HAWAII

So this Sunday I'm going home..YAY! The bad news is, the ONE things my mom asked me to get her, bunka shishu, this weird things I can't find anywhere but online, will not be procured. Simply due to the fact that I am a procrastinator till the very last, and I so did not order it in time. Argh, I suck! But hopefully I will be able to RUN to Hakata and buy it before I have to RUSH back to make some sort of school end meeting at 7:00. Ahh the silly life I lead here.

Also sadly, I really wanted to take pics with some of my favorite students in Kyudo BUT I forgot my camera. BAH! So I visited them for like 15 minutes (they practiced very little today) and then they were all cleaning up so I decided to make my leave. You'll all just have to get my really ghetto pics from like ages ago. Sadly could not get a picture of the awesome people, or the captain who is super silly. Boo-urns. Also I wanted to stand next to them to show the fact that I am a midget. Most of them are rather tall, and I am sadly short. Not that I am extremely tall, nor is it that no one is short, its just that the ones who are tall are tall and Japanese and skinny. Making me feel lame and extra short =/.

I'll be in Hawaii in two days but will continue to blog, I wonder if I'll get reverse culture shock? For sure I'll be happy not needing to come to work everyday! But hopefully no one will have changed too much. I know I have quite a bit, though old habits do die hard. My older sister went to New York for about the same amount of time I lived in Japan and when she came back she was a much better person but with the year she had gone back to her old ways and it was as if she never changed.

I'm worried about Hawaii, it's people, it seems to encourage stagnation and contentness. People seem to lack drive and are so laid back its scary. In Japan I am still lazy and sometimes find myself just wasting the day away as I would do in Hawaii. But here I am also driven by so many people who just do so much more. I still can't break all my old habits but I truely believe I'm getting better.

Things I've managed to do in Japan:

Eat vegetables : Thats right I am not up to the level of salads and the thought of fresh cripsy vegetables is still revolting to me, but I wont sit there for 2 hours picking out every green onion, nor will I not eat anything with specks of green in it. As long as its been cooked thouroughly enough to make it seem less vegetable like I'm fine...generally.

Become more patient: Not that much better, but still an improvement. I still talk insanely fast with fluent English speakers, but even I am amazed how long I will stand there forcing children to talk to me in Engrish, even how SLOOOOOWWWW I talk to them, though I'll admit it I do sometimes sound like William Shatner when I do this =/. I'll even dumb words down further and further even though I speak some of the best Japanese in the area, and it would talk me 2 seconds to just tell them the word in Japanese. (I get more AHA! when I just use simple English to explain to them)

Get better at Japanese: Not as good as I thought I would, but that's understandable considering all my friends are not Japanese and I never study. But I guess somethings never change.

Make many new friends from different places: I can't belive how many friends I have who are white! It sometimes blows my mind and I sometime think the students arn't getting Internationalized I AM!

Read books: I hate reading and I still can't really enjoy it, but I've read quite a few nonfiction titles. And I've generally come to enjoy it....we'll work on fiction and literature on the next year!

Become positive: I'm a realist true and true but I realize coming to Japan its actually quite realistic to be somewhat optimistic. I often think "Ahh, things are bad..but it can't stay bad forever" I still find the faults in the day but instead of thinking it could be worse, I find myself thinking it will get better. Which I suppose is nice.

Get used to cold: Even people who live in Japan wear less clothes than me, even people in Canada get colder more often than me. My life in my apartment with no heat has made me freakishly immune to the cold. This whole week even though I KNOW it drops below freezing in the morning, I have been sleeping WITHOUT my heated blanket...not that smart but eh. I feel I'm stronger for it...though I fear returning to Hawaii with the freakish heat o.0.

Things I really need to work on the next year:

Play guitar: My god, I said I'd work on this but I so have not. It doesn't help that every other day I think "Why not play ______ instead!" Ugh, if anything I'm going to start drumming, but I still think it will be good to play guitar, I even bought a new shiny pretty one! Argh!

Save more money: I'm really good at saving money compared to everyone else here. But because I resist on big obvious things, (like heat, clothing, bed, comfort) I splurge on stupid.. crane games non stop, random giant bags of stuff I probably don't need but make me think "OH! its a deal!", food and booze. Well I guess that's not that different from my life in Hawaii..

Buy nicer clothes/try and live more comfortably: More like realize I can spend money on it, also spend money on comfort, I'm still unsure why I still sleep in a large sleeping bag..it's beyond strange. Also I sucked it up even when temperatures dropped below freezing IN my apartment with NO HEAT! I really need to get something...

Be less lazy/procrastinating: I can't count how many times I've said I should do this and still bummed on the internet. I often blame the cold (which it is) but really I could do more and I so don't.

Get up earlier!: Granted I get up on time, but everyday its a MAD-RUSH, and its because I do get up early enough but then I say eh I have time and drift off to sleep till its at the point where I don't have time and then have to rush like a madwoman...bah!

Exercise!: I can not believe HOW much weight I've put on in Japan its shocking and disgusting, I paid $1000 on a yearly membership to my local gym I need to use it damn it!

Get better at communication: I can not count the people who I just lose touch with just because I think I'll email them later, I'll call them later and never do. I'm so bad at it! BAH! I try to work on this alot, but I swear I only get marginally better each time, I just hate talking on the phone.

Yikes seems like so much I still need to work on. But I feel I've grown alot, especially living on my own. It's not really living on my own though, since rent is HIGHLY subsidized there is just no struggle even though I only get paid like 2,600 a month. (Wait that's alot) Generally I get paid enough where I don't have to pinch penny's and generally can get what I want when I want it. (though I still somehow deny myself it..) But, I do my own laundry, buy my own food, wash the dishes, go to work, get myself up, insane things I could never do in Hawaii. I wish I was more productive and I could be more, easily. But I've come pretty far from the barely trying at all in life that I used to do. If only I tried from the beginnings I wonder how far I could be right now, but there no changing the past, no time for worrying about what could've been, I can only hope to improve.

So see you all in Hawaii! I'll be jazzed to see how everyone else has changed! (if at all....)