From the Midwest and Around the World

   I visited Hikone-jo (Hikone Castle) today. With my student ID, I get in free... Unfortunately, since it is winter here, things are kind of gray and muddy. However, the view was wonderful!      However, the climb up to the main castle was a haul (as it should be deduced due to the view).        The castle was also really intimidating, but in a different way. However, the stairs inside the castle leading to the top were little death traps. They could not be called stairs because they were more like really steep ladder steps. I went up forwards...but I had to go down backwards. With my luck, it was not hard to picture myself falling down flat on my head. But here is a picture of the exterior of the castle. I will probably go again and get more pictures:     It was a really good experience and now I am preparing to Skype with some friends from college who also did JCMU a few years ago. I also ha...

   Today (Monday) was my last free day before I enter class on Tuesday. I will have to take a placement test (probably tomorrow), but I do not yet know when or where...so I will get back to you on that! While I do not look forward to having homework, it will be nice to have more structure in my day as well as the fact that I will get a bike tomorrow, so I can go a few more places. Tomorrow will probably be a tough day because I will have a test and then in the afternoon, I have my elective film class.    Of course, I will let you all know how tomorrow goes, what level of Japanese I enter, and anything else.    Highlight of the Day: This morning, I took a long walk along Lake Biwa and got to the outskirts of Maibara...it was so pretty this morning!