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So, apart from a few rough times in Tokyo and Narita Hotels, and some defying death on Mt. Fuji, Japan was a blast. ...Ok, maybe Fuji was fun too.

Today we had the closing ceremony for the KIT IJST program. The president of the university, who also came to our Rube Goldberg machine contest, spoke at the ceremony, and also gave out awards for the machines, posters and speeches. It was apparently 97 degrees in Kanazawa today according to the weather report, so wearing suits was a bit tough, but we had a lot of fun taking pictures afterwards.

Today we had to present our Rube Goldberg machines. Our machine was decently complex:

After today, there will only be 2 full days left for me at KIT, but two weeks of traveling yet to come. With that in mind, today we put the finishing touches on our Rube Goldberg machine project, and tested it a bit. We only had one successful run through today, mainly because we also had to finish our posters and write our speeches for the presentation tomorrow. My partner mostly wrote both, which saved a lot of time then, but the speech was pretty long and difficult, so after class I practiced a lot.

Today, since it is the last weekend we will have during the study abroad program, was the Farewell Party. The Students For Global Exchange again threw this party for us, they do so much for us I don't think I could ever express my thanks to them. They had quite the elaborate setup:

Today in language class we celebrated a holiday that the Japanese hold on the 7th of July called Tanabata.

Yesterday we had our language class like usual, but part of the class was devoted to writing our thank you letters to the host family. They made sure that we wrote really polite and grateful letters, it seems like it will mean a lot to them.

One other thing we did in language class, although I can't remember which day it was exactly, was some music dictation. We listened to this song called "Bonzai" by The Wall-flies, at least I think that's what their name is.

Today in culture class we talked a bit about the schools in Japan. Like in America, there's the concept of elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and college. In middle school, students are very communal, and they work in groups of about four to learn the material, and the teacher kind of supervises. They are responsible for a lot of things, including serving lunch, which can take a little while for them to learn.

The test went well in my Japanese Language class, and then we practiced our self-introductions because we were meeting our host families later that day. At lunch I went to the post office to exchange some traveler's cheques, it was pretty easy. Also, since there's a travel agency right inside the bookstore at KIT, we booked a pass for the trains for the long weekend to get to Kyoto and Osaka, or wherever we want to go in that area.