Yes, I'm still here.

Sorry about not posting for a while. As things have gone, life has been pretty normal around here. Normal, that is, for being in a country where you can only read and understand about 10% of what there is to actually take in.

Let's see... I left off on 7 May. Today's the 22nd. What's happened since then?

The triplets had their birthday on the 16th. That was a bit interesting. As the 'designated singer,' I was chosen to lead everyone in "Happy Birthday." They really enjoyed the outfits that mom picked out for them. I've got a picture of everyone in their clothes, and as soon as I remember to start taking my camera to places, I'll put them up on flickr.

Last Friday-into-Saturday, the 18-19th, I was unofficially kidnapped by the members of the choir. We had a full night of getting to know everyone, and just general section bonding. And when I say a full night, I mean a full night - We talked, cooked, and questioned each other from 9PM Friday to 8AM Saturday... No sleep available. We started by cooking dinner - yakiniku, meaning fried meat. Essentially, this involved the Tenors getting together around three camp stoves, opening 3 huge packages of pork meat, and throwing them into frying pans, 3-5 tenors to a pan. Once it had fully cooked, you were to take it out of the pan, dip it in the sauce (of which I want ingredients for - it's delicious), and then chow down. We must have (as a section of about 12 people) taken down at least 10 pounds of pork that night. It was awesome.

After the pork fest, we went into Q&A time. This involved listing a set of categories on a board (things like: queen, teacher, girlfriend, wife... I think you get the idea), and then we were to take turns listing which women in the choir fit those roles best in our minds. Apparently, all of the tenors have a huge crush on our pianist. :)
This was fun, but I wasn't aware of the one detail that I had missed: two of us would be sent out as 'tenor ambassadors' to each of the other sections to relay what we thought of the categories. For those that haven't guessed it yet - that means that anyone we were also questioned by those who were on our list. It's a bit harrowing to tell someone you picture them well as a girlfriend or wife when they're standing right in front of you. :)
That didn't go to badly, though, and now I've found that a couple people are a bit interested in me as well. In fact, I've now found a walking partner for walking home from practice - Mayu-chan. We both live in the same part of the city, and so we take the extra 10 minutes to walk from campus to a common intersection, and then each go to our houses. I can't tell if she's interested in me like that or not, but I have to say - I really wouldn't mind if she was.

Saturday afternoon was spent with a group from the JASIN program (read: other gaijin) going to Glover Gardens. Glover Gardens is basically a large garden created as a replica of the original British settlement of Nagasaki. The buildings that are there are some of the originals, and some have been moved from their original positions to the hill where Glover Gardens now stands. It was an interesting trip - we met at one of the city malls with Seb, our history prof. (he's awesome. More like a buddy than a teacher, but it's cool - he knows exactly what he's talking about.) We then took a 25-minute stroll around the bottom half on the city, with Seb pointing out important stuff along the way (what country first landed here, what type of boat that is, this bar is very gaijin-friendly, things like that).

Speaking of gaijin, I'd like to enlighten you all in the US that I have these special Gaijin Powers. It's like I'm a mini-superhero. You can read all about it here.

So long for now - hopefully I'll put some more up soon.