it's just moi!

the past few months seemed to have been dragging on and on and on....you got the picture: i am plain bored.

since i finished writing my thesis in april, i've been feeling a little less comfortable with the thought that my departure date from tokyo will still be in late september. it's not that i don't like being in japan anymore. it's just that boredom is slowly killing me little by little. i feel so unproductive...and that is after baking almost all kinds of cookies i know ( a little exaggerated, yeah...), learning how to cook not just for breakfast but for lunch and dinner as well, going around tokyo's suburbs and biking around kodaira city's small crevices. man, i still am bored.

most of the time i fight this off by scaring myself of what my life will be again in manila: the pollution, the pickpockets, the terrorists, the garbage, the GOVERNMENT, the economic crises. but, heck, it does not really work for me now. all i can think of are jollibee, max's fried chicken, sm, rockwell, tutuban, glorietta, boracay, cebu, bohol.....waaaaaa. i want to go home now.

i know...i know that i won't like what i'll see when i finally land at NAIA but my heart is really in the philippines -- the government be damned! i am counting the weeks, the days, even the hours when i will board JAL to finally fly home.

then again, i will miss my apartment. it has always been a warm haven in my two-year stay in tokyo. nah...i know i can't have my cake and eat it too. :(

disneyland

disneyland...for the third time. gosh...i must be really a kid at heart because i can't get enough of mickey mouse and his ilk. i always love watching the parade, with all those characters that have been familiar since my childhood parading before me.

needless to say, disneyland reminds me of my childhood books.

sun and moon

sun and moon...day and night...light and dark.......

hakone in summer

this was the realization of a promise made more than two years ago. by adit (the guy in sleeveless shirt), my indonesian friend. of course, before he made true of his promise he went around europe and australia first. ;) but hakone has always beckoned, so in spite of the unpredictable weather that was threatening to grow from bad to worse that day, we pushed through with the plan.

i had fun in hakone. it's a beautiful place up in the mountain. methinks i was a mountain girl in my previous life because i really love nature. sure, i love beaches more, but up in the mountain, i always find inner peace.

jerry (in red shirt), mei (the only other girl), mike (in striped shirt), adit and i had fun in hakone. the highlight, of course, was taking the 'romance car' on our way back to shinjuku. that was really FUN!!!

grand vacation in kuruizawa, nagano prefecture

this is the one-hectare property of shimoyama-sensei's parents. it's a beautiful place in the mountain. i almost missed experiencing this until sensei called to invite me to go with her to nagano. i asked her if i can bring one friend with me and she said yes. to make the long story short, jessa -- another jds fellow from the philippines -- went with me. it was so much fun! while tokyo was sizzling hot, the tempreture in the mountain was very, very cool....

the top photos were taken inside the rest house of sensei's family, while the lower ones were taken around the area of asama-san where we were brought by yuko-san (sensei's ultra elegant older sister) to watch the active volcano.

one of the oishii dinners we had in kuruizawa...takusan tabemono arimasu ne! if there's one thing that thrilled jessa and me to death was the food they prepared for us in the three days we were there.

yuko-san taught us to make things out of clay...muzukashi desu ne! this was one of the reasons why we were so excited to visit sensei's rest house. her sister makes beautiful pottery and ceramic stuff...we wanted to try too.

our last day in nagano...haji-san (sensei's brother-in-law), yuko-san, sensei, jessa, me and rudy...

goodbye part II

this time, goodbye was funnier...and all because of avic and jessa who made everything lighter. seeing joy and joanne off reminded me of one imminent truth: i'll be going home soon too. i don't know how i feel. everything is still hazy. maybe when i transfer to washington hotel, it will finally dawn on me that i'll be saying goodbye to tokyo in two months time.

guess, life is like that. you move...and you must move forward.

what now?

after the oral defense for my master's thesis, i was suddenly faced with this huge problem: what now? it's really a problem since i don't particularly like being bored. i've packed practically all my stuff already so there's nothing to pack anymore. somebody will be taking over our apartment so there's no need to dispose of appliances and furnitures. all my books are inside the boxes already so there's nothing to read. of course, my bike is still out but in this hot and humid weather, i'll be super-desperate to go biking when the sun is out. and since my bike does not have a lamp, i can't use it at night!

arghhhhh!!!!!

tomorrow, i promise i'll do the one thing i've been postponing for a long time already. i will ride the train to the opposite direction of where i usually go. i'll check what is there. it may take me more or less 30 minutes by local train to go to hon kawagoe. then again, desperate times call for desperate measures.

i am really bored.