Alysse Abroad

Dear world, Please, whatever you do, do not get seriously ill in Japan.  Should you realize one day that you are not feeling quite up to par, you will not receive any real help from the doctors here in Japan.  They will either tell you that you are not ill at all, or that you are deathly ill.  I say this from personal experience as well as many, many stories from friends. So on Wednesday, I woke up feeling like a train had just run itself right through my body.  Overnight I had suddenly developed a pounding headache, constant chills that I could feel down to my bone marrow, aches in every muscle, joint, and bone, a cough that refused to stop once it got rolling, a sore throat, the strength of a dead snail, and the sensation that an ogre was taking tap dance lessons on my chest.  So Thursday, when this persisted, I headed over to the clinic.  The doctor then did their usual checkup-y routine on me, and did some chit-chattering.  Then she pulled out a ...

Hey all, Alysse here checking in.  It's finals time, so my butt is in high gear.  Well... it was.  Until I got sick.  But anyway, I've blocked myself from Facebook and Youtube, so until next Friday, it's all books and sleep for me.  I can barely believe nearly 8 of my 12 months have already passed!  Here's to a good Winter's end and an even better Spring's beginning.  I have a lot planned for Spring, so I will be (trying to) keep this blog rolling with it all.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Yokohama with some friends.  I wanted to go initially just because I hadn't been and it's close enough that I don't really have an excuse to not go before I leave Japan, but far away enough that it's not Tokyo, so it's new territory.  Yokohama is a city about 1.5 to 2 hours away from where I am, and it's right on the beach.  We went in the dead of winter, so that beach breeze and moist air was not quite as blissful as I would usually have considered it to be, but it was beautiful all the same. I had missed the smell of the salty water and the sloshing sound the waves make when they hit up against things.  Yokohama turned out to be a really wonderful city.  It has all kinds of things to do, it's really, really, really beautiful, and it has a laid-back kind of vibe to it.  I sort of felt like I was back in San Diego, in a far off, roundabout way, if San Diego had a giant Ferris wheel and a Chinatown. Chinatown was the first ...

These two pictures portray my life right now. I'll post up some real blogs soon, I've just been lazy. You probably don't realize it, but the first one is incredibly hilarious.  Just trust me. The second one is more comfy.