Tokyo Spring

It's extremely difficult to come to the understanding that my spring holiday will be over in just about a week and a half.  The past two months have gone by uncomfortably fast and to think..I only have four months left.  I remember thinking a few months back how I still have seven..six months left..now it's down to four.  After realizing how quickly time does fly by, I've made it my goal to do as much traveling as possible with the little available time I have left.

Fushimi Inari-taisha

Kinkakuji (Golden Temple)

In February I did quite a bit of traveling from Tokyo to Osaka then up to visit my relatives in Ibaraki prefecture.  I had the opportunity to visit Kansai which is the southwest section of Japan mainland (Honshu).  This area is a very popular tourist area, as it has Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and Kobe - each claiming fame to various things.  During this weekend, I was able to connect with a long-time family-friend and be a tourist (which feels pretty great after not being one for so long!).  I got to see some of the famous sites which many people identify as being "Japan", which is always a pretty cool thing to say "I've been there!". 

Up close and personal in the Nara Deer Park

After visiting Kansai, I made my way up to Ibaraki prefecture for another long weekend to visit my relatives and go snowboarding for two days.  My aunt and cousin drove me up to Fukushima prefecture for our skiing/boarding trip and it was just amazing.  The mountains are so beautiful covered in snow and the powder is like nothing else I've ever experienced (though I haven't experienced too much).  My cousin and I are both fairly new to boarding, so it was nice to be able to go down the runs together, learning, falling (quite a few times), and laughing.

Yoyogi Park

March has basically been a working month for me..although I initially started as a preschool teacher, I have been a substitute teacher for many classes due to the regular teachers taking holidays and days-off.  It's been a busy work month, but fun and interesting.  It's always nice to be able to learn the different aspects of any organization you work for, so I'm glad I got to dabble a little bit in other types of English classes and gaining some other skills necessary for those classes.  This Thursday was my last day of preschool and it was a bittersweet day.  I taught the children in Thursday preschool since I started in January, so they are the students I was most attached to.  The age that these students are at is just an amazing time for growth and development - they are giant sponges that soak up everything around them and it has been great to see them grow and learn in the past couple months.

Meguro River

 Spring finally came to Japan about a week and a half ago when all of the sakura trees came in to bloom.  Japan has always been well-known for it sakura and it definitely lives up to its fame!  It's a beautiful sight to see hundreds of sakura all together in bloom.  Most are a pale, pink color but a few are a white and even fewer are a brilliant, hot-pink flower.  The beauty, unfortunately, is short-lived, as the blossoms only last for about two weeks.  Basically, once a majority of the trees are in bloom, thousands of Japanese flock to the sakura-filled-parks to do hanami.  They have a tarp or blanket set on the ground, usually accompanied with some beers or umeshu and enjoy the beauty of the sakura with friends and family.  I was fortunate enough to have this experience with my friends last weekend and it was so relaxing to be surrounded by the sakura while drinking some ume shu.

My spring semester begins on April 8th and goes until the end of July and sadly, I don't have many holidays in that time to do much traveling and sightseeing, which is why I've taken the opportunity of going to Okinawa the first week of April (1st through the 6th).  Okinawa is the southernmost island of Japan and has a very unique culture and history, especially in regards to mainland Japan.  It's a subtropical climate, so I'm very much looking forward to spending a few days sitting out on the beach and getting a pre-summer tan.