About time for another update - eep!

Oh well hey there stranger!
It feels like it's been so very very long since I last updated! Yikes, all of the sorries.
Let me give you the lowdown of some wonderful occurrences over the last couple of days.

First, the excuse for not writing. I caught myself one heck of a nasty head cold that decided to stick around for half of a week. It seemed passive, but ended up making me extremely sluggish at work and miss on a sushi dinner date (so not cool!). I'm slowly but surely working it off and feeling normal again.

Friday, the country manager for Lattitude Global Volunteering, Ide san, came to Iizuka to visit us! Unfortunately, she was just checking in and couldn't stay long. She had to go back home to Tokyo that night after being in Nagasaki the day before. Ide san is one busy woman! It was really nice to see her though.

Saturday I met up with my friend Taichi who came to visit from Osaka! He joined me, Samantha, Ken and a handful of other hospital employees along the Onga river for a BBQ. It was great. We played sports, talked, ate grilled meats and shared a few Asashi. It was quite a strange feeling to know I was eating lunch with ER doctors and cardiothoaracic surgeons. They're people too!

Sunday was also a very happy day. Yano san took us to Costco! There's nothing quite like Costco, especially on a free sample day! We tried various grilled meats, strange vegetables, seafood and macarons. I left the store with a bag of oatmeal (very difficult to find!), a bag of granola (already the 978g bag is almost gone, so delicious!) and a costco must purchase; mega ultra chcolate chocolate chip muffins! I can also honestly claim that this was the first time since I'd arrived that I had entirely forgotten I was in Japan. The place was exactly like it is at home...until I paid my yen to the wonderful Japanese speaking cashier.
After Costco, I went into Fukuoka city to visit with Taichi again before he left back to Osaka. It rained, but not on our parade. We did quite a bit of walking! I only just get a taste for the crazyness that is Tenjin shopping. I'll have to plan another 19 trips to maybe see it all.

Today, Samantha, Ken and I took a Shodou class at the hospital. Shodou is Japanese art of calligraphy using paintbrush (fude) and ink on thin mulberry paper (washi). We had to chance to make our own ink by grinding the inkstick (sumi) against the inkstone (suzuri). We only spent a couple minutes doing this before switching to pre-made ink because to produce proper ink takes about an hour. The class was excellent. There is so much more to the art of calligraphy than I'd previously thought. Shodou has links to Zen Buddhism and revolves very closely around meditation and finding zen while producing pieces of art. So much so, that the class is actually used as a therapeutic technique in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. We were told to hold the brush and paint. And to just let ourselves paint, to not over think  Well...I don't know any Kanji (Chinese characters of the Japanese written language) anyways, so that worked out. Then we were asked to draw the Kanji for heart/mind/spirit; kokoro. The point was to paint with your heart and produce whatever it is that you produce. After I'd finished, the Shodou sensei took my paper away and said "Do it again. You didn't paint with your heart." Oops, guess I was trying too hard to sort out how to shape the strokes instead of allowing it to simply flow out onto the page. Regardless, it ended up being a really nice class and I plan on going back again as soon as I can. :)

Ao sora. blue sky

kokoro. heart/soul/mind

 This also just in: I agreed to be part of a relay marathon happening Sunday, June 16th. I must have been crazy because this girl struggles with the waking up portion of her morning runs. This means training, and lots of it. What I can say it that this will certainly help with accomplishing my goal of 100 runs before I leave Japan, which currently stands at a solid 30.

26 days until the run.