it's not sayounara, just ja mata, ne?

I apologize for spamming you all but I wanted to get those all done while I was still in Japan.

Still in Japan, you say? Why would I be leaving now, you say, after all that 'Keep Calm and Carry On' bluster in the last post? Well, after the Embassy suggested its non-essential personnel leave the country last week, my school pretty much flipped its shit.  It's canceled the Study Abroad program and all SA students have to return home immediately, so I'm flying out tomorrow.  To say I'm less than pleased about this would be an understatement, but there's nothing that can be done about it at this point. (Also, both of my best friends here had finally decided to leave, so despite the fact that I was intending to stick out the semester, it would be unbearably lonely here without them for a whole month. Places are nice but they're pretty useless without friends to enjoy them with.)

I've been assured that I'll get credit for all my classes as TUJ hopes to do online classes or something to finish off the semester.  (Studying abroad via online classes from my living room at home seems kind of dumb, but like I said, can't be helped at this point. 

I spent the last two days having all sorts of fun to make up for being basically kicked out of the country - we went to Akihabara, Ikebukuro, Hibiya, Ebisu, Hamamatsucho, and Ginza; I ate whale bacon, took pictures with Godzilla, did a semester's worth of souvenir shopping in a day, definitely saw Izaya-kun from Durarara!!!, played in a playground, went to all-night karaoke for the second time this week, and were treated to desert on TUJ's dime; that is, we generally had the time of our lives to make up for everything being cut short.  (here are some pictures from that :D voila!)

My plane leaves here tomorrow at 5pm JST and after 18 hours of traveling and a 6-hour layover in San Francisco I land in Pittsburgh a measly 7 hours later at 11:45pm EST. So my next post will probably not be from Japanland.  But the news ain't all bad. It's not sayounara, just ja mata - since my mom already has tickets to come see me at the end of the semester, she and I will, barring nuclear apocalypse or other extenuating circumstances, probably still be coming back for a vacation filled with fun times. :D