What will be missed.
The holiday season is here and with today being Thanksgiving, we sent to work making my favorites (especially because I need to lose weight, so today was my last hurrah). And I got to thinking about many thing I use the oven for. But oven culture is not Japanese culture, and the best I will probably get in Japan is a toaster oven. So this is the last days of pumpkin pie and whole turkeys. Not that turkey is something I'd be eating a lot of in Japan. Maybe once I've been there for a while, I can make a list. But I can at least give you my fiance's list of things he already knows he will miss:1. good orange juice2. good ice cream (or cheese, or any kind of dairy, really)

Just hang tight.
Psst.Hey, guess what?Hey, you know what?I put my JET application in the mail today. It's officially out of my hands, and I just have to hold my breath until January. Wish me luck!

App, app, application.
It's been a while, hasn't it? I've been pretty busy with grad school: teaching, classes and making some real headway on my thesis so that I can hopefully earn my full degree in May. I'm scheduling a prospectus meeting this week! That's a big step for me. Anyway, the other thing that's been going on is that the JET application finally went up the first week of this month. I was a madwoman refreshing the website all day on the day it was due to go up. And even then, the ability to actually start the application was limited and I had to do some computer trickery to be able to start

One small step for ローレン
Today, on Facebook, a friend of Dai's and mine (who is Japanese) wrote the following as his status: 気持ち悪い食いすぎたI was SO excited because I understood it. Without even needing to look up the kanji, I remembered them well enough (as well as their meanings) to understand that this means (loosely translated) "I feel bad/sick because I ate too much." It's small, but I am weirdly proud of myself.

Love Letter to Japan -- The Bird & The Bee
One of my very good friends sent me this song, and I thought I would share it here. It's not in Japanese, but it is about an American girl who is in love with a Japanese guy. She said it reminded her of me, and I thought it was fitting. Not to mention, catchy. Sadly, this is not the actual music video-- it won't let me embed, so you just get the song. If you're interested in watching the video, that link is here. Thank you, Jen. ♥ And please, enjoy.