meeting people

By my third week in Japan, I've been to six university campuses. I've met people on five of them and will be returning to three or four regularly. Also exciting has been my reunion with my freshman year roommate from USC, Yumi. We made brownies at my apartment, which didn't work so well in the fish broiler (next time we're making them at her house.) She lives less than 30 minutes away, which is crazy to me! We plan to hang out again tomorrow too, which makes me so happy...she's going to help me with Japanese too!

As for students, I've met the most at Sophia University, which is a Catholic school, but without many religious pupils. I don't know if you can see the cross in the picture, but it's on the top at the right. I'm planning to join a swimming circle at Sophia, and two students offered to take me to the pool! I met some other students as well at our first English lunch on Friday. I'll be bringing a copy of The Case for Christ to Keiko next week, because she has been unable to find a copy in Japanese (we're still looking too though.)

Our team also visited Nihon and Todai Universities on Wednesday. I will be going back to Todai with Kermit and one of the Japanese staff members, Yusuke. He was able to introduce us to a Christian student, Nobu, who is a freshman this year. Oh, and in that picture from Nihon, it was really funny...later on during our ride home on the train, Yusuke asked if Kermit liked Shyla since he put his arm around her. The answer was actually no, and Americans sometimes just do that with friends.

Naomi, who is also on the Japanese staff, also introduced me to a freshman, Aya, at Rikkyo University. This is another Catholic school, also known as St. Paul's. Again, there aren't many Catholic students. It was fun to talk to Aya for a while, and she's going to introduce me to her boyfriend from Osaka during Rikkyo's festival week at the beginning of November.

I've also been to Waseda and met a girl who used to live in San Diego at Toyo University. I hope to hang out with her again next week! I continue to love the Japanese people, my teammates, and everyone!