- stand beneath my window with your bugle and your drum -

I think I have a case of senioritis - the last two months of my time here should not be the hardest ones. It's no longer freezing. If only for that.

Maybe I have too much time to think.

The fortune-stick I pulled from a Kamakura shrine yesterday spelled out that good fortune was headed my way - that, and to keep walking forward, watch my mouth, listen to my friends about love, be ready for a mild illness, and study my language harder. (English? Japanese? Both, probably.)

...okay. ^_~

I like Kamakura a ton - it may be my favorite place in Japan right now. Chill in places, crazy in others, with lush and winding backstreets leading to art museums and well-tended shrines and okonomiyaki stands. I think it's my Japanese Jasper.

Even if, realistically, the two places do not look at all the same, they feel the same, somehow. (Though, tourist-wise, Kamakura's probably closer in density to Banff.)

I learned okonomiyaki-fu yesterday (the trick, it seems, is to mix like hell and then to cook it on each side for five minutes) - I will be seriously wounded if I can't find okonomiyaki back in Canada but considering I didn't even know what it was before coming here, odds are not too good. I tried a hydrangea-sweet potato pudding (it was an odd sort of sweet and definitely not for everyone but I can see myself craving it in a year's time and doing everything in my power to find or replicate it.)

I also found a new favorite painting - "Asasuzu"; a young girl in violet in the midst of a field - the artist, Kaburaki Kiyotaka, was a local to Kamakura, and his work (in what was his house and is now a converted art museum on a positively gorgeous side street) is beautiful.

I bailed out on dancing - my feet were protesting, I was oddly tired (getting old! yikes!) and I was carrying way too many souvenirs (an inevitability of traveling in Japan; plus, I'm starting to amass "going home" gifts... scary!)

I miss my home in Canada and my family&friends a ton right now, but I'm not going to back down or complain (much.) 'Cause a chance like the one I'm living is once-in-a-lifetime, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that the precious people in your life stick by you even when you tromp off halfway around the globe in pursuit of a childish dream and fueled by a youthful curiosity.

If you're reading this, it's more than likely I owe you a serious thank you; you're one of them. ♥