Good Bye Grandpa…

During these past few days my grandfather had been very ill in the hospital, it wasn’t the first time but still, I was praying in order for him to recover quickly.

So, very early this morning, I was woken up by a call I received from my mother, telling me that he had just passed away. When I picked up the phone and saw the number on the caller ID, I sort of knew right away what had happened before asking anything.

And the thing is that, I surely wasn’t expecting this to happen 4 months ago when I came to this country. As I said in previous posts, I knew that things will never be the same when I get back to Panama, I just didn’t know how different they were gonna be.

I have many memories with him.

Whenever we spent weekends together on my parents farm we would play dominoes with my brothers until very late in the night.

We used to go almost every Sunday to his house when I was a kid and he would cook for us, my grandpa was the best cook ever, I missed his food a lot when he stopped cooking.

He used to tell stories all the time from when he was working at the Panama Canal zone, that I really didn’t pay much attention to because I always felt I had heard them thousands of times.

My grandpa was really good at drawing, painting and many other things.

He was 84 years old, the next month was his birthday. Over the past few years he had spent a lot of time on hospitals, but always recovered somehow, and I sort of thought it was going to be the same this time.

I’m really going to miss you grandpa, and I’m terribly sorry for not being able to be there in your last moments. I can’t even go to your funeral because the plane ticket costs three times the money I have saved until now, please forgive me.

I know you must be in a much better place right now, so please rest, and watch from there.

Karaoke!!! – カラオケ！！！

And then… after the graduation party, we, Fernando (me), Akira, Baska, Ben, Nam, Paun, Tonu, Banu and Thiago, went to do some karaoke together with Nitsu-sensei and Tajiri-sensei as a last Japanese course activity.

Here’s me and Baska walking towards the karaoke place. The Ue o Muite Arukou song got sort of stucked in our heads so we were singing it while walking.

Graduation Party!!!

So, after the ceremony, there was a party at Sanjou Conference Hall (山上会館) near Sanshiro Pond (三四郎池).

Here is everyone walking towards there.

Japanese Course Completion Ceremony

Last Thursday (August 2nd) was the ceremony for the completion of the Japanese intensive course at the University of Tokyo’s Hongo campus.

Since a lot of people were going really well dressed and stuff, I also decided to go dressed in a suit. That was horrible, that day was particularly hot, and with all those black clothes it surely was a pain.

Sam and Phuong were sitting right next to me.

Toshiba RS&D

On July 31st, Hui and I were invited by our professor, Shigeo Takahashi, to a presentation at Toshiba’s Research and Development Center in Kawasaki City (川崎市).

On our way there, Hui and I, got sort of lost, but somehow managed to get there.

This is an interesting picture I took on the way there.

There’s a lot of weird parking stuff like this here in Japan.

Massive Birthday Party

As you already know, my birthday was in July 29th. The thing is that, a lot of people’s birthdays were also around the same date, and since we all had our Japanese final exam on the 30th, we decided to make a big party for all of us on the 30th at night at the multi-purpose hall of our lodge.

We were celebrating the birthdays of:

• Naoki (July 23rd or 24th, I don’t remember that well).
• Hui (July 27th).
• Fernando (me, July 29th).
• Kazumi (和美, July 30th).
• Gaik Theng (July 30th).

Sarah’s birthday was on 22nd, but we all had a huge party just for her the week before.

Here’s Kazumi playing with the balloons. She wasn’t the only one doing that during the whole night.

Happy Birthday!!! – 誕生日おめでとう！！！

Last Sunday (July 29th) was my birthday. I really wasn’t planning on doing anything but these guys just appeared out of nowhere with balloons and stuff.

Look at all those balloons!!! 24 in total (21 after a couple of hours though ), since that’s my current age. I had quite a hard time trying to accomodate them in my room afterwards, but it was nice.

Last Japanese Class – 最後の日本語のクラス

Last week was our last Japanese class at the International Center, it was somewhat sad.

先週は留学生センターで僕たちの最後の日本語のクラスでしたが、ちょっと悲しかったです。

These guys remembered my birthday and sang the standard happy birthday song in the classroom.

皆は僕の誕生日を思い出したので、教室で普通の誕生日の歌を歌いました。:)

My birthday cakes.

僕の誕生日ケーキです。:lol:

Madama Butterfly

On July 7th I went with Baska, Thiago, Rene and Eliza to Musashino Shimin Bunka Kaikan (武蔵野市民文化会館) in Kichijoji (吉祥寺) to watch Madama Butterfly (蝶々夫人) being performed by the University of Tokyo’s Opera Circle, since our friend Naoki was participating on it.

Here’s the pretty neat ad that was sticked in the elevator of our lodge.

Tonu’s Birthday!!!

On July 7th was our friend Tonu’s birthday, but since he and Nam were going back to Thailand the day before that, we decided to celebrate on the 5th.

We went to Shimokitazawa (下北沢) to an all-you-can-eat yakiniku (焼肉)restaurant, since he loves yakiniku (and probably everyone else as well).

From left to right: Tonu, Baska, Natto (which from now on and in any future posts we will address as Paun), Nam and Akira.

Here we were before starting to eat, some of us starved to death the whole day in preparation for this moment.

Weird Stuff: My Favorite Coffee

This is something interesting I found the other day. Bought it just for fun. Nice coffee by the way, but I was kinda afraid at first, since I thought I would probably cut my veins right away after tasting it.

So, lately I haven’t been feeling too energetic… I wonder why?

Eli’s Farewell Party

This is somewhat old, but since my online storage service was acting kinda funny these past few weeks I just couldn’t post these pictures.

Well, around the end of June our friend Eli went back to Brazil for good, so everyone was so happy about it that we even made a party (nah! just kidding, everyone was somewhat sad… I guess). The party was at the Komaba International Students House.

Here’s Ann and the brazilian mafia.

Photo Storage Service Change

Since my previous online storage service is really bad (if you noticed, there are some dead links whenever you go to the photo pages), well it’s not that bad, it gives some huge 25 GB storage space, which is really good, but everything else just sucks, so I’ve given up already, and decided to change to Flickr like almost everyone else.

I’ll be uploading everything in the next few days, so I hope I can share my pictures with you anytime soon.