I hate writing out invitations by hand. Thank goodness for electronics! Now all I need to do is send them off in time. And I have plenty of that. I mean, the thing's not until July! That's like...too far away to send them off now. Maybe next month, or June even. It's a tricky balance. Unless you send off two invitations which I should have probably thought of earlier. Duh. Now I'm going to do that. Except the the second invitations are going to be called reminders, so they won't really be invitations as such.

 On another note? I should never, ever look at hollywood casting because they never get it right. Ever. They're almost as bad as some of the fans. Which I have yet to run into, but it's really only a matter of time.

Life is just sooo crazy right now. My sister bought me my dress for my big day already- she knows me so well it's not even funny, because I was actually thinking, oh no, she's gonna get a really frilly and over the top one, but she's already on the ball, and it's gorgeous! It'd be great though if my Mom stopped asking me if I'm going to wear a kimono for any of the ceremonies though.

 I already told her I'm not doing it that way...but I guess she's just a traditionalist. I might just wear it for the afterparty to sort of compromise, but you can't really dance that well in kimonos. Least I don't think so.

So I actually have a date for my last day at the shrine, or at least an approximate time: June 7th. It's sort of sad because I really have enjoyed my time here, as I've said before, but it's time to start a new chapter in my life.

...That sounded so rehearsed, swear to god. Anyway, I'm not leaving the country until probably like, late July. Me and my fiance, funnily enough, haven't actually been to an Bon festival in Japan, and the July one is around the 15th so we figured hey, why not, might as well! I know one of my favorite parts of it is the floating lanterns at the end. Except we never could really do that at home, because they'd always tip into the water the minute we put them down.

How surreal it is that a year ago Sunday, something swept through Japan and changed it forever. So much so that parts of Fukushima prefecture is still a no go zone, and there's still so much debris to clean up. I think they said it was like, 20 million pounds or something. And they've only got six percent of it taken care of.

The shrine's holding a a memorial service on Sunday. Well, I don't think memorial service quite describes it, but I think it's the closest  thing. I don't know. You'd think I'd be better at this kind of thing. I'm barely learning to read Japanese now...  Romaji apparently doesn't count. Least not to some people I've talked to.

There are some days where everything works out and you feel so happy. And there are days that are like that, but only more, and you know there's more of them to come, but you have to work for it, but that doesn't lessen the affect...I had one of the second, in case you're wondering! Oh, and it was also a decision day, too. I love being here, and I love working in the shrine...but I've decided that it's going to be the best thing for me if I return home to San Francisco.

 It was only a part time thing, but I'm always gonna remember my time here. And I might even come back on vacation one day!  Hopefully my parents won't be too upset with another decision I made...

It feels like it's just one of those days. Or months. Last week was weird. This week is topping it.

I think fall is starting to come in a little early. It's getting all sweater weather-y. Least that's what a couple of the senior citizens here have said to me. Seriously, when did being in this line of work get everyone to talk to me?

Gosh, am I exhausted. So many people came into the shrine today, and so many of them wanted to talk to me for some reason. Most of them were kids who'd just finished some big test or something and were coming in to ask for good results. One of them even gave me a green tea flavored kit-kat. It was...interesting. I like the chocolate ones better, but it was nice of her to give me that anyway.