I woke up this morning to the 20th of November. This was a very auspicious beginning to the day so I decided to have a good one. After skipping to class and trying to pay attention through sleep deprived eyelids I made my way slowly to the tutor lunch and watched in horror as my tutor did math in Japanese. As she fought a bitter war with the letters and numbers on her home assignment she told me about the plans the tutors have coming up the next weeks. This Sunday we will gather to watch the magnificent foliage of Kyoto´s temples, lit up and shining red, yellow, orange, green and several other variation of these colors. I think I feel a bit jealous of myself even...
Next weekend as a sign of peace between tutors and exchange students we will gather in the countryside and stay the night, playing sports, perhaps going to an onsen and just generally creating havoc.

Stepping out of the classroom into a three day weekend (yatta!), I went to greet Megumi who came to visit to see my campus but mostly getting help with a letter she wanted to send to Iceland. Me being very fluent in the language I think I was a tremendous help in this process. We spent a few good hours touring the campus and chatting at the school´s cafeteria. Today I found out she knows more about Scandinavia than I do, I don´t know what to think about that so I won´t.

The past few weeks passed with frightening speed. Every day is a new adventure and I, in my senility, am still remembering every so often that I´m now a proud inhabitant of Kyoto, Japan. I don´t think my brain will accept this for a fact until, oh say around the time I go back home. So much to do, so many things to explore, so little time.
School is going well, I´m still not fluent - going to give it a few more weeks - and have yet to put my plan to take over the main island into action, I´ve just been to busy. What is an evil overlord-to-be to do! Much to my personal dismay I haven´t joined .. well, anything yet but I have big plans!



It´s getting colder by the minute in Kyoto, and I swear the days are becoming increasingly shorter. As father Winter squeezes my bones tighter by the day I am reminded that it is soon time to celebrate the birth of Santa. I´ve always wanted to experience the festivities abroad but found out that they do it quite differently here half the planet away from home. In Japan, you see, Christmas is all about celebrating the coming of Colonel Sanders. On the 24th of December the Japanese gather around Kentucky Fried Chicken to comemorate this event, eating french fries and chicken and generally be merry. Should be interesting to see.

Oh, before I forget, I feel like I should mention one of my teachers  at Kyoto Sandai.
I decided to take his class, a new one this semester, which is on Japan´s foreign diplomacy. At first we were psyched to learn that he is a real diplomat as he told us the first class of his work in Russia and years of study in England etc. As the weeks passed we learned that his father was Shigenori Togo, Japan´s foreign minister in the time of world war II, was sentenced as a war criminal for defending the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for 20 years and died shortly after. Originally from Korea, his family was abducted and brought to Japan, where they took the name Togo (formerly had the Korean name of Park). It´s just so surreal to have such an impressive teacher with such a rich family history and direct ties to the inner workings of the government at this time, every class he will say something like "oh, and on this picture you can see former prime minister Nakasone with Margaret Thacther and Reagan, actually I met him just yesterday, so nice to see him again.. "
"And next week the parliament will be calling me in to talk about ...  so you might see me on television soon..." or even ".. and I haven´t even told the parliament this but... "

Best class ever.

Hope everything is well at home, I should leave you now to go to bed as I have to wake up around seven tomorrow. We are going to visit a school somewhere in Kyoto and introduce ourselves, our country and culture and receive introductions from the Japanese students in turn. Should be good fun. Early, but fun.

Bisoux,
-Hildur