Okay... Let's try this again...

Tori here!  I'm still in Japan.  The thing is that I moved to a new program and a new facility in the city of Otsu.  Before I was with quite a few other Americans.  Now I'm in an apartment building primarily occupied by Japanese workers for either the boat or the hotel next door.  There are only three Americans besides myself here, and two Australians.

Above is the new foreign line-up around here.  Just take out those two Japanese friends there.   The one in the back with her hand straight up is Natalie, she's one of the Austalians, along with Paul who is across from her.  Next to Natalie is Wes, one of my fellow Americans.  I'm the blonde closest to Paul with the yellow bag and side pony tail.  Next to me are Emily and Elmo. You can't see, but Elmo has hair that is probably longer than mine.  It's the most gorgeous hair I've ever witnessed in my life.  It's definitely worth mentioning.

This is the old group.   Only a few of these original gems remain over at JCMU in the town of Hikone.  Most went back home to America after the first month.  Starting from the girl in the white hat and going up the back row to the right and then winding back and forth, we have: Erika, Iyana, Rory, Marc(our Professor and an old friend of mine standing there in the back center), Yutang, Sean, Veronica, Uzonna(the one sitting on the right), Me(standing in the black and white), Katie, Ashley(sitting in front of Katie), and Desdemona.  The man in the front middle is a Hiroshima survivor

Man, how I miss that old group.  If I could just have them back and add Elmo on to that I'd be so very pleased.  Elmo is pretty cool and probably the person I enjoy hanging out with the most over here in Otsu.  We have very similar interests and he's just comfortable to be around.  And, again, he has the most beautiful Kenshin-mermaid hair in all the land... Just don't let it catch the light when you have a migraine, you might die. He also has an obsession with Pokemon that some might find crazy, but I just find it a tad adorable.  He's one of the top competitive Pokemon players or something of the sort.  Pretty cool.

Elmo.  I put my cat ears on him~! n.n

Wes is also pretty cool.  I like hanging out with him, but not like I enjoy being around Elmo, or any of the JCMU people for that matter.  Wes is older than all of us.  We call him Grandpa.  Although senpai, or uncle, or something like that would be more fitting.  I believe he's 26, and he's really damn good at cooking food.  He also LOVES cooking food and knows how to cook with all the ingredients here.  So, many times, he cooks us all food.  Today he made us something called nikujaga.  It's like Japanese beef stew.  We ate it over rice and it was pretty good.  Wes is also nice when you want adventure, because he's usually up for exploring or doing just about anything.  He has a GPS just in case we get lost, but we usually just check the time on it if Elmo isn't around.  Elmo is the only one with a watch.

This is Wes with ALL the ladies.  Fabulous.

The last member of our American crew is Emily.  Emily is my roommate and is a self-proclaimed depressive personality.  She hates the color pink and ANYTHING that could even remotely associate her with being a girl.  She's pretty distant, while the rest of us are always talking and joking and such. We generally get along, but I always feel... on edge around her...  Like she hates me.  Although, there have been several times where she's been quite pleasant and fun to be around... maybe she just takes time to get used to?  

The really awesome thing about Emily is the voice she makes when she's talking to her cat on webcam.  Yes, she talks directly to her cat, on webcam... for quite a while, too...  but yeah... her voice becomes SO high pitch and just... painfully, disgustingly cute.  Elmo and I attempt to not laugh our asses off every time. 

This is Emily doing something surprisingly cute (she doesn't really like cute too much... unless it's a cat) with one of our Japanese friends.

The internet here only works on the first two floors by the way.  They conveniently placed all us Americans on the 5th and 6th floor, so we all have to come down to the lounge on the 1st floor to use the internet.  It's probably a good thing, though, because otherwise we'd just sit in our rooms all day and be forever alone.  The lounge is nice, and we're working on fixing it up a little so that we can have parties down here and stuff.  The biggest problem in here so far is the massive amount of tiny ants that come out of nowhere in endless streams just to crawl over EVERYTHING you know and love.

The boat I vaguely mentioned way up there at the top is the Michigan boat.  This is where all of us foreigners work.  It's named Michigan after the state the Americans are from.  It's for the sister-state relationship that Shiga and Michigan share.  The boat is a big show boat with a red paddle wheel on the back(mainly for show)  There's a fancy dining room on the first floor, a cafe and buffet hall on the second floor, a food and drink bar and performance stage on the third, and then the top floor is called the sky deck, it's for viewing the scenery of Lake Biwa, the lake the boat cruises around in while people eat or get drunk or flirt with their date on the cruise they're on.

This is the best picture I can find of the Michigan right off the bat.  You get the general idea of it.

 

There's a couple nice pictures of what the paddle wheel looks like in action.  It's pretty fabulous.  Especially when the sun is setting so nicely in the background.  It's pretty loud, though, and splashes, so I don't always prefer to be near it.

 Here's a nice picture of us in our working uniforms out in front of the Michigan Boat.  Looking pretty snazzy.  I'll get an up-close picture of what it looks like later.

I actually quite like working on the boat, especially when there's school kids on.  Junior High students are the BEST in the world.  So much fun.  Some days it's really slow, though, but even those days are great because my co-workers are really nice and fun.  I often get called "kawaii"(cute) or I get called some random Disney Princess name or Barbie.  Hearing Japanese people try to say the words "gorgeous" or "pretty" is usually funny because it sounds so off.  It's pretty nice, although sometimes a little embarrassing.  Two of my male coworkers have asked if I'm single(which I currently am), so I'm curious what's going to become of that.  I don't see much of a point to it, seeing as that I'm going back home at the end of August, which is in two months.

The only bad thing about the boat is the plethora of spiders, and even that isn't that bad after the first week or so.  I've become pretty accustomed to spiders being EVERYWHEREEVER and dropping down on me at random times or me accidentally walking through or touching their webs.  The restaurant areas of the boat don't have any spiders, just the outside, so I only have to worry about it when I'm not working and when I'm anywhere else in Japan, really.  Spiders are literally EVERYWHERE here.  Just get used to it, or don't come to Japan.  They might be gone in the winter, though... not sure.

This here is the Michigan house by the way.  There's 7 floors and I live on the 5th with Emily.  Elmo and Wes are on the 6th floor.  There are also many spiders here, but again, I've gotten used to them.  It makes sense that they're here, though.  I mean, the walkways and stairways are all outside.  and the entrance and everything aren't THAT well sealed that they could keep out little spiders.  Just burglars and stuff, which is pretty uncommon here anyways.

I think we're going to go get ice cream now since it's so damn hot out.  I'll try to post about my day later tonight~