One Week Before Take-off!

Hey, friends, family, random strangers choosing to read about my time in Japan!
I decided to make a weblog about my magical adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun. "Magical?", you say. "Yes, magical," I say. Alright, maybe they won't literally be filled with magic and unicorns and Quidditch, but still, this shall be one hell of a journey, and I plan to document it well!
For those of you who know me, may know that I also wrote a daily blog of everything- and I mean EVERYTHING- I did when I went to Germany. Those things took me hours upon hours to write, and only one person consistently commented on them, despite others claiming to have read them. So if you're going to stop by, leave your footprint once in a while, ok? Even if it's just "wow, that's cool", or "stop rambling, go do something productive like practice Japanese", it'd just to be nice to know that people are here reading. Well, not reading, per say...
I do plan on writing some entries when I have time so that I can carefully insert my witty...wittiness (humor me). But for the most part, I assume I will be trying to do the whole video busi-nass. So you can enjoy my face and voice (or cringe at it, whatever suits you). Maybe you'll even get me to speak some Japanese at you- which would be a rare treat, because I don't even speak Japanese at Japanese people...which...hopefully will change for this trip, because that could pose a problem...
As implied by the title of this entry, it is a week before I take off for the Narita airport of Tokyo with my friend/classmate/fellow daring traveler Alex. My old high school buddy will pick me up, and I'll stay with her in Yokohama, which is a rather large city right next to Tokyo. Think like how Scottsdale is to Phoenix, or...how uh...I can't really think of examples. I will hopefully be getting my fill of large Japanese cities between Yokohama and Tokyo before I head of with the bullet train (that's magical, right?) to my little town Hikone in Shiga, Japan, which is the sister state of Michigan. 

Hikone is home to few cool things, like a 400 year old castle, the largest lake in Japan, Biwako or Lake Biwa, it's famous resident it apparently a prominent S&M novel writer, according to wikipedia. But more importantly, it is also the location for the Japanese Center for Michigan Universities, which shall be referred to as JCMU. So remember that name, folks, because it will more than likely show up a few times, and it would be helpful to know what I'm rambling on about if I'm shouting acronyms in random contexts.
I am partaking in the Intensive Summer Language Program, which is over two months of sitting in a classroom learning Japanese at an extremely fast pace. It's supposed to cover the whole 300 level (which I am 95% sure I will be placed into), or as much of it as possible. We will do fun things though, like go to that castle I mentioned, also, supposedly we go to the oldest ninja training school in Japan. Shiga is also not far from both Kyoto and Osaka, both of which I plan to visit. So be prepared for stories of awesomeness.
Currently, my life is just filled with panicking, packing, panicking, studying, and panicking. There's so much prep to do for this trip, and I feel poor already, just with I've had to spend up til now and just knowing what I will spend when I get there...and on that note, THANK YOU MOM AND DAD FOR BEING AWESOME AND LETTING ME/PROVIDING FOR ME TO GO ON THIS TRIP! **ahem** so yeah. I probably won't bore you with mundane details about prep for the rest of the week, and so this intro doesn't have to be any longer than necessary, I shall end it here. Until later!


Mary


And yeah, I wanna do these things:
Location: On the couch at home in Michigan
Mood: Panicky (Ｔ▽Ｔ)
Listening to: Back to Zero - Aoi Eir
Japanese for the day: じゃまた Ja mata - See you later