yamaonna

September is here, and that means a few things, but mostly – it’s back to school.

This year’s summer vacation was Busy.  Hot.  Exhausting.  But good 😀

For most of my summer I’ve had guests visiting, because it was pretty much my last chance to have people stay before I leave Japan sometime next year.  From now on life in Japan for me will be focused on passing the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) level 2, and then selling my stuff before moving, and I just won’t be able to dedicate myself to visitors like I usually would.

For the first part of summer I had Angus visit, which I talked about in Blessed are the geek, D-days, and Gundam is Back.

On the day Angus left, I started working for a friend, covering his lessons while he was overseas.  It was really refreshing to teach students who wanted to study English, unlike teaching at a school were they are forced to learn.  It was only night lessons, so during the day I had time to chill out, watch tv, and sort out my house a bit before my next set of guests.

For the final part of the vacation I actually had my friend Michael come for a week to climb Mt Fuji, followed by my father visiting for 10 days just because.  By the end of August I had been expecting the weather to start cooling down, but this year has been most unusual with temperatures continuing to reach up to (and occasionally over) 37 C even into September!  It’s actually been the warmest August in Japan since 1946, so I had started to slow down a bit because of exhaustion.

Shibuya Crossing

Despite slowing down a little, I still did a lot of sighting seeing with Michael and Dad.  With Michael we went to Shibuya and Harajuku to see the cosplay kids hanging out there, and Asakusa and Odaiba to see a bit of Tokyo’s history and skyline.  With my Dad, his main requests were to go to Tokyo Tower and Odaiba, so we spent a couple of days doing that.  We also saw Inception, went to the National Nature and Science Museum in Ueno, and probably most exciting for me – went to Disneyland for my birthday!

Rainbow Bridge and Himiko Ferry

So, overall, this vacation was busy, hot, exhausting, but fun!  (and I went to Disney 3 times! win!!)