Author Archives: Lachlan Canavan

On Saturday I spent my last afternoon with my host family. I ran over, as per usual, and we went to have tsukemen— cold ramen dipped in broth. We went to the base of Mt. Hakodate and looked out over … Continue reading →

The weekend after the speech, I spent most of my time gathering the journals, photographs, and videos I had and uploading them to a webpage. I felt that a webpage would make more sense to present the stuff I had … Continue reading →

The weekend after my first week in the dorm started on Friday as the five of us staying there headed to an izakaya. It was a good chance for us to really get to know each other— I hadn’t spent … Continue reading →

My time in Sapporo was really wonderful because after a month of intensive study we really had improved— and the weekend gave all of us who went a chance to see the results of our learning. I searched for and … Continue reading →

The fourth week started with some more work for my independent study project. I walked about 20 minutes to a jazz cafe right after class, where I was met with a cat at the door. To my surprise, the cat … Continue reading →

The morning after the jazz performance I went to see, all HIF students headed to Onuma Quasi National Park on the outskirts of Hakodate, where we would spend Saturday night. In the afternoon we hiked around the lake, then got … Continue reading →

The second week was more difficult for a few reasons. The first unfortunate point was I found myself without the abundance of motivation that had carried me through the first week. Homework dragged further and further into the night as … Continue reading →

In this journal, I’ll discuss the first few weeks of my time in Hakodate. I arrived here a few days before the start of my program, and stayed at a hotel in the Matsukaze-cho area. I had been in Japan … Continue reading →