Sean's leaving in a couple of weeks and it's amazing how this has made us so much more aware of and appreciative of our time together. Since there were no classes on Friday due to an undergraduate student retreat, we planned to spend an entire day enjoying the city and each other. It felt like one perfect day and so far it's been my most favorite day in Tokyo since I arrived.


We lucked out with the weather - it was sunny and clear with temps in the 70s - and decided to spend the morning hiking up Mount Takao. This small mountain is just about an hour outside of the city and can be reached easily by train. It's a pretty touristy and famous mountain but also has some more off-the-beaten-track trails to take to the top as well.  We packed some snacks and a change of clothes for the second half of the day and headed to the trailhead.



Hiking was beautiful and our trail took us up alongside a mountain stream with plenty of waterfalls. When we got to the top we had great views of the city and also of Mount Fuji in the distance. We enjoyed a sushi picnic lunch with beers and people-watched tourists and hordes of school children on class trips. We took the paved, touristy trail down so we could visit some of the temples and monkey park and then ended up taking the chair lift the rest of the way so we could save time and get on to the next adventure.



Back at our train station we changed clothes and headed to Shibuya in downtown Tokyo where we hung out at Cookie Time, one of my favorite restaurants from New Zealand. This had recently opened in Tokyo and we enjoyed New Zealand coffee, cold milk on draft and fresh cookies. It was a delicious stop and fun to reminisce about our time with the Kiwis.  After that, we headed to a few specialty shops in Harajuku nearby as Sean wanted to pick up some gifts to take home. We had fun looking at sake sets, sushi magnets and bonsai growing kits. Tokyo does not lack for souvenirs in the least.



Conveniently, we were nearby to the next stop of the day, a lecture at the United Nations University where the Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, was giving a talk on the potential for soft power diplomacy in peace building and conflict prevention. One of the bonus of attending the talks was that they always serve fancy drinks and snacks for free after - delicious!

We finished up our one perfect day at an opening of a new craft beer market with Sean's ultimate frisbee friends. I haven't spent much time with them at all and it was nice to get to know them and hear about their upcoming beach tournament (where Sean currently is now).



This year, we'll be apart from each other on our anniversary (5 years!) but we already know what we want to do in September to celebrate it belatedly - a guided climb up Mount Fuji - I can't wait!

I am really enjoying Japanese III this term. There are ten students in my class and I adore my teachers. One of them is older and she is a little spacey but she brings the funniest and most random visual aids to class for us to practice with. She is very sweet and when I have my individual tutorials with her it feels like I'm talking with my grandma.  The other teacher is probably younger than I am and I enjoy her because her language teaching methods are completely American. She did her graduate education in the U.S. and has been teaching Japanese at Oberlin College the last two years. In her classes, there are a lot of games, pair work and conversation - it's great!

One of the fascinating things about having twelve hours of intensive language classes a week with native teachers is that you get to know their weird quirks and also lots of curiosities of the culture that just emerge naturally. On Friday we had to give speeches and all of us were very nervous. One of our teachers told us that a common solution is to imagine that all of our classmates in the audience were vegetables. "There's a carrot, he's a giant radish, behind him is a sweet potato . . " and so on. It was hilarious, especially hearing her try to explain this concept in Japanese.

One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the unwavering focus on the quest for perfection. I can't give the class all of the time I need to in order to excel, but I'm still enjoying it and learning a lot. This flabbergasts my teachers who get miffed when I make careless mistakes and can't understand why I wasn't able to completely memorize a difficult speech. It also explains why we get sad faces on quizzes if we miss a point or two.  Frankly, I was elated that I received 14/15, but that's still not quite good enough. Being immersed in the Japanese grading system is an entire experience in and of itself.

Thursday was a big day for me and Sean as we both finalized our summer plans that have been in the works for a long time. I had my last interview at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and was granted temporary security clearance to intern at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. I'll be working in the Public Affairs department mainly with language and culture education and international exchange programs. I'll be there from right after spring term ends at ICU (June 24) until right before the beginning of fall term (September 6). I'm beyond excited and relieved that things have fallen into place and now it's time to start a whole new set of hurdles such as obtaining a visa, finding accommodation and searching for flights.



Sean received his official contract to work for Adventure Treks this summer and was assigned to work with the "Colorado Explorer" program from the middle of June to the middle of August. He will be working with 7th and 8th graders hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, mountain biking and climbing near Salida, rafting the Poudre and Arkansas Rivers and making summit attempts on Flattop Mountain. He will do three separate trips with twenty different teenagers each time.  It's a dream summer job for him and it seems all he does lately is look at his packing list to make sure he has everything he needs.



Sean leaves on the last day of May and I'm dreading it. One might assume that it gets easier to spend time apart but for us it actually seems to be getting harder. Concerning proximity, our marriage has been one extreme or the other. Tokyo in June without Sean is going to be awful because we do everything together. We live in a tiny apartment the size of a shoebox, we run together in the mornings, eat practically every meal together and enjoy date nights on the weekend. He takes care of me listens to me and supports me when I feel anxious and stressed out. Being without him for June, July and August is not going to be fun or easy. The one thing that helps both of us is the busyness and newness of a different experience in the summer which also makes the time go fast.



To celebrate finalizing our summer plans we hung out at a craft beer market nearby and I enjoyed a delicious sparkling mango beer. It will be fun writing about what we learn this summer and I'm looking forward to actually seeing some pictures from Sean as this year he actually has his own camera.  I'll keep you posted for the both of us.  Thanks for reading!

The newsletter is almost done and the format is being sent to the graphic designer today - I can't wait to see the finished product!  Here's one more article that I wrote on our mediation training that we had right before spring term started.