Flowers and ninjas galore!

Listening to: Me and Mrs. Jones cover by Michael Buble
Currently drinking: Hot tea 

School officially starts tomorrow, well, orientation does anyway. And so tonight is really my last night of freedom before the reality of homework and other school obligations set in. I told you last time that I have been pretty sick of late, and I still haven't fully recovered. The Japanese cough medicine that I bought at the store really didn't do anything but soothe my throat for a few minutes before I then continued to hack my lungs up. I have resorted to begging others for their illegal decongestant medicine and praying that whatever breed of cold I may have disappears before classes start. We have had a couple of really fantastic excursion opportunities over the past few days, and it's been really hard to force myself to do them (it's been hard to force myself out of my room actually), but, the culture is what I am here to study so I feel like I have to at least attend them if not enjoy them.

I was most excited for Friday's trip to the Ueno Iga Ninja House because I, not so secretly, am obsessed with ninjas. Not only do they kick ass, but they also have one of the coolest uniforms around. I mean come on, who else can get away with wearing all black and not being thought of as super emo? Anyway, the trip took about an hour and a half to get there, but we first stopped at this silk braiding house that actually turned out to be really interesting and fun!

The silk braiding spool

The process was kind of complicated at first, but turned out to be fairly simple once you got the pattern. I, being a "tad" competitive, felt the strong compulsion to finish first, and so jumped right into the braiding without really waiting for more explanation. Thankfully, I didn't end up mucking anything up too bad and actually did finish quite early, which ended up giving me a little more time to do some souvenir shopping :) I must admit, this trip I did not feel at all guilty about being a complete tourist and indulging in mass purchases of adorable yet useless items.

We ended up stopping again to have lunch, and then finally got on our way to the Ninja House!

Ninjas were everywhere around the town (watch out!)

The actual house was really hard to get a picture of :(

I plan on using practicing my shadow techniques...

The head ninja showing us all of the
different types of weapons

I took so many pictures of this place, and it has been really hard to decide which ones go up here! The rest are on in my photos on facebook if you would like to check them out!

Saturday I basically spent just having a girls day with, the always beautiful and fun, Erin. She's my workout buddy for the gym (I'll have to tell you some gym stories another time), and she has my same liking for shopping at second hand stores, so we did exactly those things. I haven't really been able to run that much lately because of my illness, but a little jogging is still better than nothing, so it felt pretty good. It also felt pretty good to get a couple of new items of clothing which will probably be staples in my wardrobe over the spring and summer here in Japan ;)

Today, Sunday, we all went to view the sakura flowers blooming. It is extremely important in Japanese culture, and so I was really excited to go see them. Little did I know that my body would have such a violent reaction to them. Apparently, in Japan, many of the flowers bloom at exactly the same time, so the pollen released into the air is very, very intense. Many of the people here get hay fever, and know exactly what drugs to take for their allergies. I am not one of those people. I've never had an allergy, and I really don't know how to handle them. Fortunately for me, most of the other students here have some form of allergy and/or cold medicine, so I have been able to get by on the favors of others. This ended up allowing me to go see the flowers with relatively little pain, but I still plan on making another go at the pharmacy to see if they have anything stronger than that vile cough medicine that did absolutely nothing.

There really weren't that many in bloom yet

My one artsy pose for you 

I've been trying to mess around more and more with my pictures, and I really wish I had a DSLR so I could give you all some really cool shots...

Now you spring to life
Show your faces to the world
Sakura blossoms 

Family out for a stroll with their adorable little girl <3

Well, I must try and get some sleep now (I need all the beauty rest I can get), but thank you all so much for reading and I really do love you lattes!