Just wanted to let you guys know that I might be dead as soon as the weather starts warming up again. It turns out that there's a humongous monster that resides here in Japan that rears its ugly head every year. Also it is apparently a distant relative of Mothra. It's the "Asian Giant Hornet" or Vespa Mandarinia Japonica, and it can spit acid right into your eyes, no joke. Plus the venom has pheromones that call over even more hornets to spit more venom and gnaw at you with their gigantic mandibles. 30 of these dudes can take on 30,000 normal honeybees and kill them all in just a couple of hours, and then gorge themselves on honey afterwards. I can't even be in the same room as a yellowjacket without peeing myself, so I'm pretty sure I'll be done for if I cross paths with one of these things.

So yeah bugs. They aren't any fun.
Anyway. I've been doing things over here in Isahaya. I moved families once again, and found out that I won't actually have five host families, but I'll just be going back to my first two host families again. I don't really understand why they did this instead of just making my stays longer, but uh, I don't really understand a lot of things over here.

The new family is nice. My first weekend with them, we made a trip over to the local Buddhist temple because it was still the New Year's time and they went to pay respects to their ancestors, or something. I dunno.Then this weekend I went to a botanical garden with the host mom and her sister. It was pretty nice, but it seemed really strange to be in the middle of winter and checking out palm trees and all that. And uh...I really don't have anything to say for this post. I'll just put pictures up.

the truth is that after reading about that wasp hornet killer bee thing I read a bunch more about creepy insects and now I'm really paranoid and all I can think about are gross bugs, so uh, I'll just leave off here.

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It's the New Year's time here in Japan, which as far as I can tell, seems to last a lot longer than it does back in the U.S. Lots of people go to temples and all that, so I went to a couple with Alex, the other American exchange student here in Nagasaki prefecture. We went to the Suwa Shrine, the biggest shrine in Nagasaki prefecture, located in Nagasaki itself. A ton of other people were there as well, and it was quite interesting to see. I took a time-lapse video of us walking up the steps to the shrine, but it turned out to be a shorter trip than I expected, so the video is kind of quick. Also, I didn't really think the whole time-lapse thing through, so at times it can get a bit choppy. If you've got some video know-how though, maybe you can go through it a little slower.


For New Year's day, we had a meal of special New Year's-only food. Most of it was pretty gross. Actually, I can't honestly say that I enjoyed the meal. Most of the stuff came covered in some weird glazing that hardened into a plastic-like covering. However, the next day I also went to a New Year's dinner in Nagasaki with Alex where we had some KFC which was a little more edible. Apparently KFC has become a sort of traditional food in the end of year/New Year's time of year. I would be all OH GOODNESS THAT IS GROSS about that, but seriously, KFC is such a better choice than the stuff they usually have.

So uh, I don't really have a whole lot to say here. I guess, uh, have a happy New Year and all, even though I am quite late on that. As for a New Year's resolution, I don't really have one. Never really did make them anyway, because I usually just forget about them in a week or so. I dunno. New Year.

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