Well, this is it.
I'm leaving for Narita Airport around 2pm tomorrow.
I had my two big suitcases shipped to the airport this morning, and I vacuumed and dusted my room. My carry-on bags are almost packed...
It's a weird feeling.

I've said good bye to all of my friends here... It's sad to separate from everybody, but the good thing is, I have friends all over the world now, and especially all over the United States. No matter where I travel I can say to someone, "Hey, I'll be in your neck of the woods soon, can we meet up?"
That's a really cool feeling.

And I'm excited because I get to take one of my friends "home" with me. I'm really glad to have the opportunity to meet and become friends with the Waseda student who's studying at my college next year. Hopefully we'll have lots of cross-cultural adventures starting in September (and tonight we're going to that maid cafe I mentioned in my previous post, so I'll update about that later)!

The world is really a lot smaller than any of us realize. I met someone at a nomikai on Thursday who studied abroad in Missouri, my home state, while he was in high school. I was so excited about it that all we did was talk about Missouri the whole evening. But most people in Japan have never heard of places outside of New York and California, so my excitement is understandable, right?

One of the things I've really learned in Japan is that I don't know anything about so many parts of the US. And that's sorta embarrassing. I've never been to New York, or Boston, or DC, or LA, or Niagra Falls... It would take too long to list the states I've never been to. So from here on out, I want to get to know my own country better.

I'm not sure yet if I want to live in Japan in the future, but I don't want to forget Japanese. I feel like I've finally gotten to a point during this year where I can actually enjoy Japanese. I can't turn back now. And I can't lose the language that connects me to so many of the people I know this year. So I have to keep studying. Time to forge on ahead. 進め、日本語の道へ！

Last Sunday at Fuji-Q Highland was interesting. It was a holiday on Monday, which I didn't realize, so the roads were incredibly crowded. Both my bus there and back took two hours longer than they were supposed to because of traffic. Then the park itself was crowded too. We only road two roller coasters, but they were the best ones. Eejanaika, the Guinness World Record for most twists, and Takabisha, the Guinness World Record for steepest drop. Eejanaika in particular was really amazing. I actually cried. I had such an adrenaline rush after that one.

So here's some emails I sent myself during the bus ride back.

"8 hours of buses and 4 hours and 50 minutes of lines for less than 5 minutes of roller coaster glory. It's hard to believe, but it was worth it."

"Today's menu:
Eggs and toast(thanks Missus!)
2 onigiri (sake and mentaiko)
Water
Green tea (thanks Madi!)
1 taiyaki
1 peach flavored softserve
1 age pork man"

The great thing was that you could eat and drink in the 2-hour lines. And people let each other get out of line to buy vending machine drinks and food. Which allowed us all to survive the waits. Actually it was really beautiful weather that day, not too hot at all but hydration is important regardless of the weather.

While looking at the monitor in the bus:
"That's not how acronyms work:
CHANCE
Chuo Highwaybus AlliaNCE"

Upon seeing that the word for street, doori, is almost always translated as "avenue" on highway signs:
"Who decided every street was an avenue?"
The strangest part is that they tend to actually leave the Japanese word for street on there, so you get  Chuo-doori Avenue and Waseda-doori Avenue and Meiji-doori Avenue and stuff. Why "avenue"? Why not throw in some "boulevards" and some "places" and some plain ol' "streets" for good measure?

This post is going to take the form of a list because I've been terribly neglectful of this blog.
And I'm not actually that sorry because I'm in oh-my-goodness-20-days-left-in-Japan mode and I've been that way since day 50 or so, so don't blame me for not wanting to stay in my house and blog.

This post is actually only happening because 1) I'm in the library and supposed to be working on a presentation and 2) I want to brag about the cool stuff I'm planning for this and next week.

Stuff I've done (thanks to the dates in my planner...):

May
1) Watched a traditional dance performance I totally didn't understand
2) Went to see my friends' band perform in a SILS music club live in Roppongi. They called their band the Guy Jeans because they're... the only all-gaijin band in the SILS music club. Yeah.

June
3) Went to go see Thermae Romae テルマエ・ロマエ which is a movie based on a manga about a guy from ancient Rome who gets sucked into modern Japan through a roman bath and brings Japanese bathing and toilet innovations back to Rome. It was entertaining. And since my mom couldn't figure this out when I described it to her, yes, it's a comedy.
4) Went to a cafe that had all-you-can-drink fresh juice and tried avocado milk, which is actually really refreshing and delicious.
5) Helped lead a discussion group in a 3-week class where Japanese students on Waseda's engineering campus watch The Apprentice and use it to compare American and Japanese business practices.
6) Met one of my friends from Knox while she was in Tokyo and went to go see the Sky Tree.
7) Ate all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu
8) Went to a cafe in Shin-Okubo called Coffee Prince known for its cute Korean baristas. Also for the adorable drawings they do on the coffee drinks.
9) Went to go see the movie of a book series I'm working on reading, 図書館戦争, Toshokan Sensou, (Library War), which was cool because it had animated versions of places I'd been! (Shinjuku's Kinokuniya bookstore, and some places in Osaka)
10) Got my hair cut.
11) Visited a class at Rikkyo University, near where I live, because the professor in charge of our study abroad program was teaching it and the students wanted to meet exchange students.
12) Went to eat unagi, found the unagi place was actually closed, and ended up overeating Indian curry and cheese naan instead.
13) Had udon and then later cake as well as lovely conversation with friends from my J-pop class

July
 14) Went to a flea market in Shinagawa with a friend of a friend from the US and her friends because they were in Tokyo
15) May or may not have caught bronchitis between 9) and 14), cough still not totally gone
16) Took an essay-writing test in Japanese on the 4th of July
17) Arranged for the pick up of and mailed home a box of clothes and a box of books, all by myself!
18) Finally tried one of the parfaits at a cafe by my station, strawberry + anko flavor.
19) Presented my final film project for my documentary filmmaking class
20) Immediately afterwards, went to a 飲み会 nomikai (drinking party) followed by karaoke. Took the second to last train home for the first time since going to Disney Sea (I don't get out much?)
21) Joined my friend's circle for "orienteering" around the Yamanote train line. We found 6 of the 7 locations and tied for second and third place out of 4 teams. So we didn't win anything, and I was super exhausted from 20) so I sorta fell asleep on the train towards the end.

Still to come
 1) A trip to Cafe NEWTYPE, which is a maid cafe in Akhihabara, with the twist that the maids are gorgeous 男の娘 otoko no ko. 男の子 otoko no ko written with the kanji for child means "boy" but in this case the kanji is for "girl." It's a new kind of gender identity (okay so I saw the cafe on TV and then I realized I could meet someone I saw on TV so I decided to go okay), according to the TV program I watched. According to Japanese Wikipedia, the term originated from a manga trope about beautiful crossdressing boys... I believe that as opposed to ニューハーフ new half or トランスゲンダー transgender people, who are born men and decide to live as women and consider themselves completely 100% women, 男の娘 still consider themselves male to some degree, although they dress and live as women. Translating Japanese gender identities into Western gender identities doesn't always seem to work too well, but perhaps 男の娘 would be a form of a genderqueer identity, from the Western social justice perspective. I'm really curious to learn more about "LGBTQ+" culture in Japan, because the environment just seems so different in Japan (which is why I put LGBTQ+ in quotes). At the same time, as a straight, white woman, it's definitely not a space I belong in so I would understand if there wasn't a lot of information available to me. But if anyone knows any research or books or manga on the subject (from a realistic, serious perspective), please let me know.

2) Finally, a chance to go to Fuji-Q Highland, with the same friend from Knox. It's a theme part in Japan with a habit of building a new roller coaster every few years so it can keep breaking records.

3) An all-night karaoke party

4) a festival in my homestay town with my host sister. She's going to lend me one of her yukata for it.

5) Farewell parties and finals.

6) Going to the police station to claim the 7000 yen I found on the ground in Harajuku and turned in to the police because the 3 month waiting period will be over soon and then it officially becomes my money. Ahaha.

If this ends up being my last blog entry before the airport, please forgive me! I'm a busy bee! Ahaha, look at that final project I said I was gonna work on today, sitting there abandoned.

This post's theme is: cafes!

The huge variety of cafes is one of the few things I like about Tokyo. But let me tell you, going out to them too often can kill your wallet. My finances are in dire straits right now, not just thanks to cafes, so hopefully some sort of income source will materialize when I get back to the US... Food is expensive, and coffee is expensive, and guess what my favorite things are? Going to eat food and going to drink coffee.

Now that I've vented my financial stresses, cafes.

First of all, I went to Daikanyama, near Shibuya, with one of my friends, as part of my mission to explore Tokyo for cute cafes. The first place we found when we got there was The Queen's Collection Chocolate Cafe. So, naturally, we had to go in.

Their big thing is hot chocolate. You pick the bitterness of your chocolate, and then you get a candle/fondue pot thing and milk and you heat it up and mix it yourself. I really wanted to try it, but the day my friend and I went it was too hot so... I got hot coffee... because that makes sense. I kinda really want to go back on a cold rainy day and try that hot chocolate.

But look how happy my orange mocha was!

I ordered an orange mocha, and it took me a while before I realized that all of the orange was at the bottom. But after I stirred it it was delicious!

And the cafe was pretty adorable.
Occasionally Tokyo rewards me with places like Daikanyama, where the streets are wider and not that crowded and there are cute cafes everywhere, including places that look like old-fashioned sweet shops on the inside and are devoted to chocolate. Yeah. And then the rest of Tokyo continues to be Tokyo and it figures that the part I end up being charmed by is like... not at all thrifty.

So yeah, I've gotta go back to Daikanyama at least one more time before I leave. Maybe back to the chocolate cafe, maybe someplace new.

Next stop (I promise, the pandas are coming at the end), the giant Gundam statue in Odaiba.
For those of you who don't know, Gundam is an anime series about giant fighting robots, and this one is life-size. So it's really huge. It's also cool because if you get close it has all this stuff like "only assemble by a trained professional" and "caution: not a step" and stuff like that on. I don't think it really says that specifically, but like, those sorts of things...

Detail shot of the Gundam's foot.

After seeing the Gundam, we attempted to explore some of the malls in Odaiba, but we didn't get very far because we couldn't stop eating (lunch turned into Auntie Anne's Pretzels) and then the boys we were with were like... so ridiculously chill that we never got anywhere. And we couldn't get them to stop talking about trading card games. So it was a lot later than we meant it to be when we finally got home. And it was Sunday. Whoops.

But we got to see a nice sunset behind rainbow bridge and check out the lights of Tokyo Tower from the Yurikamome line on the way home. And then we managed to find, from the Yurikamome line platform, what we're pretty sure is the cliche view of the Tokyo streetlights that you see all the time online but we couldn't find in real life. If you're ever going to Odaiba for some reason, you should take the Yurikamome line at least one way. I was turned off by how expensive it was compared to the subway, but it does a loop in the middle for some reason, so it's good for sightseeing. You can get a good look at Tokyo Tower and some cool skyscrapers and stuff.

Rainbow Bridge

Rainbow lights

Okay, now, finally, pandas.

I bought a book of cafes in Tokyo, and one of the featured cafes was panda-themed! I didn't take a picture of the inside of the cafe because I already had it in my book but it was quite adorable and quite delicious.

Sign out front

Small sign out front

Sign at the top of the stairs (the cafe was on the 2nd floor of the building)

Panda table decoration

Panda keema curry

Panda mocha

Cookies and cream ice cream!

Laura and her Panda Set

So that was last Thursday. Then on Saturday my class was cancelled so I went to the Ueno Park Zoo with another friend, and we saw the real panda! And really cute elephants. And lots of other stuff. It was a really good zoo day somehow. We got to see the zookeepers feed a lot of different animals, and they all seemed really active.

The female panda! There's a male one too but he wasn't outside.

The zoo keepers encouraged the elephants to walk around the enclosure in a line like this and then gave them bananas.

Me and the elephants.

Oh, and today I drank this at a cafe in my train station that I keep wanting to try:

Azuki shirotama float

It was kinda expensive considering how much of it was ice but you live and learn, I guess. Now I don't have to be curious about that cafe anymore.

Oh, and of course, it's not related to pandas or cafes, but on Monday there was a solar eclipse over Japan, and I bought the special reflective sunglasses and got to see it. I didn't take a picture or anything, but I woke up at 7 to go check it out and it was well worth it, standing in the driveway looking at the sun through the special glasses and taking a break every two minutes. The moon covered the sun so that it was a perfect ring. I think you could see the eclipse in California too, but I'm not sure. It was really cool to see.

 70 days left in Japan, counting today (and it's already 9pm so I suppose I should be done counting today). See you sooner than I can believe, America!

I realized I never posted about the classes I'm taking this semester.

At SILS:
-Modern Japanese Fiction in Translation
With the same professor I liked for literature last semester. We're reading Meiji and Taisho and early Showa fiction and looking at what it means to be modern and different writers' images of Tokyo.
-Tokyo: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Documentary Filmmaking
I'm not sure this class is actually about Tokyo but our final assignment is to make a 15-minute documentary. I think mine is going to be about two of my friends and their book-buying habits, but I haven't heard anything from my professor after I sent her the topic email. So far I know more than I did about cultural appropriation but I have no idea how to make a film. I feel like I should be starting soon but I don't know what I'm doing with my little digital camera. The only thing I've done so far is asked my friends for permission to interview them and bought a bigger memory card.

At CJL:
-Writing Essays with Volunteers
This is a cool class. We write essays and then we get help correcting them from native speakers.
-something about speaking and writing your opinion
We discuss stuff in class and then we write short essays about them. No homework because all the work is done in class.
-Intensive Japanese 5
I like my professors for this one so it should be good.
-Discourse Grammar in Japanese 5-6
This class is a lecture about grammar and it's hard but it's stuff I need to know, like the difference between は and が

And I'm volunteering in a freshman English class. Which is awkward but fun.
And I'm a member of an English conversation/cultural exchange circle, where everyone is a sweetheart and it's great and I wish I'd started going sooner.