell... so I keep it simple with Mr. Campbell, which he is absolutely fine with. Well, my class schedule is quite crazy and not really what I expected... a little less organized than I would normally prefer.

Other than classes, we've had tons of holidays... this coming week will be the first full week of classes since school began. During these numerous Japanese holidays I've not really done much other than hanging out with all my friends. We did however go to a place called Arashiyama in Kyoto. This place is famous for keeping it's historical Japanese appeal. The day we arrived, it was rainy and I had a blinding headache, but I pushed on and wanted to experience everything. Arashiyama is located at the foot of a valley and is cut in half by a beautiful river, which wasn't so beautiful the day I went... in fact it was brown and quite ominous from all the rain water. We attempted to go check out the mountain Monkeys, but that trail was closed to the weather and we ended up just walking about 2km up the river to a dead end... This was about the peak of my headache, it was about here that we decided to try and check out some Temples around the area, but we ended up bailing on that idea as well. The constant, drizzling rain, the cold, and the ever darkening night canceled our plan to check out the temple fairly quick. The pain in my head was calling for some medicine, while everyone's empty stomachs were ready for food at the restaurant we made reservations at.

After downing some medicine, the 8 of us went to our tiny Takoyaki restaurant. (takoyaki is a fried ball of breading and vegetable with octopus inside) As we walked in to the "V" shaped restaurant that was built feet from the train tracks, the smell of fresh Takoyaki filled the air. Our party of 8 took over about half of the restaurant, and our 3 hour face stuffing began. Although the restaurant is a Takoyaki restaurant, the chef specially prepared a few other meals that he only does for special customers... Thanks to my friend Sho, we became "special customers."

That was about five days ago, and we're planning another trip to the restaurant. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but my camera died at Arashiyama, and I was unable to take pictures. I've got pictures of other things we've done, but I'm sure we'd all get tired of pictures of me hanging out with my friends. I'll be sure to do something interesting soon, so I can have some interesting pictures for you guys.

Thanks for the long wait!!!