This week's summary....

Hey-ya peeps,

Tis the end of Sunday and the start of a brand new week. Though I arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday, I will consider this the end of the week.

With that being said.....How to sum up the week?....

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Tiring. Now don't get me wrong! It has been an extremely fun week, but it was very tiring. In fact, I crashed on my bed last night at about 10pm without prepping for bed and didn't get up 'til around 4am this morn.

This week was tiring for two reasons: 1) is that we had to walk everywhere during the humid heat (fine, I cheated and spliced two reasons together). In California, we do not walk far from our homes. In Southern California, we rarely have this awful condition called humidity. So to actually have to walk for miles just to get food or necessities and be in a humid climate, it wears down one's unadjusted body.....

Now for the second reason. This next reason for being tired is because of the force of one's emotions. Regardless of our awareness, our emotions are extremely powerful. So for me, who has lived at home for my entire life, being away from home and being in Japan (my second home) triggers some deep emotions. There is a freedom that comes from being away from home, but fear that is surfaced as well. This fear is more from my financially limitations, but also from now having to deal with life's hiccups all by my little self.

Then, there is the excitement of the trip. Not only I am excited about living in Japan for an entire year, but also about experiencing seasonal Japan, seeing and catching up with my old friends here, developing my language skills, and having the opportunity to deepen my education in Japanese history and culture. God has truly blessed me with such a wonderful experience. But, on the flip side is that when the "honeymoon" feeling of excitement wears off, homesickness will set in. Again, another fear. I remember having my friends' parents taking me home or letting me call home when I got homesick as a child. And my friends only lived at most four miles or so away from me. Now I am thousands of miles away from my family and at least 15 hours ahead of them (give or take Day Light Savings). So all my childhood fears of homesickness have arisen. Not to say I am homesick yet, which I most definitely am not...yet. But knowing that there will be a day in the near future that I will be homesick can cause some stress.

So, why do I mention all of the this? Well, my life, my experiences, and my emotions are all tools to teach. I feel that by expressing my initial fears, I can comfort those in the future who are considering study abroad by letting them know that I have come to Japan with fears and other powerful emotions. Also, I can share with those who have never had the opportunity to study abroad what is going on in the head of a study-abroader. Is it scary to share such thoughts? Yeah, it is. I don't want my family and friends to worry, but it is important to know your own emotional state and express it to another person, even if that other "person" is the internet. We as humans will do anything to make ourselves feel "better", even burying our own feelings. But those feelings will rear their ugly heads in ways and at times that we not only least expect it, but also at the worst moments.

So if you are going to take anything away from this post, then remember to explore your emotional state regularly and express how you feel to someone that you trust who will listen to you. We all go through rough patches, but we can make it harder by letting our emotions run amuck.

Well, now that we are done with our Bikky sermon of the day, now I will quickly go through the highlights of my week:

1) Arriving in Tokyo
2) Moving in to the dorms at Hoshien
3) Finding the Calpis Soda (from the same line of Calpico drinks) and Bikkle (the yogurt drink from which I got my name...thanks to a friend from my Tokyo missions trip a couple of years ago)
4) Going to church and seeing familiar faces
5)Being able to travel around Tokyo on my own and with friends.

Before I go, let me give you a tip for traveling in Japan. When you are taking the railways in at least Tokyo, many of the large stations have maps showing the destination and stops for each train route. These are often both English and Japanese. In the off chance that you are not in a big station, you can peek inside the train and check for the electronic displays that are above each door in the train. Usually in the small stations, it seems like you have time to pop into the train to check the display, then pop out if you're on the wrong train. But, if you do not have time to check or in your moment of nativity and unfamiliarity with Japan, do not worry. Just jump off the train at the next stop. Each train is paired with another going in the opposite direction. So you can just use another train to get back to square one and try again. Also, in Japan, you pay based on the distance between your starting town and your destination, not by how many trains it takes you to get there (at least for the Japan Railway trains). As long as you do not leave the station, you can take as many train as necessary while paying a base price traveling from Point A and Point B. :D

Wow! It's raining right now (I love the rain!) and it has been thundering off and on for the last few days. Amazing! I can actually experience seasons!

Anyway, that is all for my weekend post (geez, that's a lot of writing!!!)

Until next time, Later Peeps!