ichi go ichi ei

Well its February now and nothing incredibly huge has happened. Classes are so so, the japanese religion class is actually getting pretty cool because its at a point where he tells us all about a matsuri that is going on in a few days so we are all prepared for it. In the Japanese language class we finished our first novel! Its called moonlight shadow and I personally didn't care for the story. I was all excited for starting a new book but apparently we are taking a detour in February to focus on grammar points used in the JLPT level 2 test so thats pretty good too.

My birthday wasn't too bad. On the 22nd, Thursday, I ate yakisoba with the missionaries, who are really cool people. On Friday me a few foreign exchange friends and one Japanese guy, kanada, went to nishiyoma gardens (new mall) and ate at a Hawaiian restaurant. I got a really good "american size" burger and Kanada ordered a birtday desert and they sung happy birthday and it said my name in chocolate. We then walked around the mall for a bit and Jay got a terabyte external hard drive for 12,000 yen ($120). In the states you can get them at about the same price but its so hard to even wrap my mind around a terabyte. Like it was a few years ago that a terabyte was an impossible number like you might as well say bajillion or something like that.

I have really enjoyed going to church here. Its a really small ward (we had a record today of 53 people) but that just means everyone is so much closer to each other. And the missionaries, especially elder Bohman, are a real inspiration to me and I actually, for the first time in my life I think, bore my testimony for fast Sunday today.

I decided that Its kind of unreasonable to try and spray paint all of the models I have left to build before I go home with the awkward way I have to do it that I'm just going to build them as quickly as possible and do all of the painting at home once I buy a airbrush. I really need to go this way because I ended up buying three more the other day. I bought one because I wanted to try and hand paint it and then I got the wing gundam one because I have wing zero and wing zero custom so I wanted a set and I bought the zeta gundam because it was only 1200 yen! Like Japan is an expensive country for sure but when it comes to manga and anime goods its really amazing.

I'm past the half way mark on this trip and before I know it I'll be home, its starting to become kind of mixed feelings. I keep having dreams of being home and seeing everyone and other dreams of coming home too early and missing out on everything back in Japan. I think I'm going to be really frustrated in my life for a few years. There are things I like and dislike about both countries so while I'm in America I think I'll miss Japan a lot and if I come back to Japan I'll want to go back to America. I hope I can find some happy middle ground somewhere.