また台風？ Again typhoon?

Yeah, to make a long story short, its been three weeks since we had that really big typhoon hit us. It was super strong and everything. According to my friend, it was a very unusual typhoon. And, there's usually only one typhoon, on average, that comes and hits Okinawa this early. Yet, here i sit 3 weeks late and there's another typhoon overhead right now. This time there shouldn't be any blackout though. Its not nearly as powerful as the last one. It is a nice change though. Lately, its become really hot in Okinawa. Feeling in the 100's (I think the hottest was 108F).

But, enough of that. There's just one weekend that something actually happened so I'll talk about that now.

So, it all started on 6-10. Well, actually the night of. If you look at the pictures around this text, you can guess there was some sort of drinking event. (Seems to happen often enough...) This 飲み会 (drinking event) was to celebrate the new new 4th year students entering the lab. Except that only 3 of the 5 came (1 of the 3 from my lab, the girl). The drinking started at 8. We were at the 居酒屋 until 12 and we walked around a bit (since Toki-sensei was quite drunk). It was pretty fun and we ended up drinking quite a bit.
While walking around, I got to meet up with another friend who just graduated from our lab. He, ironically, also came back from a 飲み会 and was getting some air. We were hungry so we went to Lawson and bought cup ramen and ate as we just talked story. It turns out that he was going to leave to America (New Mexico) in 2 weeks and so his office had a party for him and one other coworker who was leaving the next day.
So, I finally got back to my dorm at around 3 in the morning. Got washed up and everything and finally got to bed at around 4:30.
The next day was just as busy! Starting from12, there was a 理学部 (science department) volleyball event. It was a total of 4 hours and I thought there would at least be some breaks inbetween games. Turns out that I was completely wrong. It was basically 3.5 hours of straight volleyball playing. It was quite difficult but fun! I'm definitely going again next year!
I got home and took about a 30 minute nap before eating a quick dinner and heading off to another event. It was a 24 hour charity marathon for the Tohoku region. For those that don't know, the Tohoku region is the region that got hit really hard by the Tsunami a few months ago. The point of the event was to walk/run as far as we want and the total would hopefully end up being enough to have gone all the way to Tohoku. I'm not sure, but there was probably some money or something that was also being raised. But I'm not sure. I ended up walking 7.5 miles. Yes, I was exhausted after the 4 hours of volleyball but it was for a good cause. I figure that whats a little pain compared to what those in Tohoku have felt.

After this, we went to Karaoke to pop the karaoke cherry of my friend. LOL. It turns out that he actually had a good time and is looking forward to going again! So, that was a success!

Well, I'm over looking at my computer screen. Been doing it all day since I didn't go out at all today cause of the typhoon. Hopefully tomorrow will be better so that I can go biking or something.
Until next time, ALOHA~~! ヾ(*´∀｀*)ノ

台風。。。 Typhoon...

Heh, this is sort of embarrassing but it has now been over a month since I last updated my blog. Usually I'm taking a while because there's not much going on or not feeling it. Well, this time I've been thinking about doing this blog for AT LEAST the past month. But, every time I sit down to actually work on it, something else tends to come up. So, since its been over a month, I sort of have a lot to talk about. Though, it really hasn't been all to interesting.

So, first off, there was this thing called 'Golden Week' which, for most people, is a 1 week (actually...9/10 day) vacation. My grand total of vacation days was...3. (ーー;) Added to that, the rainy season started one week early. 'What does that mean?' you may be asking yourself. Well, the rainy season usually starts the week AFTER Golden Week. So, for all of you that can't put it together, the rainy season started during Golden Week. So, for the 3 days of break that I did have, it was raining (hard) for about 2/3 of it. Luckily, being the idiot I am, I still went out and had lots of fun.

The first day of Golden Week, we (as in Minoru, Roy, and me) went down to the port where Minoru and many other exchange students were going to participate in the ハーリー (hari boat race). Going there, the sky's were overcast but it seemed like a fairly good day. Take our bikes? Sure why not right? LUCKILY we weren't stupid enough to not look at the weather report which called for heavy rains. So, we caught the bus down...after quite an adventure walking. LOL. At the matsuri, I had my fair share of food there. (One of the BEST things about the festivals is the festival food!!) Then we went to go hangout at the Ryudai area and wait for the Ryudai teams to start their hari boat trials. There were a total of three teams that would be in different trials (meaning that it was possible for Ryudai to get 3 different trophies). The 理学部 (science dept) was first up and took their trial. I didn't get to watch because..quite frankly, I didn't know they had left. LOL (whoops...). The exchange students and the 工学部 (engineering dept) were to be second up. By this point, I guess you could say it was raining cats and dogs...but that might be being too nice to the rain. It was storming by this time and, for the most part, umbrellas weren't going to help out too much. It was raining hard enough that the whole festival shutdown for the day. Which was unfortunate because I was looking forward to the race as well as seeing D-51 live for the night show. Oh well, can't do anything.

The second day of Golden Week, it was still storming up a storm (hahaha...). So, I just walked with Minoru to GEO and got some DVDs to watch. Also, ended up playing a lot of Starcraft 2 during the day since it really was the first day in a long time that I was home actually early enough to play with a lot of people.

The third day of my Golden Week, Thursday, was the best as far as overall weather goes. Also, it was an awesome day in general cause we went driving! So awesome! There are so many different places that we went to (I can't remember all the names...so I'll just put up some pictures because a pictures worth more than 100 words...or something like that). We also got really lucky with timings. When the rain would come, it would be while we were in the car and when we were out and doing the whole tourist thing, it was just overcast. However, on the way back, the weather became sunny as heck which kind of disappointing to us since we couldn't be out in it. (rental cars have this annoying time limit thing...LOL).

Also on this day, it was the last day of the Hari festival. Meaning, there's usually a big name group or singer that comes in to close out the festival. This year, it was Orange Range!　(ノ^_^)ノ  For those that haven't heard, here is one of their more famous songs. They were the very last act, right before the fireworks. We got there the VERY second that their encore finished. (ーー;) So, to feel better about myself, I of course splurged myself on more matsuri food. We also got to watch the fireworks show. For those of you that haven't been to a fireworks show in Japan, ITS A MUST! Just saying, its definitely an experience.

Well, after Golden Week, there wasn't really too much going on. Life just went on as usual. Went to lab, came home, ate and slept. Every Monday go to badminton which is always a blast. The picture above is my friends dog and another friends kid. They were so cute together ヾ(*´∀｀*)ノ♪

I was actually all set to write this blog last weekend. I had already picked out all the pictures and everything. I just told myself that I need to finish my homework. Which, I was getting to slowly. Now, why would I be wasting my weekend indoors? Any guesses? Well, we had a category 3/4 (I'm not sure if it made it up to 4...but it was very close) typhoon hit us Saturday night/Sunday morning. This would not have been a problem at all because I was well prepared for it. Enough food and such. But, we lost power for 12+ hours. That kind of threw a wrench in my plans for working on my computer since I wasn't sure when my power would be back. Had to save my battery for times that I actually needed it.
So, maybe you're asking if it was really as bad as I'm saying. Well, here are some pictures (with some descriptions):

These are all pictures from my normal walking around. I didn't go and search them out because it was really all around.

Its hard to see in this picture, but the leaves on the trees are all brown. These were all very healthy green the day before the typhoon. All throughout campus, I found that many leaves had become brown (of those that were still on the trees).

Well, that's all for this edition. Hope to update soon. Until then, stay safe and...oh yeah...when was the world gonna end? Yeah, live it up til then ^-^ 笑