Since coming to Japan I have met such wonderful people. Seems like just last week I was packed and ready to come to Japan, but now I am packed and ready to leave Japan. I am sad the day has come where I have to write my last post in Japan.

From the silly Americans I met my first semester, to my crazy and wonderful floor mates, I have met so many people! I've been able to travel around Japan with my friends too! I was able to cook and hang out with my floor mates, go to bath and onsen and many other things!

Thank you Naruho for letting me stay with you over summer break! I love cooking dinner with you! Kanako, let's go to Boston, then Hong Kong, then... Japan, then we can get you a handsome cat. Good luck with your studies in Lithuania! All of my floormates are all so cute and so sweet!

I met many wonderful friends from my Japanese class! We took a trip to Yufuin for our quarter break! It was so much fun to eat at a snoopy cafe! Uri and Chan are such nice people and I want to visit them again! Please come to America and I will show you around Boston, Uri!

Then my sweet and wonderful host family who took me in many times, fed me wonderful food and let me hide under a kotatsu for the winter, I have so many wonderful memories. I went out on many trips with my host family, went to the movies, had wonderful foods and tried many different things! They helped me experience Japanese culture! 

Thank you Mai, and my host family for the wonderful memories we made together! My host family has truly become my second family. I couldn't have asked for nicer people to help me get acquainted to life in Japan. There was sometimes a language barrier but we were still able to communicate and have fun!

Even when I was weird and too lazy to pack, my wonderful friend helped me pack! Good luck in America Kouki! I will visit Yokohama when I come to Japan!

I have met people from all around the world, from Finland, to Uzbekistan, to Indonesia too, and they are all wonderful people. I hope I will get to see everyone again, maybe in their home countries! Please come to America everyone!

It's been so wonderful to look back at all the wonderful memories I made with everyone. I faced many hardships in Japan, but not nearly as many bad things as good things. Living in Japan has been a wonderful experience and I WILL COME BACK!

I go home in one week and my finals have ended.

I am making sure to see all my friends before I leave. I've met so many wonderful people while here and I am so happy!

I went to a farewell party for my Japanese Professor whom I've had for two semesters now. Although sometimes he was strict, he is definitely one of my favorite professors throughout my college years and my favorite professor at APU. He kindly invited us to his home and we cooked and had pizza! (Haven't had pizza in a while!!)

My Japanese class has always been a small bunch. This semester we were less than ten and everyone was from different countries. (Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Finland, Uzbekistan and South Korea.) We have become very close friends and I hope I can visit them all again one day!

My professor will no longer be teaching in APU so we are his last students! I wish him luck in the future and with his move! (Let's keep in contact!) I also wish everyone else good luck in their studies and future jobs!

I may or may not have cried when the party was over...

Mai is a sweet girl I met in Arao. She is a family friend of my host family and we are close in age. When I first met her we visited the local amusement park over the summer. So, when I came back to Arao we hung out again!

We visited Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine which houses the god of literature and calligraphy. It was packed when we went. Just to give our respects of ten yen and make a wish we had to wait. My host mother was saying that, in the new year last year, she waited an hour to give thanks to the god because there were so many people in line. Normally you toss money into a large box, maybe three feet wide, by two feet tall, but they had a whole barrier around the front of the shrine where you could toss money so there wouldn't be a line just for the box.

We visited here specifically for Mai's game match. She plays Hyakunin Isshu which is essentially a card game made up of matching poem card. I really can't explain this game and couldn't figure it out from watching, nor from reading descriptions. It's fast paced and players slap and smack the cards in front of them. Cards go flying so it's entertaining to watch but I have no idea nor understand how to play.

Mai is on the left

Sitting like that takes a lot of strength, as it kills your legs after only a few minutes. It's a super intense game and lasts a while! To be honest I can't tell how people win either. It's very formal so no long sighs from the loser, no big smiles from the winner.

After that, we got the local specialty sweet which is Ume ga e mochi. Which is plum (flower) picture mochi. It's mochi, with a picture of a plum on it. We went to a small Japanese style cafe, where you can sit outside with hot tea, on the same table you eat off of.

Left is the mochi, you can see little indents. Those are the plum flowers. There is anko (sweet red bean paste) inside.
The green stuff is green tea which I love very much. It is bitter and goes good with sweets.
The two little things are umeboshi. Pickled plums. I don't like, but I ate anyways because it's fun to pucker!

Mei and I!

It's fun to speak English and Japanese with Mei, as she doesn't know much English and my Japanese isn't perfect of course. I had so much fun with her! When I come back to Japan I will come to Arao to visit my host family and Mai!

お節料理! Osechi Ryori! (New Years feast!) I tried my best to label things that readers wouldn't know by sight maybe. The main focus of the dinner was the crab, but there were many delicious foods! We did make a few things, but mostly it comes in a large stacked box resembling a set platter of food! We separated it into smaller boxes too.

Kamaboko: Processed fish cakes made into loaves and are pretty colors! They have a festive look, don't they? (Left)
Takoyaki: Is a ball shaped snack with a wheat flour-based batter. On the inside is octopus! (Right)

Kinpira Gobou: Carrot and Burdock root (gobou) sauteed together in soy sauce. We made this! Very easy and tasty! (Burdock Root, Left)
Karaage: Basically fried chicken, famous in Oita! (Right)

Tamagoyaki: It's basically scrambled egg made into a loaf and cut in an aesthetically pleasing manner. (Left)
Edamame/Kuromame: Beans! Kuromame are sweet black beans. Edamame are soy beans.

Mochi and Dango: I typically eat it when it's in a sweet/candy form, covered in, or filled with something sweet, but it can be used in soups, or grilled, basically anything. Here is what Wikipedia has to say: "Mochi is Japanese rice cake made of mochigome, a short-grain glutinous rice. The rice is pounded into paste and molded into the desired shape. In Japan it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki."Dango is made from a mochiko, related to mochi. Both are very chewy and glutinous!

I drank sake out of a crab head. Apparently that's a thing. According to my host family, crab and sake go hand in hand and I can assure you, they do. Hot sake is best. For the new year, of course there were fireworks. Always fireworks. In Arao, there is an amusement park that shoots of fireworks. We didn't go into the amusement park, but we went to a shrine near it and watched the fireworks from there. They were short, but very pretty. After that we visited the shrine we watched from and asked for good luck/health/fortune for the new year.

On new years day we visited a local shrine. Yotsuyama Shrine which was built nearly 1000 years ago. It's a shrine that has a god for small business owners. So at the beginning of the year many shop owners go there to pray for a good year. It's a small shrine up a small mountain. It's a steep walk, but many elderly people still made it with ease. By elderly I mean like 80 and 90 years old.

Yotsuyama Shinto Shrine

In front of a 5 yen coin!

I prayed for a happy new year for my friends and family, as well as good health! I hope I got that, because the fortune I got said I'd have a bad year with money. I got the worst one for money. Go figure! I hope everyone had a lovely New Years!

Compared to Kyoto, Beppu does not have temples or shrines really. It has onsens and pudding so that's okay. All that white smoke is actually steam from the dozens upon dozen of onsen in Beppu. I believe there are at least 36 onsen, but I am pretty sure there are over a hundred baths.


I am living in the city of onsen (hot spring), but I haven't spoken much about them. Today was cold so of course onsen! I went with a friend to a famous onsen in Beppu, only a 15 minute or so ride from my school by bus. Very cheap bus ride, rather expensive onsen but it was so much fun. That symbol to the left is the onsen symbol. The map below shows all of the onsen in Beppu. (Look for the symbol in blue!)

Beppu has the most rich and natural onsen in Japan. In Beppu there are 8 different springs which are now towns and onsen areas within Beppu. They are named Beppu, Kannawa, Myoban, Kankaiji, Hamawaki, Kamegawa, Horita and Shibaseki. I have visited onsens in Beppu, Kamegawa and now Kannawa. From sulfur baths, to clay, to salt, to special mineral water for your skin, there are many natural onsen in Beppu. There are also other onsen that are 'man made' such as the carbonated bath and the electric bath that gives you shocks as you sit in it. I have tried all of those and maybe the clay is my favorite and the shock one is my least favorite.

Indoor 

Onsens are not expensive typically (in Beppu at least). Maybe a few hundred yen (a few US dollars). There are indoor spa type baths or outdoor ones that look like beautiful pools of water. Some are small, with only one bath for both genders. Then there are some with saunas, outdoor, indoor, sulfur, clay and normal baths, those are the expensive ones.

Very Pretty Outdoor

Onsen water isn't just good for your skin, but you can boil stuff with it! Go figure. Onsen Tamago (onsen boiled eggs) are delicious, as well as sweet Purrin (Pudding).

So today I visited Hoyoland onsen in Kannawa. This one had an outdoor, clay, sulfur and sauna bath in it. The clay was by far the most fun out of the baths but the sulfur is very nice for your skin. Unfortunately the onsen boiled pudding was all sold out! We then went to get dinner at Myoban which is known for it's thatched roof huts that house crystal making facilities used in bath salts. Now because we are on a mountain and there are hot springs everywhere, including sulfur baths, yes, it smells like rotten eggs. Sometimes when the wind blows up the mountain, we get that lovely smell on campus. I can't get used to it and where a face mask.

Myoban

For quarter break I went to Yufuin which is only a forty minute bus ride from Beppu. I went with two friends from my Japanese class. In Beppu it was pretty warm and I was dying even in a t-shirt but in Yufuin, a quiet mountain town, it was pretty chilly and I was glad I brought my light sweater. The leaves are starting to change color finally! I visited here before and wrote a post about it back in spring semester.

For lunch we visited a Snoopy Peanuts themed cafe. We got to sit with a giant snoopy stuffed animal and got snoopy themed foods! Definitely a super cute cafe why can't we have these in America. I stopped at the Studio Ghibli store here and bought a cute photo frame as well!

This post is a little overdue.
Our school had a festival! If you haven't realized, Japan throws awesome festivals for anything it seems.

 Cloudy and windy. Rained on and off throughout the day, but it was so much fun! There were so many stalls from different clubs and groups selling so much food. I ended up getting yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick) and tamago senbei which is like a fried egg on a cracker sandwich thing with mayo and sauce and it probably sounds awful to you but it's great. I had it twice.

The festival was two days long, over the weekend and everyone got involved! I really wish schools in America could care enough to do this sort of thing. Student clubs are so independent here and are able to do so much!

 Our club, Xiao sold Peppermint Bark! I was so surprised no one knew what it was. No one knew what peppermint was! It's never too early to get into the Christmas spirit. We ended up selling out early the first day and early the second day! We did so well!

That's not all we did though. We also did a Free Hugs event where we literally just walked around hugging people. Yay hugs! 

 The festival continued into the night time with firewords and music performances including the taiko group. Poor things must have been so cold! Without the wind it would have been tolerable.

 Okay this post will actually be two separate, not consecutive days. But it's fits together.

My host family lives in a mansion (an apartment complex) which has a lovely view of this amazing amusement park called Greenland. At night it is lit up beautifully. Like so. Greenland is a very popular, and a very big amusement park (I'll soon find out) and it is always crowded. In the summer, at least.

On the last day of August which is the last day of summer before school starts there is hanabi (fireworks) set off. So we went to their friends for hot pot, since they have a better balcony view of the fireworks.This marks the last day of summer. Literally, the last day of being crowded.

So, a few days later I went to Greenland with my new friend Mai! She is so cute and fun to hang around with! I had to use my Japanese a lot more since she doesn't speak English. There was literally NO ONE at Greenland and it was wonderful. Still humid and hot, but no lines, nothing.

I played with guinea piggies.

Me and Mai!

There were at least ten different coasters, three haunted houses, two haunted theaters, games and many more! It sorta reminded me of a retro theme park because the rickety sounds were a little ah... unnerving, but I am not dead. I definitely had fun!

Not actually home home. I'm going to my host families home which is home enough.

Now, I tried to be really cheap on this trip. Which mean I decided to go by bus and train everywhere. That being said, I took a bus from Sendai to Tokyo in the morning, a bus from Tokyo to Osaka later that night and took a train to Fukuoka that morning, then a train to Arao that evening. Needless to say I needed a shower, but saved a bundle.

The bus company I used was: WillerBus. The website is in English and the prices are cheap! There are different buses, from plain seats with no features, to capsule hotel style seats. Of course they get more expensive, but I think I paid about 25UDS each way on these buses and they were great. No one talks. Only women sit with women and they visit a rest stop almost every two hours or so.

Omurice and Tonkatsu

Between Tokyo and Osaka I was at the station for a while so I got dinner of my comfort food of omurice and tonkatsu. I finished it all in hopes to store up for the winter ahead. I then went to the book store to read an entire book while standing there for four hours.

Pictures from the Bus

Rice Fields, not perfect grass.

After that long journey, I came home and my host mother picked up me up the station. She fed me sweets, then I showered and went to bed.

Thought my trip was over? I have half a month more of playing around now! Look forward to me struggling while climbing a mountain, painting spiky chestnuts and going to Nagasaki!