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| A house I saw while biking around Akita |
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| Akita's famous rice fields are almost ready to harvest |
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| One of many shrines near the university |
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| The perfect drinking spot for a thirsty biker |
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| A power plant nearby AIU |
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| Some place I want to visit in the future |
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| This park at Akita City reminds me of Hawaii |
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| A wild dear in Akita city |
As of right now my Japanese is slowly getting better, but I am not happy with it. I still struggle with saying simple phrases in Japanese, reading kanji, and listening comprehension on tests. Although I am in Japan, I still need to study kanji, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. The only thing I do not need to practice as much in Japan is speaking because I can talk to Japanese students in Japanese.
In order to solve my dilemma, I joined the Japanese Conversation with Friends club. This club meets every Tuesday at night, and I get to speak with Japanese students in Japanese for one hour. Although I do not know a lot of Japanese, the students are very patient with me and try to teach me useful Japanese words and phrases. In addition, I get partnered up with a Japanese student so I can practice speaking Japanese and get someone to hangout with. My conversation partner is from Okayama and she is currently thinking about where she wants to study abroad at. I am not sure if she wants to study abroad in Hawaii, but I am sure she will pick a good school.
Exploring Japan has been fun, however compared to Hawaii, finding places to go to is a lot more challenging. A lot of Japanese restaurants do not have websites or their menu is only in Japanese. In addition, in order to find certain stores, I need to ask someone to tell me the store's address or show me the location of the store. After living in Japan for about a month, I miss being able to rely on technology to solve my problems.
Currently my roommate cooks for me most of the time, but occasionally I cook for him sometimes. He seems to like cooking a lot and does not mind cooking for me as long as I help pay for the ingredients or do the dishes. So far because he is from Taiwan, he likes to cook a lot of Taiwanese food. I want to cook some Hawaiian food, but I am unable to find the right ingredients. Therefore I am asking my parents to send me some food from Hawaii so I can start cooking things like poke, loco moco, and spam musubi.
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| I am not sure what he made, but it was good |
Next Sunday will be the Akita International University Festival so I hope I can put pictures from the Hawaii booth. A lot of us will be busy this week trying to prepare for it. We are hoping to having things like hula, kikaida, and pidgin. Anyways I am looking forward to the festival.
