She's Ba-ack!

Whoa! Where did I go?! Well, anyway, I’m back!

First things first, luckily, I'm not anywhere near the area where the 7.0 earthquake hit this morning (8:30-ish AM Japan time on 6/14). I'm down near the Tokyo area. If you hear about a big earthquake near the Tokyo area, then you're allowed to worry. ;-)

Sorry I haven’t posted a blog for so long, but it’s been a very busy first half of the year. From what I’ve heard from most of you, it has been for you too! Busy + computer memory problems that forced me to go shopping for an external hard drive in Tokyo’s electronics district which I put off as long as possible = no blogs. :-) Sorry!

I have a lot to catch you up on, including stuff from last year I recently realized I never wrote about! For example, it’s coming up on the 1-year anniversary of my having to take and pass the Japanese Driving Test (both written and practical, thank you very much). I’m very much remiss for not having all of you experience that little slice of heaven with me. But don’t you worry, your chance will be coming to a blog-near-you soon enough.

I also failed to regale you with the tale of my fabulously long bout with the norovirus during the winter holiday. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

With such wonderful stories in the pipeline, I’m sure you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats, waiting anxiously for the next installment (ha ha).

Just to tide you over, here are two recent photos of me doing weird and/or very-Japanese stuff. The first is me taking my cheerleading role at my current junior high school's sports festival as "seriously" as possible. The second photo is from last weekend's stint as a "flower daughter" at my town's annual Iris Flower Festival. Some of you may recall that I served the same capacity last year. :-) I even made the prefectural newspaper this year. More on those events in the soon-to-follow update blogs!