2014年ようこそ！ Hello Everyone! First of all  明けましておめでとうございます！！！ Happy New Year! It’s been a while since my last post! But it’s already almost been 4 months since I have been here! I really can’t believe it! I had the most amazing New Year’s! Every year I usually just hang out with my friends and welcome the New Year but this year was my first time celebrating with a Japanese family. I did a lot of different things to welcome the New Year with my host family!  First of all to prepare for the New Year, everyone needs food! My host mom took me with her to the early morning fish market.  We woke up unbelievably early... and went by car. When I got there it was freezing cold as well! Who wants to be awake really ea rly and stand in the cold :（　 After getting past the cold I was able to enjoy the fish market. What was even more cool was that one of the Hippo Members husband owned a fish stand. So I was able to talk to him and get a close look at all the fish....

Home Stay Hello Everyone, I want to take some time and talk about my home stay experience. First of all, my time at LEX is not my first time coming to Japan. I may have stated it previous before in older post, but just in case I didn't or maybe you forgot, I have studied in Japan at two different universities. During those stays I lived in the university dormitories and I lived alone. Therefore, coming to Japan through Hippo has been a very interesting and fun experience. Coming through Hippo I got the chance to live with 3 different Japanese host families. At first I was very anxious and worried about living with a family. After all I do not live with my own family in the U.S. so going back to a family setting was troublesome, I thought. But OH, I was wrong. I lived in three different areas of Japan. The first place I lived was in Omiya, Saitama. It was a family made of 5 people. "Dad" "Mom" and three brothers. Of course I did not call them Mom or Dad, ...

Group Fellow Meetings - Omar Hello! Usually on Mondays there is a Group Fellow meeting that is held in the Youth Olympic Center near Shibuya. First I guess I should explain what a group fellow is. To put it in simple terms, a Fellow is a leader of a hippo "family." On these Mondays the Group Fellow members and do a special meeting where they can get information from the LEX Headquarters and they can also listen to special presentations. I had the chance once to speak and introduce myself in front of all the fellows once. Today I am going to talk about a special guest that we had from South Korea, Mr. Min Byeong Gyu. He and his wife helped a lot with the hippo branch in South Korea so he came to Japan as a special guest and spoke to us. It was a bit difficult for me to understand because of the language gap but I did not need words or a language to understand his passion. When Mr. Min Byeong Gyu was younger he would perform and sing opera in front of many people. H...

Bubble - Omar Hello! I have been super busy here at LEX! I am having a great time and I have been participating in various activities as well as working in the office! A couple times a month there is an activity called Bubble. Bubble is a workshop where most of the "younger" members of Hippo Family Club come together and do Hippo activities. I say put younger in quotation marks because I think that all of the members are still "YOUNG"...some are just younger than others. ^_^ I had the chance to be a "Fellow" or leader of one of these meetings this week. And fortunately  for me this meetings theme was HALLOWEEN!!! So we strongly suggested that people dress up! I had a great time leading this group. I got the chance to lead the meeting with the other interns and another member of Bubble. We did various SADAS with a Halloween based theme. We also played Lotteria (Mexican version of Bingo). One of the normal Leaders of Bubble named Gori made the Lotter...

(Omar) Hello! Hey everyone! My name is　Ivan Omar Olivas-Diaz, but everyone knows me as Omar Diaz. I am from South Haven, Michigan. South Haven is a small yet beautiful town located on Lake Michigan. It is a great place to live in the summer because all the surrounding lakes, and beaches. So everyone can get to know me a little bit, I will share some information about myself. I am currently 23 years old and I attend Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am a double bachelors degree student, studying Marketing and Japanese with a minor in Asian studies. I have a variety of hobbies such as music (guitar, piano, and listening to music), sports (soccer, tennis), and I love interacting with people. When I am not at school or working I am always with friends. Ice cream is my favorite food, and I my favorite animal is probably red pandas. That information is probably irrelevant. I come from a family of 5 (including myself). I have four older siblings; two sisters an...