Yes, I'm Still Alive!

Ohisashiburi! Minna genki deshita ka?

Boy, I'm just so bad at keeping my blog up! This is only my second post for the year and it's already half way though June! ^^;

A lot of things have been happening and I've been really busy at work as well as just getting back a couple weeks ago from my yearly trip to Japan.

Like I mentioned before, my boss took another job working for the City and County, so I'm all by myself all day most of the time. My boss will pop in every once in awhile to check out his messages or to look for a file and then go back to his other job. I never see him now except on Saturdays for a couple of hours since the tax season rush is over and I go home at my regular time of 5:00 p.m. and he doesn't get back to our office until after 7:00.

Anyway, this tax season has been just totally exhausting! Not only did I have my payroll's and corporation bookkeeping to do, but I also did basic work on a lot of the individual income tax returns by filling out as much of the information that I could on the organizers and putting all the information given by the client in order so that my boss wouldn't have to go searching through all the papers and taking up too much time to work on the returns. I also had to do my usual inputting, correcting, printing and assembling the returns after my boss went through the organizer. I also ended up trying to do most of the extensions by myself so that we could get the extensions out on time. We actually finished one hour earlier than we usually do which was nice, but man, was I TIRED!!!!!!!

Even though the initial rush is over, work still sucks since the phone rings continuously, partly because my boss is taking so long to finish tax returns, partly because he NEVER returns his phone calls unless I beg him to call certain people. He finally got a new phone system which I (yes I had to setup the phone system!!!! XP) just set up today. At least now I don't have to answer the phone every single time since the system has an answering machine. Now if only my boss would get caller ID I'd be set!! XD

I just got back a couple of weeks ago from my annual vacation to Japan and had a lot of fun! This year we went to Osaka first and stayed a few days there just eating A LOT and revisiting some of the tourist spots that we hadn't seen in a few years to see if anything had changed. We then went to Okinawa for about five days to visit our relatives who live in Naha. My uncle is in the military and just got transferred to Naha at the beginning of this year so they told us to come visit this year as they are supposed to only stay there for a couple of years.

It's a good thing my Aunt and Uncle live there since there is only a bus system in Okinawa or else you have to take a taxi or drive yourself. All the sightseeing spots are just so far away from each other! My aunt drove us around to go sightseeing since she hadnt's gotten to do much herself (she used us as guinea pigs!) so we all got lost together. My aunt drove and my sister and I helped to navigate, though my sister did most of the navigating since she was in charge of the map. When we went north to see the spots in Nago it took an hour and a half just to get there by car! In Nago we saw the world's largest aquarium. It was huge! The main tank is so large that 3 whale sharks have room to swim around in it! My sister loved it! We also stopped at the Pineapple Park and got to sample their Pineapple Wine as well as a lot of other pineapple goods such as cakes, juices, beauty products and of course pineapples! They also carry a lot of the other goods that Okinawa is known for which is sugar cane and this citrus fruit that they call Shiquasa (?). It's a lemon-lime kinda fruit. It was really fun and we bought a lot of omiyage there. We ended up eating in a buffet restaurant near "America Town" where they had this majorly delicious miso soup! I had like four or five bowls of soup. I hardly ate any of the other food! We also stopped at this really little "foot onsen" located outside one of the hotels nearby. It's actually just a strip of water where hot mineral water is piped in and you are supposed to rest your feet and legs in it. It felt very good and it was very relaxing!

The next day we went south and got lost looking for Okinawa World. It was really hard looking for it because the signs were no help whatsoever! Okinawa World is located in the same place as the Gyokesendo caves so some of the signs said Okinawa World and some of the signs just said CAVE! It was a good thing my sister and I can read some kanji so we figured out that the cave signs were also for Okinawa World. After we FINALLY found Okinawa World we spent most of the day there. It was actually really fun. We got to see an Eisa dance program which was really entertaining and the lunch we ate at the restaurant was really delicious!

The next day we went looking for Ryukyu Village. It was really interesting in that the village is built like an actual Ryukyu village was built long ago and they feature a lot of the crafts that were done such as weaving, printing, and making musical instruments. There was also a dog there named Kai. It was a Ryukyu breed and it was so cute! When we called him he reluctanly came out of his home (since it was so dang hot! I probably wouldn't want to come out into the hot sun either!) and we played with him a little.

We stayed at the Hotel Royal Orion which is located on the main tourist strip in Okinawa know as "Kokusai Dori" or Kokusai Street. There are a lot of touristy stores and a couple of shopping arcades so we pretty much spent a whole day walking through the arcades and laughing at some of the tourist souvenirs they were selling.

The final day we spent walking around "America Town" which is actually a town near Kadena Air Force base. Since so many Americans hang out around there it's known as "America Town". We walked all around the stores, had some drinks at Starbucks (they were in the middle of a Banana promotion!) and watched some street performers. My sister who usually NEVER buys clothes in Japan actually found a couple of t-shirts that she really liked and bought them. I must admit the designs were really nice!

We spent the last three days of our vacation running around Tokyo buying all of our "toys". I read a manga that is not sold over the internet nor can the local Japanese bookstore here bring it in since the publishing company will not sell there goods overseas. I had to buy those first and ended up finding two more titles from the publishing company that I liked! Gads, now I have three titles to buy every year! I also bought a bunch of CD's that I decided to look for while I was in Japan and also some DVD's. One of the DVD's I bought was "Garo". I had been trying to decide whether or not to buy the DVD's before I went on vacation since Amazon Japan was showing it to me. When I saw it in Japan I decided that since I had the money. I would buy it and if I liked it I would keep buying it. I LOVE IT! The action scenes are cool! The costumes are cool! The actors are cute!!!! XD

Well, I got some DVD's that I just rented today to go and watch so I better end my post here before any poor soul who happens to stumble onto my ramblings falls asleep (unless they're already passed out!)

JA MATA NE!!!!! (Hopefully.....) ^_^