The view from the tower was amazing. Here are some views from the top. I could see all the way to my school!

Last weekend I went with some friends to 名古屋港 (Nagoya Port). I believe the port itself is 400 years old. They have an aquarium there (which was a bit too expensive) so instead we went to the Port museum and observatory tower.

I went to this famous shopping place called Osu kannon. There is a temple and a ton of shops.

This is probably the best example that I have of the many misspelled signs/T shirts/ ads that are in english. This one is supposed to say "Please Climb Down," but as you can see, that is not what it says :)

This is from a famous Japanese style garden that we went to in Kanazawa

View of the ocean at sunset from the ride back to Nagoya from Kanazawa

In Kanazawa we went to a fish market. Here is my friend and I eating a whole squid! It wasn't bad.

Last weekend was our first IES trip to Kanazawa 金沢. Here are pictures from the drive up there. It took about 5 hours with traffic, but the scenery was stunning.

I went with Nanzan University on a field trip to go see 名古屋城 (Nagoya Castle). The real one was destroyed so this one is a reconstruction. The photo on the right is a view from the top of the castle of downtown.

Here is some food I have eaten. All delicious.

Scary and cool animals! Upper left is a dead Japanese hornet (they are about two inches long and terrifying), the spider on the right was HUGE (notice the skull design on its back), and the bottom is some type of lizard.

This is not a painting.

This isn't the most flattering picture of me, but here is my host mom! This is just outside of the old town we visited.

I can't really attempt to describle how beautiful Nagano is. All I can say is that these pictures don't do it justice. Amazing.

Here are some pictures from the town.

I went to this very old preserved town in Nagano with my host family. It was awesome.

Here are some of my friends in Nagoya Station, which has a ton of shops and restaurants, a movie theatre, etc. Notice the gold clock in the background. We went to see the new Miyazaki movie "The Borrower Arrietty" based on the American book series. The small pictures to the right are from the movie theater. Movies are quite expensive here. With a student discount it was 1500 Yen, which is somewhere around $18 or so. The movie was entirely in Japanese, which was a bit difficult but the story was not very complicated so I didn't have a hard time following.

Lawson is a chain convenient store that we eat in often. It is sort of equivalent to a 7/11 or a gas station-ish place. The bottom picture is of me and few friends riding the subway.

Here is my room in my host family's house! Right now it is outrageously hot and my family only has air conditioning in the living room to save money. So, as you can imagine sleeping has been a bit difficult at times. The second picture is a view from my window outside.