So I finally did something over my break.  I went to Nara.  Here is
where you can see the giant buddha.  It really is huge.  You look at
it and it`s all inside by the way, and the nostril looks tiny, but
apparently when they were building it the eye fell inside, so some boy
crawled into the nose and got the eye out.  So behind the buddha, they
carved into a pillar a hole the same size and if you crawl through you
get good luck the whole year.  My roomate went through, but he`s
smaller than me and he almost got stuck, so I didn`t do it, but he was
the only adult that went through.  Only kids crawl though, so all the
people there starting clapping for him.  It was pretty funny.  The
other thing that is cool about Nara is that they have pretty much
domesticated deer.  They walk all though town and everyone feeds and
pets them.  Although, it got me thinking about the deer I`m used to in
the wild.  These deer looked nasty compared to them.  I started to
think about how whenever an animal moves into the city it becomes
gross and disgusting.  This made me think some pretty deep thoughts
about my current situation.  I`ve never been in so much of a city in
my life.  Kobe is small, but packed with people and the city doesn`t
stop all the way to Osaka, which is gigantic.  So I am a little
worried that, because I`m in the city I will become disgusting and
unhealthy.  I am an animal (that will never sound right, so I won`t
even try).  But we also found some hiking paths outside of Nara and
went into the woods.  Here I saw what I have named the strangletree.
It is a tree that is all twisted, like it was formed from vines and it
was growing around other trees and basically strangling them.  It was
really cool looking though.  My Japanese is finally getting better.
It`s strange, because when I first got here, I was having these stupid
conversations in English, because I didn`t understand anything, but
now I can force people to speak Japanese, because my Japanese is
better than their English.  And I will hopefully learn a lot more.
I`ve been hitting grammar really hard and just dealing with time
lately, but I think I`m going to try to push for vocabulary next.  You
wouldn`t believe how hard numbers are in Japanese.  There are endings
for everything.  But there are so many irregulars with everything it`s
tough.  Like days of the month.  The first ten are all strange, then
it gets normal.  Except for 20, 14, and 18.  Then you have a whole set
for things that are cylindrical, then a set for people, then a set for
flat and round things, a set for animals, a different set for big
animals.  The worst part is that you can`t just use the number counter
all the time.  It is correct to say the number counter for people and
then say the word people.  Why?  I have no idea.  But my teacher said
that after next week if I learn all the verb conjugations this week I
will know 80% of Japanese, except for kanji and vocab.  But that`s
based on grammar only.  And I still have trouble thinking things up,
pronouncing things so people understand me, and remembering words.
Plus that is normal Japanese.  I`m also learning slang and Kansai-ben
and other stuff that is different.  I used some in class on accident
and my teacher gets mad at me, its pretty funny.  That`s about all I
got for now.

Dan