Darn Camera

This kind of sucks. Last week was pretty exciting. A Halloween party, a trip to Kamakura, a Taiko drumming class, a birthday party,  and then another Halloween party. Only problem is for some reason my camera decided to delete all the pictures I took of these events before I could upload them to my computer. Not entirely sure why, but it happened sometime during the 2nd Halloween party. So not much I can do about all that. I went with a group to Kamakura and to the birthday party, so I just asked them for a bunch of their pictures, but for all the other events I haven't found anyone I can ask for pictures yet. Also since the pictures I took from the people aren't all organized like my other ones (cause the camera I have does most of that automatically) I just uploaded them all to online albums and will give the links instead of in bedding them all into this entry. Not just because I'm lazy, but because I have to study for the 5 tests we have in the upcoming 2 weeks and organizing them manually would take to much time. So here we go.

Halloween party #1:
-This one took place on October 30th. It was a party for the entire dormitory. It was in our cafateria. There were snacks, costumes, and a contest. It was pretty fun.

Kamakura:
- November 3rd was a national holiday. So no school. A bunch of us decided to go to Kamakura, a large tourist spot full of old temples, shrines, a little shopping town, etc etc. The town part, full of all the different shops reminded me a lot of Gattlinberg and Pigeon Forge. It had almost the exact types of shops as well. Even the shops that sell cheap knock off samurai swords. The main thing we saw was the Daibutsu (Giant Buddha). Basically a big statue of the Buddha that you can actually go inside of. This is the main tourist attraction in Kamakura apparently. After that we went to the beach, which was pretty nasty. The beach in Kamakura was covered in dead fish, stingrays, star fish, etc. It seemed that anytime high tide came in and left, a bunch of things got left behind. You could even watch the birds pick at the dead fish. Definitely not a bring your kids to play and build a sand castle kind of beach. Then after that we walked around the shops, and had really overpriced Chinese food for dinner. Here the photo album with all the pictures a friend took.
Kamakura Album

Taiko Drumming:
-The most recent culture class was on Taiko drumming. It was actually pretty fun, and I had video of me trying it out, but its gone now. I've decided to go check out the school's Taiko club, since I am not allowed to join the Kyudo club for some reason. It is also apparently a good work out for your arms, and a couple of the people who do it say it build a lot of arm strength up.

Birthday Party:
-Friday night was a Birthday party of Ellie, one of the foreign exchange students. It was in what I think is an Internet cafe on crack. You pay by the hour for  usage, but the place has a whole game area with pool tables, ping pong, dart boards, slot machines, etc. All of which are included when you pay for an hour, no extra charge for darts, or pool equipment. Also they have tones of free drinks, ice cream, smoothies, soup, etc. We were there until about 2:00am, and then hung out for another 2 hours at a 24 hour restaurant. It was a really cool place. Apparently during the day they also have TV rooms where you can watch movies or play video games.
Here is the album for the pictures taken. Birthday party album

2nd Halloween Party:

- The 2nd Halloween party I went to was on the 5th. It was a party for one of the groups I joined on campus. The CPP group. The Conversation Partner Program, its a group where I am assigned a Japanese person who volunteers to meet with me every week and help me with my Japanese. It s pretty useful practice. The party was for everyone who joined the group. A bunch of guys went as the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill. I joined them since I didn't want to buy a costume(they are really expensive here) and I already had a suit anyway. My conversation partner, Max, also did the same. Though there were only 7 of us so it was more the Crazy 7. Also we went and bought cheap 1$ swords and spent a lot of our time whacking each other with them

 

The only picture that was left on my picture was the group picture of everyone that went to the party.

Who knows maybe the person who I got to take the picture accidentally deleted everything else, or I left the camera when putting it in my pocket, and since its touch got a touch screen, it moving around in my pocket just so happened to have hit the format memory option. Believe it or not this has happened before with the GPS I had back in Georgia. Any time I wasn't using it I would have it in my glove box, but since it was always plugged into my cigarette lighter, anytime the car turned on so did the GPS. Then one day I pull it and see a message saying that I have formatted the memory.

This coming week is going to be pretty busy. I have multiple tests coming up. Tuesday one in my Speech class, Wednesday a Kanji reading test, Friday a Grammar test, and the upcoming Wednesday a big Kanji writing test. So I'm going to be pretty busy studying this week. I'm pretty sure I have another test somewhere in all of that mess, but I don't have my schedule in front of me. So because of all that I won't be doing much these next two weeks.