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Curry flavored Pringles. Yum. The best thing to come from Japan since Udon. (ok, so technically they were made in Belgium or something… bleh) Oh my god. Yeah ok, so I am a curry addict… And Pringles are not all that great… but the whole concept of curry flavored potato chips makes my skin giggle. Did I mention that they are yummy? I may be exporting a shitload of them … but NO you may NOT have any.

The last week has been amazing. Tomo’s cousin is quite possibly the coolest girl I have ever met (not to mention super cute). We both love the same kinds of music (genre if not artist) and I love the fact that she wants to be a radio dj. Her high “cuteness” factor was probably a large reason I had problems talking to her… I’m about 80 percent sure that it wasn’t just the language barrier.

Yamagata prefecture, and the Japanese style hotel Tomo and I stayed in after I left Chikako (his cousin) was stunning. The hotel was smack dab in the middle of this cute little “onsen town”. Apparently the whole mountainous area is scattered with the volcanic hot springs. Onsen are neat. They make your skin feel like silk, and your muscles remain mushy for hours afterwards. A very zen-like experience.

The food at this hotel was amazingly beautiful. It took me an hour of grilling Tomo before I finally understood that the Japanese language does not have a word you can use to describe food arrangement as “beautiful”. I really wanted to impress our host-waitress-kimono-wearing-lady by saying something nice and non-american. I took like, seven pictures of our dinner… I hope I can remember the function and name of everything on the table when I get them developed. Raw meat no longer gives me the heebie-jeebies… especially when it tastes that good.

Then… Then… Then… I got to see fireflies. Uwaa!　ホタルをみた！ Apparently Tomo tried to keep that part of the trip a surprise… but he overlooked the fact that I can read hiragana and that the town was littered with “Hotaru no Matsuri” (Festival of Fireflies) fliers. So after dinner, we walked in our wooden hotel-provided geta, clipity-clop all through town until we reached the beginning of the Firefly path. And… and… and… I SAW FIREFLIES! It wasn’t too crowded, as this is the last week of the festival… but it was still busy. I still believe that I was the first person to see a fire fly that night… and I am one-hundred-and-ten-percent positive that I was the only one who had one land in her hand! Whoo hoo! Fireflies are so cute and small and sparkly. Their green color almost makes them look anything but real… but I can’t think like that anymore… because because because one landed in my hand!!

Tomo and I rode a (drum roll please) shinkansen all the way to Yamagata and back. About 25 percent of Japan sped by in less than 2 hours. Brain… can’t… grasp…

I spent the evening of our return applying to various “last minute” scholarships… hoping that I can still scrounge up enough money to pay for school next term… I am getting quite an education out here… but still. I want to take Judo from an English-speaking sensei.

Until next time…