Well That's Just Silly (And Other Nautical Expressions!)

Oh Japan. You have been great. She shall surely miss your beautiful mountains that seem to rise right out of the flattened fields; and the way the clouds stir about the peaks as if they are striking and rolling off of the steep wooded surfaces. Every morning's bike ride to school was made that much more bearable to her(despite the suffocating heat >__>) just with the knowledge that she could just turn her eyes up to the mountains and hear the sound of their music (yes, Julie Andrews is in Japan; didn't you know?).

She'll miss biking through Black Veil every morning as well; the over-grown pathway beside the main road on the last stretch before she hits Michigan Ave (yup, that's actually in Japan, too).

And while she doubts she would have survived even one journey through the real Black Veil (READ THE GREEN RIDER SERIES IF YOU DON'T CATCH THE MEANING OF BLACK VEIL.), this one still managed to take its last revenge and cause our ever-so-graceful heroine to tumble over her handlebars and spill onto the cement:

But it's not that bad (considering how bad it could have been; except, the Nythling-like bites that have been appearing lately, and are now on her palms, are quite distressing....) and the crows who haunted there always seemed happy enough to hop out of her way, and the great hawk that hunted for its meals nearby did love soaring quite beautifully on the currents above.

All of the random festivals, like the one pictured above that they ran into during Jenny's first trip to Kyoto, were a delight. She was especially glad to get to go to to festival in Rory's host family's town, Taga, and to spend the evening with their family and neighbors. It was more fun to be with them for the few hours that afternoon than it had been the whole summer with her own perfectly polite host family (who was very kind, but she could never seem to connect with, which wasn't their fault). 

(the right column of text literally says "Nagahama yukata festival")

(Getting to wear yukata to festivals was also a definite plus~)

Engrish. In its spoken form, or on clothing at the department store. Also, Influence such as:

(Text reads "this is the last" or "this is the end")

But for all of its charms (there are so many more than the ones just rattled off), she's very much ready to go back to America: the place where it's cheap and easy to make grilled cheeses with tomato soup! And while she still has no clue what her future holds, she does know for certain that there is a polydactyl blob of soft-fuzzyness just waiting to crawl into her lap <3

Arigatou, Minna-san!