:D

I'm getting to love this place more and more each day. Getting to know people every day, making friends, working hard, getting inspired by everyone and everything inside and outside campus, enjoying the landscape, having a ton of people around me who also like anime, manga and the same sort of art, seeing new things every day and I'm also having a lot of fun playing badminton at the campus (three times a week).

Next week, school festival is coming up from tuesday to thursday, monday preparations, friday cleaning up. Which means, no school, which is actually a bit of a shame. On the other hand, really looking forward to the school festival. The badminton club will be setting up a stand to sell... well, some sort of Japanese food. So far, all of the Japanese food I've been eating is really good, so I'm looking forward to it. Yes, half of the time I still have no idea what I'm eating and ask a classmate for an explanation.
Anyway, I'll be at the campus at 9.00 on monday to help out! :) Probably at the festival as well, although that hasn't been decided yet and it's not neccesary to come each day. There is also the plan to go with some classmates to a museum of traditional Japanese art next week, very close to a Shinto shrine, so it would be nice to get to see that as well.

Last week we went with a group of classmates to mount Hiei, which was - according to my Japanese friend - one of the easier ones to climb. For a Dutch guy, used to have ground under your feat that's below zero, it was slightly more difficult than imagined. I have to say, I love to take difficult paths, but you litteraly had to climb at times. Really good workout, amazing outsight at the end and so much fun to do. Pictures are added! :)

As far as school work goes, I'm giving it my everything and people seem to really like what I my make here. The teachers are genius artists (really, really good...). For example, the photography teacher (I'm not taking that class actually but he comes to visit often and have chat)
http://www.uspaceart.com/web/bbs/board.php?bo_table=work&wr_id=204
(first wine glasses were arranged, after that photographed)
Students are very inspiring as well:
http://www.koichirokashima.com/
He is in the other illustration class, which focuses on picture book. Great, detailed painter and a nice guy a well - ate dinner with him a couple times at the campus. Please check feel free to check out his website!
Also, there is an amount of traditional techniques and ingenious works with traces of it, that I couldn't have even imagined beforehand.
Yesterday I went to an Ikebana exhibition at the campus (flower arrangement) and was impressed at the skill the artists had with balancing and composing everything.

For today, I'm going to work on my website with a Japanese translation, update social media pages and see if I can design a business card. Of course, I working hard with Japanese studying as well, as I believe it's the most essential thing for connecting with this country. The official test will be coming in about a month, so that's definetely going to be exciting.

I can't wait for tomorrow, to meet more people and see more amazing things. Mountainclimbing and ikebana exhibition pictures are added, so make sure to take a look! :)