Hey Peeps!
Happy 4th of July! This week has marked my last month in Japan! I go climbing in two days. A bunch of my friends and I are climbing Mt. Fuji. It will be a two day-one night trip that includes a hot springs bath when we make it back down the mountain. Then, will be the race to send everything home and wrap up school and my time in Japan. So much to do, so little time! All the while, I am still working on my manga for that manga competition I've mentioned. This manga is going slowly right now, just because I still have a lot to do for school and outside of school. I am still sketching and inking pages (drawing the outlines of the characters and such), but I am now moving towards fully illustrating the pages, meaning: I am adding the shadows and "gray" colors to it. Mind you, Japanese comics are black/white/grey, not full color like American comic books. I can finish the majority of a page's illustration in about 2 hrs, where the sketching and inking the lines take a total of about 6-8 hrs...so getting most of the pages sketched out and inked before leaving Japan is my goal.
Anyhoo, this month I have friends (a college friend and her younger brother) coming from the States with whom I will be traveling for a few days at the end of my time. Then, I have friends from my 2010 missions team here. In fact, my entire sub-team from that missions trip is here right now in Japan. Two of them live here currently, while the other member flew in recently to visit and to do job interviews and such for after graduation. So, of course, we're trying to get a sub-team reunion going. I got to grab dinner and a cafe drink (aka coffee/tea) tonight with the one whose recently returned. That was totally cool!
Welp, it's time for me to start heading for bed...good night! Enjoy our nation's b-day today! And remember the fallen who have impacted our nation so much! Please, do reflect on the freedoms we have protected for so many years and think hard about the current issues of today and their implications for tomorrow! We are at a major turning point in our nation's history, are you sure that we are protecting our historical freedoms or abandoning them for selfish reasons? That's for you to decide, but please consider the arguments from all angles, because we will impact our children's/grandchildren's/great-grandchildren's/family's futures by our decisions of today!
Until then, later peeps!
