Hey all!

Just had a wonderful time with some newfound Japanese friends - I met a girl named Kaori on monday when my group was practicing a skit in Japanese in the green area by the foreign student offices and she came to our practice again today with a friend. After practice she and Yuki invited us to all you can eat shabu shabu (basically you get a boiling pot of water and veggies and meat to cook) and from there.. oh the rapture. It really is exciting to get to know new people and I'm so happy that I decided to stick around after classes today (^_^)v We took group pictures - hurray for Purikura!

And now to study and sleep... or maybe I'll just keep reading Wicked....

choices choices

tonight was... awesome.. I can't even.. let's see

went out to a bar that was having a 99 cent beer sale and decided that I can drink beer as long as I have more than one glass (one beer only = a very sick Ashley)

then went to another bar where we actually just played pool

then snuck into school.. was discovered.. snuck into school and hung out on the roof and talked until it was time to drag myself home

awesome

rocks my socks awesome

Wanted Ad:

Male friend, preferably dark and mysterious or light and passionate.. or a little of both.. but all types welcome. I'd like him to be on the same campus or at most ten minutes away but anywhere is fine. Likes to snuggle me even though we don't go out and is totally chill with making out at parties or sleeping in the same bed all jumbled up in limbs and sheets. Attractiveness a bonus but verbal skills are more important.

Can't ever fall in love with me. (at least not without advance written warning)

Sometimes I feel like I'm arguing my position to a brick wall.. I really do.

It should be simple. I say something, people grasp the topic or point and then don't bring it up again until it looks like I've changed my mind. Until that point people should trust what I am saying to them and just relax and have nice days until something actually important happens. Like a wild rampage of squirrels intent on world domination (in my case the ever-ferocious tiger pigeons since there don't seem to be squirrels in Japan). Now that my friends, is something worth getting worked up over.

Until then, fuck drama games and the insecurities of the young and let's all get along.

Sooooooooooooooooooooo, me and my host mom are going to be on a national radio show together.. true story. HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHH I HAVE TO STUDY!!!! ::generally runs around like I have my head cut off:: It's not until May but that doesn't give me a whole lot of time does it? URRRRGG



In other news I suggest you guys all hug your parents. I know I appreciate mine for the constant love and support they give me, no matter what I seem to be going crazy about or changing into. Friends may tell you they like you for who you are and not for what you look like or do stupidly from time to time... but most parents love you and hate you without any of the reservations that friend have to abide by. Me = love my parents so much right now for what they've just done for me. Hurrah for family!

sooooo happy

Stolened from Kristen

My ex is ... three people and I consider two of them to be two of my best friends
Maybe I should ... stop being so retarded when it comes to impulse buying (aka I don't even smoke but I have a pack of cigarettes and a lighter)
I love ... my dog... and assorted friends and family
I don't understand ... why we all just can't get along
I lost my ... sense of dignity.. there's something very degrading about being the token foreigner
Sex is ... uh. is. I like it well enough I suppose.
Love is ... something unexplainable through words and can only be expressed through actions - whether they're everyday or something special
Somewhere, someone is ... probably buying shit. But I'd hope that somewhere, someone loves me for myself and not for my body.
I will always ... love my puppy
Forever is ... longer than I have time for
I think the current President is ... a piss-ant dictator wannabe
I woke up this morning ... at about 5pm completely refreshed and finally stress-free
Life is full of ... make-you-want-to-cock-your-head-in-a-quizzical-way moments
My past ... generally what happened before the past three seconds
I get annoyed when ... people are stupid or blinded by circumstance... and when people don't say goodbye to me
I wish ... that I could understand what people are thinking sometimes
My dog ... is the most adorable thing in the world
Tomorrow I'm going to ... go to school, meet my Japanese friends, meet with my groups for group projecty type things, and then go home and eat toast because my host family isn't back yet
I have no tolerance for people who ... create drama out of a sense of boredom
If I had a million dollars I would ... spend it on ridiculous things.. like college. pish, college
Sometimes I want to ... bust out a backflip
Home is ... wherever I want to be at any particular moment - which usually ends up being wherever I am at any particular moment.


CHANGE IS AWESOME AND PLEASING!!!!! I'm never going to settle down at this rate.


soooooooooooooo

friday night was stressful, and so was saturday, but luckily I have friends who like to go drinking and laughing and trying to teach my unskilled self to play guitar and making fun of men.... thank god also for calls from Japanese men in the middle of the night (and I actually knew these guys, imagine that).

Hurray also for biking up to the nearest Uniglo (think of it like a cheaper Old Navy). I had the original intention of buying a new pair of jeans since my other ones broke in an inconvenient / unfixable spot aaaand......... I definately spent the equivalent of about 110 dollars. SWEET. But now I have to throw away some clothes so I can fit the new ones in my drawer

Cheers my friends, approx 6 days until it's tattoo time. (does anyone have any real experience with putting tattoos on the back of one's neck and how much that hurts? My mom made some veiled comment about putting ink into my spinal cord that I just couldn't appreciate even though I knew she had good intentions.)

check out my tattoo! (or more or less what it looks like anyway without the words and with color - white fox with grey wings and black and blue details)
argh I can't update this so just go to my xanga or facebook and it's on there...
www.xanga.com/kigarunakatana

Feeling strangely lately - hopefully I'll stop feeling so smothered by everything and return to my bright sunshine self.

As always - the situation is much simpler than I imagined. Live your lives without knowing for the moment.



In other news - I dyed my hair jet black today and cut it super short again so it looks hot and I believe that I might be going to get my piercings and tattoo preparations all done this week - huzzah!

And these kanji are kicking me in the balls because they are hasty lovers.
And this Japanese essay is sucking the devil's teat because it doesn't know any better.
And my favorite prof is leaving. Hatred for a school system that doesn't pay enough to quality employees rises exponentially.

And now the weather:
This week has a good chance of being cloudy, stormy, and windy on the inside and smooth as a lake.. with the occasional splash, on the outside.

HOW WHAT WHO WHERE WHEN DID THIS HOW DID THIS YOUR MOM
HOW DOES CONFUSION SPREAD LIKE THIS?

Nate I hate to steal your line.. but he's so awesome... and so confusing.

Alright, update time for real:

Hiroshima: SO it takes approx a half an hour to get to the Bullet train station from my house, my group was meeting at 9:00 and I definately woke up at like... 8:32. So Saturday morning was a total freak-out session of running to stations and not brushing my teeth properly and packing on a whim cause of course I hadn't packed the night before. But once I got to the station everything was peachy because they tell us to come way earlier than we actually need to ^^;

Once we got to Hiroshima it was rainy and bleh but we stopped to eat before going to the inn and a group of us hit up the Okonomiyaki stand - okonomiyaki is very famous in Hiroshima and generally involves fried noodles sandwiched between a fried egg and doughy stuff. Delicious. You can also get a variety of fillings in addition to the noodles like beef, chicken, cheese, seafood, and veggies. After that much hilarity ensued as we wer walking down the largely uninteresting roads of Hiroshima. After that we went to the hotel to check in and then it was free time before dinner.

Our hotel was right across the street from the Peace Park and the A-Bomb .. building I guess. The building was just a structure - it used to be an office building that had a domed roof, and since it was the closest thing to the hypocenter that survived the bombing, and just because it looked so eerie with the roof all skeletoned out, they decided to keep it as one of the monuments.

I actually really liked the park in general.. it was kind of creepy to go up to a mound about as large around as the quad and not as high and read that it contained the ashes of thousands of people....

Then it was on to the Peace museum to get an emotional beating. I can't even describe some of my feelings, but most of them are anger, frustration, and a sense of sad loneliness - but not all about what you'd normally think. At first, to me, it seemed like the whole museum was one big Captain Obvious statement.. I couldn't leave a note in the book at the end because I felt like every sappy, unrealistic, ignorant peace statement had already preceded me. And that by itself makes me upset that I would have taken it that way. And then the wording of a lot of the signs talked so much about how much they suffered.... but sometimes it was like.. yeah I know.. I see the charred remains of a middle school uniform and I see the next exhibit over where it shows bottles melted together from the heat of the blast, probably twenty feet from where the child was, and I see the images of people's fingernails growing black and veiny so when they were broken off they bled profusely... I'm not stupid. That isnt even the worst of it.

I don't know... set me down and talk to me about that specifically if you want, I can't seem to express myself very clearly about it here.

Anyway- after dinner was spent with the guys and Anna and Julie drinking my Baileys (about 3/4 of a bottle) and watching Family Guy and The Office. After that, me, Anna, and Meg went out to see the monuments lit up at night and it was eerily beautiful. The dome looked like it was burning from the inside..

Miejima: We woke up Sunday morning and made our way out to Miejima island which is about an hour away from Hiroshima by train. After we got off of the ferry we walked through a herd of wild deer to our inn and then split up into groups. Me and the guys and Anna went out to a famous temple (I'll edit the name later) where there is a large gate leading out into the water. After taking some pictures we hit up a noodle shop.

Then it was me, Michael, Phil, and Matt - we decided before to climb up Mt. Misen and we made good on that promise. All in all it took us (and Meg was in there too part of the time) about two and a half hours to make it to the peak and then over to the area where we would take the tram down the mountain. That was because we had to stop every once in a while for me (damn stupid heart rate making it so I could feel it pumping painfully into my limbs... curses on my bad health!) and also we went off the trail every once in a while - two or three times not our fault because the path just vanished - and I was totally a ninja. We got all muddy and awesome Once we got to the top though we stopped for refreshment and learned several things:
1. Deer squeak
2. Deer drink each other's pee
3. If there is food deer will stalk you for about 500m down a mountain
4. Meg is a ninja

So Meg disappeared at the top of the mountain even though there was only one path down the mountain but when we walked towards the lift she was walking around looking at the wild monkies... very strange O.o

Anyway, we got back in time to have dinner, I got in an argument with Billy and Michael and it frustrated me and I hated that I couldn't explain my position very well and that's the end of that. Then we played Chinese Poker, watched a little of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and then our room (me, Alix, Sarah, and Anna) went to bed reading.

Himeji: That next morning we woke up so we could spend three hours in Himeji and the castle there is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Japan, and it was pretty, but I think we were all so tired from basically being around all of Japan so we walked up to the top and then scooted on to look at an arade type walking market and then chill at the station.

Nagoya: Once we got back to Nagoya I went out to the airport to pick up the parentals - tried to sneak on to a Rapid Limited Express train but was caught near my stop and had to pay the 300 yen reserve ticket -bummers!! Then met up, I actually cried a little bit when I saw my dad and gave him a hug. Aw I love my mommy and daddy It was so strange to see how nervous they were about everything - so many questions about where to go and what to do and how to get places... very exciting for me but it must have been so weird for them. My mom is taking the whole being in Japan thing very well but I can tell that my dad is a little uncomfortable with everything - I think he's just anxious because he doesn't know what's going on the whole time. I was really impressed with my mom though - I was understanding the hotel lady just fine until she came out with this sentence that I couldn't catch any of... and then my mom jumped in and seemed to understand without knowing what exactly the woman said.. very impressing.

And now I have a new game to upload, my room to clean, and e-mails to write,

HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYBODY!!

I'll try to be in and out with the computer but who knows...

FUCK MEN I JUST WANT TO FEEL PRETTY AND DANCE!!!

It's St. Patrick's Day in Nagoya! Evidently the Irish ambassador is in town so that's why they decided to move it up a bit.
Anyways, me and Sarah and Matt had just left the Nagoya museum (and there was a lot of good stuff there surprisingly and I took a lot of pics to use as backgrounds for my camera) when we decided that going to Osu would be a good idea. So, we get to Osu, watch a St. Patty's Day parade, Sarah runs to th nearest store to buy a green shirt (she bought an orange one), and we had Indian food. Then, we got a flyer from one of the Irish festival guys and it shows the locations of several pubs, one of which is right behind Osu temple - so of course we jig over there and I get myself what I hoped would be the makings of an Irish car bomb but turned out to be a plan old shot of Bailey's on the rocks...
NO worries, I'll just have another thanks! So now that I'm all tuckered out from this latest cultural adventure I think I'll take a nap before I go clubbing tonight. Cheers!

So, "One Night in Heaven", I happened to go to a bar called "Flagella" ad I "Ask the barman," now sir, I heard tell that you were a "Little Black Devil" so maybe you would explain why a "Bartender's Wet Dream" is to see a "Flaming Jesus".

Before I even finished asking he declared "That is 'Bullshit' and you can 'Crawl Down My Pussy' you 'Funky Chicken'!"

And this is why you drink at a bar.

One night in heaven: Malibu Coconut Rum, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, pineapple juice
Flagella: vodka, mountain dew, grape jello
Ask the barman: melon liqueur, grenadine, blue curacao liqueur, amaretto almond liqueur, bailey's
Little Black Devil: white creme of menthe, dark rum
Bartender's Wet Dream: grenadine, kahlua, baileys, whipped cream
Flaming Jesus: Absolut vodka, lime juice, grenadine, Bacardi 151 rum - lit drink
Bullshit: hypnotiq liqueur, red bull, sloe gin
Crawl Down My Pussy: vodka, seagram's gin, sprite, served in a glass with ice
Funky Chicken: jose cuervo especial gold tequila, wild turkey bourbon whiskey



Alligator Sperm is the name of an actual shot!!

I am oddly and possibly frightenly excited by all of this.

HAHAHAHAHA, vagina gift.

I mean.



Moving on: my host mother is the best person to go to for advice EVER, some bitch better back off of my man (I pity the fool!! He be mine bitches!! ::laughes maniacally), and Lauren is one of my best friends now - we went out after Ikebana and visited Toys R Us, and man they have some scary new stuff.

At first we were all up on these little nodding clock looking creatures (like a cute bobble-head but the head either moved slowly from side to side like a disney singalong or from front to back like they were agreeing to the proclamation that life was fine and dandy) and it's a good thing we took a stronger look at them and found out that they were business card holders lol

After that, we were taking a short circuit around the store when we saw this raptor looking thing.. of course I decide to press the on button and it immediately scared the crap out of me - it was so freaky! I hope to share a video of it when I get home. And after all that excitement the usual hula hoop shenanigans and purchasing of bouncy balls and cheetos ensued (Toys R Us has Cheetos?!?! Oh god not even the foreign supermarket had those!!!).

Chilling at Denny's = an awesome idea and I hope to do it more often from now on.

And now kanji quiz study time!

BEST VALENTINE'S DAY OF MY LIFE dlvshvbsljvg,smbvolsavv n

I'm that moved. Michael showed up at my house with pink and yellow roses ^^ After I stowed them in the room we headed out and he took me to an orchid garden in town that I hadn't heard much about before. Gorgeous! I love me some orchids ^^ There was one orchid there that people were taking their pictures with and it has a little news article about it.We were wondering what it was when a volunteer that spoke english came up and explained that one of the members of the royal family, Princess Kiko's husband, planted a pair of orchids at the center two years ago and this year, when it was announced that she's pregnant, they began to bloom. Pretty sweet huh? After that we managed to lub out some Japanese and then went looking through the rest of the gardens. Pitted our lives against a tiger pigeon and prevailed. True story.

After all that it was almost 5 so we headed over to Anna's together to make chocolate. Boy was I fooled -I thought we were doing the whole work intensive bit but really we were just melting chocolate and putting them in chocolate molds.. haha whoops. So we entertained ourselves for a little while. There was some dancing involved. At a little after six we left for the station, Michael headed back home and me and Anna met Leah (who's married) for our "singles night" celebration... yeah.. well..

Then we had some alcoholic beverages (beware nate, Kahlua has caffeine in it) and I had dinner, and now I'm here waiting for an awesome night of work to begin... now where did I put my Japanese book again? I want it to be break again!

Hope everyone's valentine's day is going awesome ^^

I didn't even get to say goodbye to him and now I may never see him again...

FUCK YOU, LIFE.

I swear... if I hear stories of yet another one of my friends being led into a deathtrap while any of the following are still going on I will go crazy.
1. Obsession with clothing that costs ridiculous amounts so that people stoop to prostitution and just as bad - cling to their parents for every aching need and blow all their money on these worthless worldy goods.
2. Lies, lies, lies, lies - if you can't tell me the truth, don't tell me a version of it, just stop talking to me.
I'd think of more but right now I'm very upset ON TOP OF the hangover that I foolishly and irresponsibly brought upon myself.

So, I was up at four in the morning today, wondering if life with a bitter hangover would be easier if I just committed ritual suicide, and I happened to turn on the tv to the Olympics. Of course it's my fave, pair skating, and of course, my brain overinterpreted and I decided that pair skating is a lot like having a relationship.

A figure skating pair is exactly that, two people skating. A relationship is also that - the communication and love is shared between two people, not two halves of a whole. Sometimes the pairs work well together, and sometimes they don't, but for a little while at least they're showing off to the world what they're capable of doing together.
If your partner falls down, you can't pick them up - they have to pick themselves up. And even after that it's your choice whether or not to trust them to carry you later, and that trust is the make or break of the relationship.

On a side note, eddie makes me happy go butterflies