Tsune Nishi Returns!

For the first time in a very long time, I got to talk to my friend who visited us in America for over a week about 2 years ago: Tsune Nishi! For those of you who don't know, he was a student with me at EWU. He is a little guy with a big heart, and pretty cool to boot, although he's grown up in the city for so long that the outdoors are kind of intimidating to him, so in that way we contrast. Anyways, it looks like he is a busy guy now, and the workforce has placed him in a new location: Osaka! That's right, the 2nd closest major city in the area. I could get there by 2 or 3 trains for only about $30 roundtrip. As opposed to Tokyo, which I was predicting before, which would cost about $800 roundtrip! So I get to see Tsune, in all likelihood, sometime on this vacation. I wasn't able to talk to him for long, because he had a big meeting to attend, but I'm happy he is doing fairly well.

On a less joyful note, I found out today that my very homesick friend, Trang, went up the super-heated hill this morning to the school, to email her friends back home in Vietnam, only to find out that they have closed the computer labs until the 17th. So she's either going to write shorter text messages, or she'll have to find another way. I suppose I'll let her use my laptop sometime so she can write some serious emails rather than use an abbreviated uncomfortable phone-button-pusing marathon.