nikavia

Today I was awoke by the sound of an enthusiastic dog, who, thus far has not clawed Yuka to death. I am so proud of her. Yuka joined my dad on the walk with the dogs, giving me a good 20 minutes to fall back asleep before they returned and I had to wake up because it I really hard to sleep in the living room of my house… especially with a Holly. Today was pretty easy going in the morning. Lots of dad showing Yuka things and us arguing about what to do on the trip. Yuka is a saint I swear. Each hour I notice an improvement in her English. I have started to remember small bits of Japanese and learn things. For example, one thing I learned yesterday is that the translation of the Japanese word for tornado is “Dragon Roll”, which is just awesome. I also downloaded the character pack for my laptop finally. Yuka pulled out these neat cute little speakers for her ipod. They were pink and they folded up into this little cylinder but when you opened it, it opened up into a perfectly balanced tripod with good surround sound. Anyway she wanted to look something up on yahoo!Japan so I downloaded the character pack and she got to use my laptop. I am so happy!

Yuka made lunch for us too. I missed Soba. Have I mentioned how much I miss Soba? It was one of my favorite foods in Japan. Noodles and sauce and dipping and chopsticks and I miss Soba. I need to find it here and make it I think.

Anyway, later that day while my sister was at her final driving hour, we went to target and to an oriental market place to look for a rice cooker. The thing is tiny but OMG RICE SOON! I was excited!

This evening we went to Flying Star. I ate cheese cake. It was wonderful. For all the fact that flying star is horrendously overpriced and very crowded, they have damn good cheesecake and ice cream.

When we came back, we talked about Yuka’s job. She is working as an art teacher at a middle school. She started just after we left last time I think. This will be her third school she has worked at. The principal at the first school told her to look around first before deciding on anything final. While a full job would mean better pay, she won’t have as much freedom and vacation. Anyway she is also substituting as well at this school. She seems to like it but says it is difficult. The school she is at had 6 classes per grade, wach with 38 students. The school is called Nishidai, the other schools she worked at were Sakura Michi and Izumi, both of which had smaller classes. She has to grade like ten projects per kid a semester. I do not envy her in that regard, but she is teaching what she loves so I am kinda jealous.

She also works as some kind of bus moniter for foreign embassy kids. So she gets to read the names of Saudi Princes and listen to their Ipods on occasion. They like her a lot. She is sooo sweet!

After that everyone went to bed. Yuka had taken a nap that afternoon and I am a night owl so we were both up and got to talking. She game me a list of Manga that is popular in Japan right now with the youth, as well as clicked on some neat things on yahoo!Japan that I am going to go back later and save to my bookmarks. The mangas are:

Boys Over Flowers (popular enough to be a TV Drama, VIZ publishers)

Nana (still popular after 2 years it would seem. Haha I got it before it was cool! VIZ publishers)

Red River (Yuka likes this series so I think I will have to track down volume one and check it out, published by VIZ)

Beck (Yuka’s friend likes this one, since it is a band drama. Tokyopop)

Nodame Cantabile (This is another music drama. Yuka likes this one too. Published by Del Rey)

Kimi Ni Todoke (not published yet as far as I can find)

Kare Kano (Really popular in Japan, Tokyopop)

And maybe a few more. But I will be watching that site now. I will be ahead of the curve once again damnit. We talked about SDK, and she laughed at me because I like a boy’s manga. I laughed to because really, most of my manga is shonen. But anyway, we then moved onto music. We both find Dir en Grey to be a bit terrifying, and I told her how they came here at one point. In Japan right now, someone called GReeeeN is really popular. I listened to a clip and I like it. We then talked American Music and discovered that we both like Maroon 5. I think I am going to have to burn a whole bunch of CDs for her before she leaves.

Eventually though, I started to get tired (at around 1) and we are now calling it quits for the night. I am so excited to show her the Manga collection at the mall! Tomorrow, we are getting up bright and early to go to Bandelier.
Laters
Nyssa
Manga Count: 499
Comic Book Count: 12
Word Count: