The End of August

Time flies... or not. August is nearly over. I didn't have holiday this summer. Work after work, but I have heaps of days off in September and I'll definitely have a great time with Laura for 9 days. As I plan to take an English ability test in October, I think it's time to start studying little by little. Last time I took the test a few years ago, I passed the first exam, but the second test(interview) didn't go well(I think the interviewer wasn't nice enough. hahaha), so I'll challenge the same one this time. I'll tell you the stupid thing I did... It's real stupid, yo. ;-) Well, I was supposed to take it in June, but when I went online and the closure had gone. So... yep, I missed it. Silly boy. LOL

I bought a DVD of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", so I'll watch it tomorrow. Hopefully. But I wannn catch up with my correspondence... Julie, Josie... Josie's really competitive to me!!! Scrabble and the pages of letter she writes. lol We are so competitive, but her competitiveness was beyond my thought. ;-) Josie, you won. I admitted, okay? YOU WON. She's also competitive at how fast we respond. LOL I won in that, hahaha. :-D Oh well, I'll decide what to do tomorrow. I think I'm off to fluffy bed. Have you ever experienced that a book falls onto your face? I mean when I read a book on a bed, it sometimes(well... often) happens to me. If a book is light like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but if it's like "the Order of Phoenix" or "the Half Blood Prince", it hurts a lot!!! Have you ever had such an experience? I bet you have. Hee hee hee.

OMG...

I finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" last night. I read it till 3am two days in a row. Well, I kinda need a sleep though. Hee hee, but it was so good that I couldn't put it down. As I read it through, I got more absorbed in it. At some scenes, I welled up...cos' you know... :-( Now I put incredibly huge dismay on the person who murdered someone. Can I raise real names here? It sounds so awkward to say "someone" did "something" on "someone". Or am I spoiling you guys who haven't read it yet? Oh well, just in case... I hate the person more than before.

At some scenes, you may get goosebumps or hesitate to read as it's scary. I kinda guessed that the book Harry retrieved belonged to Severus Snape as he's the Potions master and keen on the Dark Arts. My guess was right. Well, I wanna talk about the story a lot, but I think I'd better put it under a bail so that I won't spoil the joy people get from now. Let me say that my favorite character in it is "Ginny". She's awesome. Oh, I didn't like "Fluer" but now I like her as well. You'll see new love stories... I love that part. ;-)

I have 2 days off from tomorrow. Yay. :-)

Recently...

Long time no post... I've been occupied with work. I had a day off on Thursday. Well, my next day off is...next Thursday. Phew, I worked a lot. I'll have lots of days off next month. Hee hee.

Laura's in the USA now, but we keep in touch well. She's having a great time with her family and friends over there, which I'm so happy for. ;-) She's coming back soon, so we'll get to see each other in September. Yay!!! I hope I manage to get days off and see her lots. Maybe she'll come over here and then, I'll go down to her place. ;-) Oh well, we'll talk about our plan when she comes back to Japan. I wanna watch movies with her sitting on a sofa... That'd be lovely.

Now I'd like to go to New Zealand so badly to see my host family. My host mum has been diagnosed she's got a bowel cancer... It's real sad news. When I got an e-mail from them, I was totally speechless. But they're positive that everything goes well. So I believe that , too. :-) She'll be fine!!!

The end of our trip...

Thanks to Laura, I really had a great time. I don't know how many times I smiled. I felt the muscles on my face were getting funny. I like her smiles, eyes, how to talk, how to blush... She's going home for a while, but will be back in September. And we'll get to see each other soon. In October, I'm going to see her play Taiko drums. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll see her friends as well, exciting, isn't it? Well, when I saw her off, I was sad and kinda welling up. But we'll see each other soon... Soon. I hope you have a great time with your family and please say congratulations to Ellen.

The bamboo bush

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

We got bitten by mosquitos. Evil ka!!! I hate them.

Laura and me, having a break.

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

Here, it was breezy. We were sweating like crazy. lol Others were like, "Huh, it's not that hot". But NO WAY!!! It was scorching hot. You can see we're gross...a little bit. :-( Oh, my plastic bag finally died here. It was so annoying to hold that all the way back to Kyoto station. Before that, we went to see bamboo bush and then go to the special shrine called "Nomiya jinjya". I'm so happy to have visited there with her. :-D Sugoi ureshi katta.

Tenryu-ji

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

It's located 5 mins away from the bridge. It's got a really really beautiful garden. You can see some trees have already turned thier colours into yellow and red. We were holding hands all the time except taking photos. *blush* Hazukashii... We saw a man feeding carps. They were massive!!! How could they grow like that? Oh well, whatever. lol There're heaps of temples in Kyoto, but I think it's one of the best.

Its kanji is...

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

This one shows you how to write its name in Japanese. Good info, huh?

Togetsu-kyo

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

The English name is like "bridge across the moon". It looks like that from far away, I think. When we crossed this bridge, we were holding hands. That made me smile and happy. *doki doki* lol

The pond full of coins.

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

Okay, now you see the pond. People make a wish throwing a coin. You can slightly see silver and bronze coins in the water behind Laura and me. I threw 1 yen, but made 2 wishes. I hope God heard me as I spoke really fast. Hee hee. Oh, the bush to the entrance looks exactly like the Tri Wizard maze!!! We were talking about that there. Now you know that we're HP fans. ;-) By the way, don't tell me who dies in the latest book. If you did that, I'd kill ya.

It was bloody hot outside, so we went to have an icecream to one of the stores. They have...raspberry yourt, chocolate, mango, orange, vanilla, maccha(greet tea) and etc... Laura had an orange one and I had mango one. Nowadays, I'm into mango. Then, we had to wait for a bus back to "Shijo" for 15 mins or so. And we shopped around some archades and took "Print-Club". It was fun!!!

Oh, we were supposed to go to Kyoto Tower and see the night view from the top of it, but we were late... That was a shame, but we'll be able to do that one day. :-) It's the end of the second day. We have one more day. ;-)

Ginkaku-ji

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

On the second day, we slept in til...nearly the noon. Then had Udon for lunch and came to "Ginkaku-ji" by bus. Personally, I prefer this one to Kinkaku-ji. It more peaceful and the garden is amazing. Even though I like how the reflection on the water of Kinkaku-ji looks, I still prefer Ginkaku-ji. Kinkaku-ji has its beauty outside, but I think this Ginkaku-ji has one in its inside. I can't say well. Hahaha, I make you confused like, "What the hell are you saying?" LOL We made a wish throwing a coin in to a pond... I'll show that photo to you next.

Laura and me in Daitoku-ji

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

Before we went to have late lunch... Just after we took this one, we asked each other, "Are you hungry? I'm starving." lol So, we took a bus to "Kitaoji Bus Terminal". It's like the "Bus Exchange" in CHC. We were so indecisive that it took us for a while to figure out what we wanted to eat. We settled on a choice "Italian restaurant". lol I had a pizza and she had croquette lunch. I'll surprise you. I tried "Tabasco" for the first time. Can you believe that? I had an image I'd exhale fire out of my mouth!!! lol Silly boy. Oh well, the lunch was so big that we had ice cream that night. It's so great to be with her. I like that.

Daitoku-ji

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

We came here. It's such a peaceful place that we had a rest sittin/lying on the floor looking up into the sky or daydreaming. Here, we had a chat about our childhood, family and friends. We found some clouds which looked like a puppy, Sumo wrestler, spaceship from Star Wars. lol We heard owl somewhere and cicadas everywhere. Aww...Laura got a bump on her head. :-( Itai...(=ouch) I don't know how long we were there. Time seemed to go by slow and nice.

Laura and me.

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

We took this on the way to the steps. I was trying to take good photos of her, but she did funny face all the time. lol Oh, not this one. This one's really good!! Don't you think so? When we were together, we were speaking English and Japanese. When she speaks Japanese, I melt. ;-) It's so cute. And I like that so much.

After walking a while, we were headed for the rest place in front of a small ice cream store. Then I found out that she doesn't like pigions. lol It's so nice to get to know her more and more. Okay, it's the end of Kinkaku-ji...

Our trip continues to "Daitoku-ji".

Kinkaku-ji

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Originally uploaded by seriouscookiemuncher.

Laura and I had our first little trip to Kyoto. We stayed there for 3 days. Walked around Kyoto, visited temples... When we met up at Kyoto station, we spotted each other right away. I was kinda nervous before I said hi to her, but no sooner I hugged her than it was gone. :-) As we had time til the check in time, we decided to go to "Kinkaku-ji" first. It was a hot day, so we were, literally, soaked.

What's going on here...

I haven't updated for ages. What I've been up to? Nothing much, in fact. Well, the work's been alright even though the manager is sometimes grumpy. I know it's quite nornal for him to be like that when it's really busy. However, his thing is going too far. He yells at us, which I hate...loathe!!! Good thing is that I didn't work overtime so often, which is pretty cool or normal.

As I had days off last week, I managed to catch up with my correspondence. Actually, I finished it yesterday. Oh, I've been into "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". I bought it. I wanted to buy a papaerback, but the store person told me that it'd be out a year later or so. I can't wait that long. OMG, it's so good even though it's wee bit heavy. I'm still on chapter 10 as I don't wanna miss any juicy bits. PLEASE DON'T TELL ME WHAT'S IN IT, OKAY?

I've had chances to talk to Laura a lot recently, so I'm really happy with that. We are gonna see each other in Kyoto on 3rd, 4th and 5th and having a great fun together. :-) I can't stop smiling when I tihnk about it. I've been counting down the days since we decided to go. OMG, one more night!!! We'll go to the "Golden Pavillion", "Silver Pavillion", "Gion", "Kamogawa"...hmm, alot. lol I was supposed to have 2 days in Kyoto first, but one of my workmates let me have a day off on Friday. Laura and I apprecite her kindness so much. I'll update as soon as I can... See ya.