Iwata!

My boyfriend and I got our placements Sunday evening. Yay! My boyfriend will be teaching in Hamamatsu and I'll be teaching in Iwata, which is east of Hamamtsu.

I'm super excited about this location! It's on the Tokaido line so we have easy access to Tokyo and Kyoto. I'm further from Tokyo this time, but I can get there in the same amount of time because it's a more direct route. Yay!

Hamamatsu has about 800,000 people and Iwata has about 160,000.

We both have driving positions. It should be interesting to drive on the left side of the road!




I decided to change my blog and I'm happy with how it looks now. :) I used a template and I still have a little bit of work to do, but I need to figure out how to make some of the changes. But it's already a big improvement!

I'm even more excited now that I know our placements. I want to go to Japan now!

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Places to Visit

It's just a little over two months until I move back to Japan!!! I'm getting excited! :) I have already started a packing list. I have a lot more that I want to take with me this time. Hopefully it will all fit in my suitcases. :P

I have also been making a list of places I want to visit. I'm sure I'll add much more to this list, but hopefully I will also check off a lot of places! I have links about most of these places so if you click on the names you can see blogs or websites about these places! :)



Various Cities and Places and Such

 
 
Torii, pretty water, deer... yay!


 

 
 
My friend Lauren and I though about visiting Nikko when she came to Japan, but we never did. I hope to eventually make it there though.



 
The forest looks so... MAGICAL!!!!



 
So weird looking!



 
Photos: Japan Guide
 
 

 

 
It would probably be a bad idea to pay so much to get into Sanrio Puroland when all I would want to do in there is spend more money on super awesome cuteness. Ahhhh! Everything looks so cute! Maybe I'll just have to settle for going back to Hello Kitty's Kawaii Paradise in Odaiba. Maybe this time I'll eat pancakes there. :)


I like miniature stuff and this place looks interesting. I can see a lot of great photo opportunities!


 
Photo: Japanican
 Sooooooo pink! Soooooo pretty!

Osaka

Universal Studios

 


 
 
Umeda Sky Building

 


Kyoto


 


Photo: Japan Guide
 




Tokyo (My Favorite!)


 I want to dress up in a Lolita dress and eat there! :)
 
 

Photo: Excel Air
 
This would be soooo pretty at night.
 
 

Photo: Sushi Cat
 They have a cat themed haunted house? Yeah... I totally need to go.
 
 

Photo: Jamie
It's a cake buffet! And it's full of rainbow happiness! :)
 
 

 
Photos: Japan Guide
I thought the obsession with Tokyo Sky Tree before it was even finished (soooo much merchandise, even puzzles with images of it under construction) was a bit annoying, but now I kinda want to go. There are shops there though and I like shopping.
 
 
 
It's a Japanese arts and crafts festival. I hope I have the chance to go.
 
 

Photo: Sushi Cat
 I don't even like hard candy very much, but these are just too cute!
 
 
 
Whoah. This store is like my childhood. In these pictures I found several toys I had as a kid including a Magic Nursery Pet and a game called Pigtails and Ponytails. I see a random Barbie board game there. I have a board game called Barbie We Girls Can Do Anything and it was terrible. I didn't even like it as a kid. I tried changing the rules to make it fun and I never succeeded. It was boring. I still have it just because it's funny. Maybe I'll take it with me and try and sell it to this store. Ok, not really, but it would be funny.



This store looks pretty awesome! I love old video games.
 
 
 
 

 
Photo: Sushi Cat
 


 I went to Liz Lisa a couple times and loved there stuff but never bought anything. Kinda expensive... but it's so cute! Maybe I'll save a bit and go on a special trip there sometime. :) They also have a home store that I didn't know about.


 
Photo: Sushi Cat
 
 


 
Random Stuff to Do




Photo: Architizer
 Hopefully I'll have better luck than when I went to Nekobukuro in Tokyu Hands. The cats there all ran from me or tried to bite me. Haha.
 
 
Maid Café

 

eat a cute parfait

 
How did I never get around to doing this last time?!!?
 
 
see a Japanese garden in the snow
 
 
Oooooh! This is sooooo pretty!





So many places I want to go!!! Hopefully I'll get to visit most of them! :)

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My Scrapbook

When I got back from Japan, I started making a scrapbook of my time in Japan. I decided to organize my photos by location or theme instead of chronologically. It took a long time to complete (I finally finished it in January or February of this year). I couldn’t fit it all in one book so there are two volumes. Here are some pictures of a few of the pages.



I put many of the awesomely cute stickers I bought in Japan to good use!

I marked the cities I visited on the map and also made those prefectures slightly darker. Hopefully I’ll be able to add many more dots to that map when I go back! :)

I highlighted the areas of Tokyo I visited.

I miss Japanese karoke and arcades so much!!!

This was one of the first scrapbook pages I planned on making. I even saved the wrappers of the Kit Kats I bought my first week in Japan.

Arashi was everywhere so they deserved their own page, lol.
These scrapbooks took a while to make, but they were worth it. It’s nice to have tons of pics on my computer and have my blog, but I like having something physical to flip through.

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