It's Official: Kanazawa, Japan

Yup, I just checked my email and the district chair for my Rotary district's exchange program sent an email my way with a file attached that (FINALLY!) gave me a bunch of info from Japan.

My official home away from home will be KANAZAWA, JAPAN!


The basic info from Wikipedia:

Kanazawa sits on the Sea of Japan, bordered by the Japan Alps, Hakusan National Park and Noto Peninsula National Park. The city sits between the Sai and Asano rivers. Its total area is 467.77 km².

There's a LOT of info on it. Basically it was one of the few major cities that was spared of bombing in WW2 so there's a lot of old architecture preserved and it looks BEAUTIFUL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanazawa,_Ishikawa <- go there if you want to read more Also, as of right now it looks like I'll probably be flying out August 21st so that's when this blog will (FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY) kick off into an EXCHANGE blog. The email also told me a few other things:

1. The trip costs are only around $250-260ish! It's especially awesome because Rotary over there pays for the other two thirds of the cost (yup, it's actually $750ish)

2. I'll get a monthly allowance of 15000 yen. (~$180 CDN) That's quite nice for an allowance (I don't spend lots of money so yeah...)

3. My first host family will be the Sugano family. No email was given :( It didn't mention any children but there was no space marked for children on the page anyways so I'll have to wait and see.

4. It had my Japan Rotary counsellor's info as well.

I'll update as I learn more :)

Coming Up

I definitely need to update more often but I like to save stuff up and then post it all together for whatever reason.

Anyways, I performed at another art show recently with my friend Kieron. We did a Flight of the Conchords song (Most Beautiful Girl in the Room). I also filmed a short film that was shown at the same show and people seemed to enjoy it. Oh yeah! I did improv that night too. So yeah, THREE different thhings featuring me in one night :)

I continue to practice guitar and I'm definitely improving. I've also been collecting little random instruments. In the pasy few months I've bought: A ukulele ($30) , a mini piano/xylophone thing (50 cents) , a CASIO WK-10 ($2 :D ) which is a funky 80s mini sample keyboard, and a "Concertmate 460" ($10) that's a little more versatile than the WK-10. I want to try and write more comedy songs to make an album's worth by the end of the month (good luck....).

A few weeks ago, there was an optional Rotary outing to Niagara Falls that a lot of the exchange students took part in. It was lots of fun, even if we went to things I've been to before many many times. Everything feels fresh when you're with exchange students. It was definitely nice to see everyone again and we all had good times. Afterwards we went to a Rotarians house and most of us slept over. Good times... I remember I woke up the next day and went to the bathroom and when I came back, Luis (one of the inbounds from Brazil) was in my sleeping bag and just said "Can I use this?"

Two major things are coming up:

Rotary Erindale Weekend - I'll make an update about it after it happens in about two week's time-ish. It's probably the most likely time I'll get some more solid info on where I'll be living in Japan and the time window I'll be flying out from here :)

Stache Bash - It's basically Improv Night 2 with an advertising campaign based around mustaches. I'll have to get working on that pretty soon since it's on June 2nd...