So first things first...Cursive is coming to Japan!! 80% of you reading this probably don't know what that means. But they're one of my favorite bands, and they're playing a show in Tokyo and I have tickets, so I'm pretty excited. It was quite an adventure trying to get the tickets, cause there was no address for the venue on the website, so I had to search for that for awhile. But addresses in Japan don't really make a whole lot of sense so finding the place from the address was even more difficult. Luckily, one of my friends lives in Shimo-kitazawa, the neighborhood where the show is and she helped me out. So yeah, that's my music-related excitement for now. I'm on vacation now, our school has a festival during which we get almost a week off of school. I'm going to the festival tomorrow. I think it'll be pretty neat, they set up booths all over campus and have all sorts of activities. Yesterday, I went to Mitake-Jinja, a 1200 year old mountainside shrine and then climbed Otake-san, a mountain that is near the shrine. The shrine was really cool to see, and it was nice to be out in nature and away from the city for a day. The hike/climb up and down the mountain took about 5 hours and we got to see some beautiful scenery and lots of forest on the way. The trees were kind of strange-looking, they only had branches at the top, not down the sides. I fell a total of 3 times on the way there and back, only once actually injuring myself. I have a good-sized bruise on my leg right now as a souveneir from Otake-san. I guess my running shoes don't make great hiking boots. On the way up the mountain, everyone coming down said "konnichwa" to us and then we said konnichiwa back. Well, I looked up to say konnichiwa to these Japanese ladies, totally didn't see a big rock on the ground and tripped and fell right in front of them. They got all concerned and kept asking "Daijobu?", which means "Are you okay?" It didn't hurt, but it was mildly embarassing. Oh well, they can go home and say they saw a 1200 year old shrine, climbed a mountain and had a big clumsy American fall down right in front of them. But all in all, the day was really nice. The view from the top was decent, but foggy, and now I can say I climbed a mountain in Japan. I really want to climb Mt. Fuji, but the climbing season for that isn't until July. Actually, though, I'm going to Mt. Fuji with some friends on Wednesday. We can't climb it, I think we're just going there to see it/hike around it. It should be fun though. Well, I'm off to meet some friends, eat Mexican food and do karaoke. Any requests?