★The Giving Tree, Rice Fields and Kind Host Mothers★

I bought The Giving Tree this weekend at the mall while I was shopping!! The Giving Tree is the most important book to me, and I have actually been wanting to buy the Japanese version for a very long time. Because it is important, I wanted to share this with someone at home, so i bought this for them when I saw it! ((spoiler alert: this book is indeed just as sad in Japanese as it is in English...I only shed a few tears, so everything is okay~haha))

   Toyama city is completely surrounded and filled with rice fields. (: It is very nice. I might have mentioned this, but Toyama is not too rural, not too suburban. I definitely realized there were rice fields everywhere, but there was something else a little regarding what my town looks like at home in Georgia. I couldn't quite put my finger on if for a while, I couldn't figure out what was different. Sure, my town in Georgia doesn't have rice fields, but Georgia definitely has houses like Toyama. Georgia definitely has roads and cars like Toyama. Today, I finally figured the aspect of Toyama that is different than at home! (: Toyama doesn't have any trees!! Well, that's not true, Toyama has a few trees every now and then.... But where I live in Georgia is very forest-like and there are many trees every few feet. Toyama has houses and rice fields. If you look out onto the horizon, you can see houses and rice fields for miles. (: In Georgia, there are so many trees that you cannot usually clearly see but a few meters ahead of you. In Toyama, the land in flat, the grass ((rice)) is green, and there are no tall buildings obstructing your view of the land or the sky. (: it is absolutely magnificent! (:

Also, today I had a slightly less than stellar day when I was ditched after school by some friends. Anyway, my host-mother noticed I was sad, and when she found out what happened, she took me out for ice cream at a local cafe~ It was wonderful! I got a few ice cream flavors, one of them being my favorite~ 抹茶 flavored ice cream (green tea)!! YUM★ It was so nice of my host mother to do that~ it made my day so much more stellar!

~Jane Claire (｡・ε・｡)