There is a mall that opened up in this area a few months back called nishinomiya gardens. Nishinomiya is a little past the stop I get off on for school (and it takes forever to walk there as I once found out). I had plans to see the conan movie on saturday but friday zoe and jay wanted to walk around nishinomiya gardens so since I needed to get dinner because my host mom was in Tokyo I went along. We walked around but I have to tell you the only interesting store in the whole mall is Joshin (electronics store) and maybe book 1st. So it was a little boring but had fun with friends so it was ok.
The next day we wanted to do the 2pm showing of conan but it was sold out (this was the only time Ive seen the theater actaully busy) so we went for a 5pm one instead. That meant that we had lots of time to kill in the mall so we just kind of sat around for a while. The next day Courtney invited me to go to the horse race tracks with her and her family and it was a lot of fun. We didn't actually see the real race because we were trying to get out of the sun but it was lots of fun to hang out and Courtney's brother is so cute. After the race though we went again to nishinomiya for dinner.
On monday me and courtney were planning to skip afternoon classes and go to Umeda to buy more anime figures. I've started collecting the figma series and also ones that are about the same size, shes been collecting the really chibi funny ones that I forget what they are called. But it turned out it was layla's birthday so we went to nishinomiya to have lunch with her and then somehow talked Pak and Layla to go to Umeda with us. I like going shopping with courtney because I never feel bad about the amount of money I spend because she spends TONS of money the figures she gets are like $25 each and she bought like 5 of them! Her dad just gives her so much money I wonder what she is going to do when she has to make it on her own. So that was 4 days in a row of going to Nishinomiya gardens.
Tuesday we had off but Wednesday we had a field trip to the CUBE campus which was right across the street from Nishinomiya gardens. The cube was really nice because the students there seemed honestly interested in talking to foreigners not just practice thier English or something. It was a lot of fun and its really good to see some people trying to change Japan's education system.
Also on Wednesday I got to do my presentation on Tokusatsu. It was a lot of fun and I showed some trailers and opening videos, I put a LOT of time into making the presentation.
But it is really close to the end of the program at this point. Next week is finals for Japanese class. Then we have a week off I think, then the last week for elective classes. A few days after that half the people go home and I have the last two weeks to do everything I possibly can.
Its a weird feeling because on one hand its like, "what did I actually do here?" or "where did all of the time go" but at the same time I've been here so long its hard to remeber what its like back home. But I do have close to 10,000 photos (Im like 300 short so the next time I can just walk around I'll hit it) and around 50 blog posts while being here so you could say I've documented it as well as I could have.
This has been an incredible experience and I've done so many things that most people back home would never even dream about doing but I really don't think this programs goals are what they ought to be. This program is designed pretty much for "have fun in Japan with other foreigners" which is good in its own right but you really can't say that it is "to vastly improve Japanese language skill". But I dunno I'll get fluent someday.
Honestly I am dying right now. The allergies have come out and they are showing no mercy to me. Right now I can barely keep my eyes open and my nose is all messed up. I'm wearing a breathing mask but when I exhale it goes right into my eyes and makes it worse but without it I can't stand it. It all really sucks!
Well see everyone pretty soon
---Ben
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