I was telling Mori-san (my Rotary host counselor) that I had seen Saotome Taichi’s Japanese dance performance and that I wished I could wear a pretty kimono too. XD
Mori-san said that his mom was a Japanese dance teacher and that she had a lot of kimonos at home. He got permission from his mom, so on Sunday, March 16th I visited his mom’s house! Mori-san’s mom was in a kimono. I was a bit confused about what to call her, and Mori-san said it would be good to call her “obaachan” (“Granny”). I also met with Mori-san’s sister and his nephew and niece!

After giving omiyage, etc. we sat around and talked and had tea and Takarazuka Hotel cakes. Mori-san’s relatives said that they were relieved that they didn’t have to talk to me in English at all. (^_^) They also said that I looked young, which was nice because recently my high school friend IM’d me and told me that I looked old in all my pictures. LOL. Everyone was just really nice and hospitable!

Mori-san’s sister and mom and I then went to the Japanese dance room. Mori-san’s mom took out a few kimonos and we picked among them. Mori’s mom helped me into the kimonos, which takes quite a long time compared to Western clothes. We then took many pictures in different locations in the house and with different members of the family. Everyone said I looked like a Japanese person and I was happy. :D I got to try on two different kimonos. Really grateful for that experience!!

I also looked through Obaachan’s Japanese dance photos and videos of her old performances. I really enjoyed that!

I also played a bit of Mozart on their piano. It was nice to play a little bit. I really miss piano since I haven’t gotten the chance to really practice in a many years.

After that, the whole family went out to have fugu! I was really excited since I’ve never had blowfish before!! Everything was really good and I took lots of pictures. I really enjoyed spending time with Mori-san and family! :D Thank you Mori-san!!

My semester at Handai (Osaka University) has started!! The start of the school year in Japan is April to coincide with the blooming of sakura. That’s something I just learned this week! I didn’t get a chance to write about Spring Break earlier, so I’ll make a quick summary now of all the fun stuff that happened! I’ll write a few entries on Spring Break. (^_^)

March 15. Rotary PSC party at Asahi Dry (beer hall) in Umeda. Many scholarship recipients attended, but I was the only Ambassadorial Scholar from America. GSE teams and scholars back in Osaka after studying abroad gave presentations. Some presentations included interesting slideshows!

Mori-san and I sat across from Rotarians from Minoh-City. They have club meetings close to where I live, so I’ll be visiting their club to give a speech some time in the near future. Ben, Cultural Scholar from Austria, was also at my table, but I couldn’t talk to him much since he was quite far away. Sadly, it was Ben’s last Rotary meeting, as his scholarship period was ending.

Several scholars and one or two Rotarians performed! There were classical piano and opera performances. Also, Ben is a professional musician and songwriter, so he wrote an original song for Rotary! He sang about his experiences and it was a great song with meaningful lyrics. For more of Ben’s music, please visit www.benshmusic.com. :D
( More about the party! )

Today I went hanami (flower-viewing) with friends from PSC (the Rotary Past Scholars' Club)! It was really fun! All the sakura (cherry blossoms) are in full-bloom now so we decided to go to the park near Osaka Castle to enjoy the flowers. Nakahara-san organized the whole thing and I really appreciated it!

I met up with Nakahara-san at Umeda Station, and we rode the train together to Osaka Castle and met up with Hebi in the station. The flowers in the park around the castle were really beautiful. There were a lot of people and the line to the ladies' room was really long!! There were a lot of food booths selling castellas and Osaka food. We all bought some food and met up with Nagira-san. We then headed over to the main park and Nakahara-san bought us all admission tickets. :) ( More Hanami! )

Hi everyone. I haven't written here in a long time. I'm sorry to everyone who has been waiting for a new entry in my blog. I've been on Spring Break, and a lot of fun stuff happened...but also my grandfather passed away during Spring Break. I haven't written in the blog since then, and I've also been really slow to respond to emails. I still went out with friends when I was invited, but sometimes I went home early and things like that. If you've written an email to me and I haven't responded yet, I apologize for the delay. I'm sad that I won't get to see my grandfather anymore, but I hope he is in a better place now. Actually, I believe that I will see him again some day. He is probably watching over me right now.

I realized that I really have to value everyone around me. My family and friends are really important to me, and I really want to make the most of my time with them. I would like to be a good daughter to my parents and to be a good person in general in order to honor my grandfather.

I'm grateful that I got to meet up with my grandfather last summer!

I'll try to catch up on all the great stuff that happened during Spring Break in my blog! There were many days that I just didn't feel like writing but I'm coming back to this journal! Thanks for reading!

Thanks to Nakahara-san, a friend through Rotary, I have a Kansai Museum Grotto pass. There are discount coupons and free admission tickets to some famous museums and tourist attractions in the Kansai area. I decided to be a tourist for a bit so I went to Kyoto yesterday! I went to the Kyoto National Museum. It was great. I’d like to do a lot more sightseeing this month, as I am on Spring Break right now. I really like looking at artwork and artifacts!! I was planning to see two or three museums in Kyoto, but as usual I took a long time looking at all the interesting displays in the museum and didn’t have time to go anywhere else. I was in the museum for about five hours, from 12 to 5.

Since Girls’ Day (Hinamatsuri) was March 3rd, there was a special display of dolls. I think I actually learned quite a bit. I saw different types of dolls like Gosho dolls and Tachibana dolls. There were three grand doll sets that were very impressive, in addition to displays of individual dolls from different times in Japanese history. It was interesting to see the doll set from the Meiji period. I had never seen a doll set in which the Emperor and Empress were dressed in Western-style, military outfits! ( More about Kyoto National Museum! )

March 2nd: For schoolwork, went to Kobe to observe the “Remember Kobe” counseling group for families of suicide victims. It’s a good place for people to share their feelings and get support from others going through similar experiences. No pictures were allowed, as everything has to be confidential. It was my third trip to that group.

I can share about myself, of course. In the past, I talked about my experiences and such, and people were very interested to hear about the situation in America and in American schools. This time, I talked about the suicide problem from the point of somebody going into the medical field. At some level, I can’t disagree with euthanasia or doctor-assisted self-death in some cases. I feel very conflicted about the issue whenever I read about it in the news or learn about it in school. As a doctor, of course I would never do anything illegal…but I also believe that a physician’s job is to ease pain and suffering, and to listen to the needs of the patient. Of course I am absolutely against suicide. We are losing too many people to this problem and there are things society can do. but in the case of a terminally-ill patient in severe pain, with no hope of getting better….I just don’t know anymore! This is probably a problem I will have to think about later in my career…I wonder how laws in America surrounding this problem will have evolved by then. ( And there was a symposium on March 9th! )

This was a little while ago, but earlier this month, on March 1st, I went to the Scholars’ orientation for Osaka Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars studying abroad next year. Ben (Cultural Ambassadorial Scholar from Austria) and I were both invited to attend. I met up with my friend Hebi (outbound scholar for Scotland) on the train to Umeda and we went to the orientation together. We got there a little early so we went to a coffee shop upstairs with two Rotarians and hung out for a bit. It was really different from the orientation I went to in San Jose last year! I’m glad I got to experience the orientation for Japanese Scholars.

The event was held at the Entrepreneurial Museum of Challenge and Innovation! We were in a seminar room, and each Scholar sat with his or her respective Rotarian counselor. There were some introductory speeches and things, and then a museum docent showed us a video about the history of business in Japan. I regret that I fell asleep a bit during the video…nobody saw so that was good. (^_^;) It was dark and all…It was an educational video! Mori-san (my host counselor) said that he also learned a lot and found it interesting! ( More about orientation day! )

Last Tuesday, on February 26, I gave a speech at the Osaka Tsurumi Club meeting. I was invited by Satoh-Sensei. I had met Satoh-Sensei two times before at the PSC (Past Scholars Club) Christmas party and also at Takada-san’s Japanese dance performance. I met up with Satoh-Sensei at Kyobashi Station and then we rode the train to Taiko-En.

Taiko-En is a really pretty banquet house and the Tsurumi Club holds meetings there once a month. They also have weekly meetings at another location. The banquet house used to be the vacation home of a Japanese baron, so it was very grand and was a fine example of Japanese architecture! There were also Hinamatsuri dolls displayed because March 3rd is Hinamatsuri (Girls’ Day).

( Read more! )

I have a seikatsu ("for living") tutor named Mina. She is a fourth-year student at Handai, and she's basically paid by the university to help me out if I have trouble living in Japan. Since we were both busy, unfortunately, I hadn't met with her much throughout the semester. I ask her questions about Japanese language and grammar sometimes. She is very helpful and nice! A really dependable person.

Yesterday, Mina invited me to visit Kyoto with two of her friends! Kyoto is less than an hour from Osaka. The last time I was in Kyoto was probably when I was 15. I remember seeing Nijo Castle, Heian Shrine, and other traditional sites. When I was 15, I also saw a porcelain doll in Kyoto that looked almost exactly like I did when I was four or five years old! I remember that looking into the face of the handmade doll eerily felt like I was looking at myself...I regret that I didn't buy it but it was so expensive at the time. That was my memory of Kyoto. It was a while back.

( More about Kyoto! )

This was a big week for me. I was busy because it was the end of my first semester at Osaka University...Actually the nickname of Osaka University is Handai (kind of like how University of California, Berkeley is "Cal") so I'm going to call the school Handai from now on here on LJ...

I had to turn in a semester-end report to Department of Human Sciences...but most of my week was dedicated to memorizing my speech for the Rotary Club. I really cared about doing a good job on it. I've had shorter speeches in the past, but this one was for 20 minutes. I talked about Rotary service projects in San Francisco and my first (obviously very good) impressions of Rotarians as a high school student. I also talked about the suicide problem in Japan compared with that in the US, because that is what I'm studying at Handai. I had a podium and I could have read off the paper but I really don't like doing that. It's really important to me to be a prepared speaker if at all possible so of course I memorized the whole thing. I just sat at home and forced myself to memorize the four pages. (^_^)v I didn't have music or TV or anything on to distract me. There were times when I fell asleep while practicing...haha...It was boring, but in the end it felt really good to know my own speech well.

( Read more about my Valentine's Day )

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in starting a blog. I'm having a great time in Japan! I'll try to update this blog as much as possible to keep you updated on all my wonderful experiences with Rotary and about my activities at Osaka University!

First of all, I have a lot of people to thank!! Thank you to Dr. Scharleen Colant from San Francisco #2 for making this year possible!! Thank you to Bill Gilmore from SF West Rotary Club for encouraging me to apply and for guidance since I was a sophomore at Cal! Joanna from SF West and Emily A., a fellow Scholar, helped me prepare for the district interview. Arigatou! and a big shout out to members of San Francisco West Rotary Club (my sponsor club) and San Francisco #2 for showing me what Rotary is about. :) You are all wonderful people and I am glad that I met you. Thank you for your kindness. :)

And Arigatou gozaimasu to all my Japanese teachers and tutors from Cal and Lowell!! I wouldn't be here without you. I am grateful for the Japanese you taught me every time I give a speech, go to school, or run errands.

I'll include this thank-you list in my profile description. (^_^)