Tis the Season

... to write cards, to do shopping, to hang lights, to go to parties... etc. You know how Christmas is. But I'm pretty excited as I drive at night and see houses decorated for the season.

During the past few weeks, I've been looking at various things concerning Japan-- including the budget. As it turns out, we believe that a budget of $2200 will be more viable, and will enable me to pay everything from rent to schooling and pay bills like social security and buy a ticket home every once in a while.

I'm very excited about that, because while we heard from so many that the budget would be more expensive, we believe that this will be a good budget. Should I be lacking in funds, after the first year, I can teach some English classes on the side to make a bit of extra dough. :)

So, I'm excited, because that's not that far away!!

We're setting the date around March to head over there. That will give me a few weeks before I start Japanese classes, so I can figure out where I am. Kinda seems crazy when I think about it.

However, I'm still getting my head start while I'm here, studying Japanese. We've been working on things like counting in Japanese. There's so many ways to count! I know that seems crazy, because we count- one apple, two apples, three apples, etc. In Japanese, you add a suffix for the type of thing that you're counting-- thin, flat objects; time counting, and several other. We've done about 2 or 3 ways of counting, and learning the different patterns for each counting way.

Also, in the way of counting-- it's kinda crazy-- but, they change counting every 4 digits, not every three like we do. For instance, to say forty thousand, you say basically 4- 10 thousands. I'm not going to go too far into it, because right now, I can do it, but if I think too much about it, I think I may lose it. So, suffice it to say that this is harder than when I learned counting in kindergarten.

Well, I still have a few things to do. I've been on a roll getting things accomplished and I'd like to stick with it.

Talk to you later!

OH! PS- check this out! I learned how to get Japanese fonts on my computer last night! こんぼんわ．