GUYS! i am almost done!
it's been a little while since i've made a blog post, but i just recently paid for all of my school for a year and 6 months of my apartment! after that, my school sent me my certificate of eligibility from japan's immigraton, and then i immediately went all the way to nashville TN to apply for my visa. that was quite a day. we didn't want to stay the night (hotels can be expensive!) so it was a whole trip from 7am-10pm lol. anyways my visa is going to be ready soon and i'll be going back to pick it up!
i only have a little under a MONTH until i leave and i'm totally not ready. i am extremely excited, but i'm a total mess just trying to pack up all of my things or put stuff into storage and everything. it's a lot...
i'm just ready to go! i just have to pick up my passport (that will have my student visa inside!!) and then i leave for japan! that's it! this entire journey has felt extremely complicated but to be honest, now that i'm at the end (or beginning?!) it feels like it was a breeze
other than that, i've just been trying to hang out with family and friends as much as i can. i actually went to disney world with my family for NINE WHOLE DAYS! it was a lot. we were all extremely exhausted afterwards but it was so much fun! we got to do a lot of stuff that we usually don't have time for (like go to all the shows or slow rides that we usually skip). we also went to some amazing restaurants. we had dinner at takumi-tei one night, and i actually became friends with our server! she is SO sweet and i had a lot of fun talking to her (sometimes with my very broken japanese). she's coming back to japan around the same time that i'm moving, so maybe i'll get to meet up with her someday!
i also braved up and talked to some japanese people that were sitting behind me as we were waiting for the fantasmic fireworks show. i heard them speaking japanese so i was just like OK LETS DO THIS and i turned around and talked to them in my, again, very broken japanese. it was a little hard to communicate since my vocabulary is so small, but we did have a nice, casual conversation! they wished me good luck with my move, they were very kind. they didn't know any english so it was definitely good practice for me haha, but i know they were a bit confused when i was trying to figure out what to say
i ate at my very first michelin star restaurant. it was actually insane. i thought all the people were very nice but oh my gosh i will never be able to be an actual rich person because it was kind of creepy. like some of the staff followed you around to help you to the bathroom, even if you know where it is and have been multiple times, and they follow you back to your seat and even get the chair for you (to be fair, the chair was pretty heavy and difficult to move on their carpeted floor). but oh my gosh the food was amazing and really cool! i don't think i've been to a heavily gastronomic restaurant. i mean takumi-tei is kind of like that actually, but this was on another level. it was just so interesting! they also had expensive water?! i didn't even know that kind of thing existed. they had a $100 bottle of water on the menu?!?!! i just had a nordic water that was like $17 for a bottle. i'm not the craziest about my "water flavors" but i do genuinely think the water was so crisp and nice. i'm okay with my usual free or cheap water though lol
i think right before i went to nashville, i had a zoom interview with my school in japan! it was a part of my placement test. i think i did a decent job! i understood every question she asked (except for two where there was only one word in each question that i didn't understand), and i was able to answer most questions in japanese. sometimes i had to do some pretty broken japanese, and sometimes i did say a couple words in english because i didn't know the vocabulary. but i never really said a full sentance in english! it was mainly japanese. i'm pretty proud of myself hehe
anyways! i could probably keep talking about all the stuff i've done in the past month, but i pretty much wrapped up the main parts that i've been excited about. gotta log off now! i have so much packing to do (；´∀｀)