At the stroke of midnight on decemeber 11th 2009...I was flung over Scott's shoulder and was spun around 20 times...maybe a new birthday tradition...we then both collapsed to the floor. That however was not caught on tape...

I have my 20th Birthday while in Japan! It was one of the most enjoyable days. Despite the fact I had my final Japanese Oral Exam this day, but other than that the day was good.  My roommate, Xenia, spent hours making a cake for me and then it was decorated by Bron.  The cake looked amazing!!! I didn't want to eat it!!!! however once you start you can't stop! The cake was delicious.   

Since last friday (my birthday) all the exams have started, most people finish this Thursday...but I decided I would capture everyone at a moment of stress...before and during the exams

Is there enough cables? With finals going on, everyone is using their laptops to type up last minutes papers, we were all fighting for the powerpoint.  It was surprising to see how many cords and cables we had at the one stage.  No-one wants to trip over this mess!!!

So I saw this sign at a train station....not too sure what it means....but I think the point is don't ride your bicycle as pigs will come after you!!!!!!

THe past 3 months I have been busy learning a Bulgarian dance, which was to be performed at Kansai Gaidai's INFES festival.  This style of dance is called Racenia, and it originated from bulgaria.  The unique thing about this dance is we all stand in a straight line, hold onto each others belts and move and quick our legs very quickly. The past few weeks have been very busy for me, preparing for this festival and finalizing our dance. In my bulgarian dance there was 7 of us, we all made our own skirts, and Miyu's grandmother made our vest top.  Our performance went really well over the weekend.  Here is a video to see all our hard work.  We performed on both Saturday and Sunday of the festival.  It was lots of fun and I was quite surprised by the turn out. Lots of people came to watch.  Learning this dance has become a memory that I'll never forget, we had great fun, and watching this video I think all our hard work paid off, and I can finally sit back and enjoying watching the dance!

So while I was in Kobe, inside a shopping centre...which had the massive christmas tree in the previous post, was this really cool looking escalator. It looks like waves. So you could down then straight...then down then straight...then down then straight again. It felt very weird when going on it.  Also there was another escalator going to the train station, which was normal, but next to it was a water fountain going on at the same time.  It was quite beautiful.  Australia doesn't have anything like this back at home...it would be quite nice to look at when i'm at the station and taking the train home.

Incase you're wondering, Maccas means McDonalds...in Aussie language. I was with my Japanese friend in Kyoto, and he kindly pointed out this McDonalds, in which I would not have recognised right away, because it was lacking a signature sign. A yellow McDonalds sign.  My Japanese friend, told me that Kyoto wanted to remain traditional, it is known in Japan as one of the most traditional cities, so it wanted to keep with this tradition and avoid western influence as much as possible. So even though it has a McDonalds, the sign is written in white, and the bricks are brown.  Keeping with the simple, old kyoto colours, brown, whites and blacks.  So if I was just strolling along Kyoto, I would not be able to spot this Maccas from a mile away.  In my opinion, I associate McDonalds with the Big Yellow M, its what makes Maccas, Maccas for me!

So here is our attempt at singing the frog song. This 20 second video was filmed during halloween day at uni, so me and my friends are elmo, pikachu, and a frog...thus why we came up with this song again.