I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say about school. It’s still going on, we’re trucking through at the same pace we’ve been going, it’s still not boring.

Fukumoto-sensei’s replacement, Hosoi-sensei, turns out to be a pretty cool person. She lived in Italy for a long time and is fluent in Italian. It doesn’t matter a whole lot in the long run, she only teaches on Thursdays and there are just three more Thursdays left in the semester(!). So this upcoming week is my second to last full week of classes. The final exam falls on the following Friday, with that week’s Monday through Wednesday being public holidays.

On Friday we had the much-anticipated bus trip to Chiba prefecture. We went to Shimizu park, which has three “adventure courses” set up. It’s like an obstacle course, where you go from station to station and give yourself points based on how well you do. I had a great time, because when someone says “obstacle course” I get excited. It seemed like I was one of the only people in my class who was actually excited about it. Many of the girls especially were pretty squeamish about physical activity, and spent most of the time at the park sitting around the lunch tables and wishing they were elsewhere. I thought it was cool though, and there was one section that was set up above a lake. Most of the stations had the danger of falling in the water as a key attraction point, and many people (including Encaron) did.

From Shimizu park, we then drove to a grape farm where we had all-you-can-eat grapes. I sure talk about grapes a lot in my blog, but they sort of just keep popping up randomly. These grapes were far better than even the best that I bought from stores over here. We ate heartily, but didn’t make much of a dent in the grapes at the farm. I bought two bunches for 700 yen to take home.

On Saturday, we had our last culture class, and I wouldn’t say they saved the best for last. The topic was Japanese business, and it was every bit as boring as it sounds. It was also just half a day, so there was no tour associated with it. At 12:00 we all just went home.

This weekend I’ve been doing a few things: working on my senior project(s), studying for a test on Monday, and relaxing. Sorry that this entry isn’t terrible exciting. On September 11th I have an Oral exam, on the 13th we have a “Special Class” that has yet to be explained, and then there’s the Final Exam on the 25th. I have tickets for the Ghibli museum again for the 27th, and Tanaka-san told me that I would likely move into my new housing at the beginning of the week of the 28th. 66 days and I have 137 days left. In other words, in about two days I’ll hit the 1/3rd mark.

I uploaded some more pictures to my Flickr page.