Life at home in Edogawa-ku This is where I live now, in Edogawa-ku, with my second host family. They are a lot of fun! View from our apartment building View from the train station Sometimes in the evening I watch T.V. with my host mom. One of the shows she likes to watch is CSI (dubbed in Japanese, so it's always a challenge for me to figure out how they solve everything), which is funny because my mom in Wisconsin also loves that show and we used to watch it together a lot. When I went to Mexico, my host mom Martha, also liked CSI and we would watch it together in Spanish. It's funny the things you find that are the same all over the world! My host dad is a manager for a big Japanese department store (and one of his hobbies is running marathons!) He works late a lot of the time, but when he comes home everyone talks and when he has days off, everyone does things together, like attend different Hippo events. Sometimes he brings little gifts home with him too. ...

April Flowers The month of April is a really beautiful time in Japan, and though I'd seen pictures of the famous sakura blossoms before, it is really amazing to be able to experience it in person. They are everywhere! When you see them from afar it almost looks like they are covered in snow, and sometimes when the wind blows it creates a shower of petals. A hanami with the local Friends Group and some Hippo members with a great view of Tokyo Sky Tree In Japan, April is the beginning of the new year cycle for schools, universities, and hiring within companies, so the sakura blossoms mark the beginning of spring and a fresh start for the new year. While Japan's sakura trees are famous all over the world, they are definitely not overlooked within Japan.  When they bloom, it's almost like it's own holiday. In the stores and restaurants you can find all sorts of different pink colored foods and sakura flavored sweets to celebrate the season, and there i...

The Month of March & How to Count Rabbits Wow, it's already April, which means March came and went so quickly! And since I haven't updated the blog as much as I should have to include all the things I've done this last month (partly because I've been working on this report and the things in it), here it is: my March report.   And for those of you who can't read Japanese, here's brief overview of what I've been doing recently: This month I've attended lots of Hippo events (workshops, group sharing sessions, international learning classes at elementary schools, orientation camps for future exchange students, etc.) At one of the workshops I was one of the main speakers and gave a 15 minute presentation about my experience traveling internationally and working with 4-H and LEX, all in Japanese! My host mom helped me a lot to prepare and practice beforehand, which made me feel a lot more confident :) The photo is from one of the internat...

Mi papa de México en Japón! This last week was exciting because I got to see Javier, my host dad from Mexico again! He's one of the coordinators of LEX México so he came to Tokyo last week for work and vacation, and it was really nice to see him. Almost two years ago, I went to México as an LEX intern for 3 months, and stayed with Javier's family in Mexico City. It was a great experience, and one of the main reasons I decided to apply for the LEX internship in Japan. I did a lot of the same things as an intern in Mexico as I do here in the office like help check documents and work with the exchange groups, and of course had the opportunity to live and work in an environment where I was always surrounded by and communicating in Spanish. Though my experiences as an LEX intern in Mexico and Japan have been different in some aspects, one of the things that has always been the same is the people. All the LEX members I have met in both Mexico and Japan have corazones grandes ...

Move to My Second Host Family Hi everyone! さしぶり！Sorry it's been awhile since I've update this last. I've been meaning to do it for awhile, but have been busy in the last month, and had been putting it off. So here is a bit of an update since my last post. I moved to my second host family at the end of February after five months with my first host family. But it was nice because before I moved I had a chance to do lots of things with my first host family like to out to dinner and karaoke together before I had to say goodbye. One of the members of our Hippo club, Ei-chan, is a sushi chef and owns his own restaurant, so one night my host family and I went there for dinner. The food was great and we even got a behind the scenes tour (or more appropriately, behind the counter, I suppose). It was really fun! The last day with my family, they had a farewell party for me in their apartment and lots of Hippo members and other friends and neighbors came to say goodbye. It r...

Writing in 日本語 As part of my internship, every month I write a report, along with the other interns and high school exchange students, sharing about my experiences that month with my host family, at work, and about progress in Japanese.  This month I decided to challenge myself to write it all in Japanese. It took me two full days to complete, and I'm sure it's far from perfect, but I did it! And everyone can even understand what I was trying to say :) A lot of the time I still feel really lost during conversations or presentations in Japanese and I feel like there is so much I can't understand or communicate, but when I look at what I'm able to write four months after arriving in Japan without every having studied the language at all, I realize that I have learned a lot.  Being able to read and write in Japanese is like unlocking a secret code, which is pretty much how it feels like as I'm trying to figure out what different characters ...

What's Your Blood Type? Discovery of the day: It turns out that having a 'type A personality' or 'type B personality' has an entirely different meaning in Japan. The other day while having lunch with some co-workers in the office, the main topic of a half-hour long conversation was blood type. Specifically which people had which blood type. I understand enough Japanese to know that this is what was being discussed but not quite enough to understand everything that was being said, and definitely not enough to understand why this was so funny and amusing to everyone. Someone asked me what my blood type was. "O negative," I replied, which was met with an animated mixed chorus of "Oooooooh," "Mmmmmm" and "Ahhhhh". Well, it is the universal donor type, I thought. I suppose that's relatively impressive? Then they asked what type my family members were. "Uhh...I have no idea." It's not like I've ever had...