I've been in the newspapers quite a bit. Here's one of the first
articles I'm in. I'll try to get you a translation when I am on a
computer. Right now I'm on my phone.----------------HERE'S the translation (roughly):

"I'm Luke Harwath. Nice you meet you!
I'm from America and I'm 22 years old. At university I studied Japanese a little and can speak a little Japanese. I can also write a little bit of Japanese. I want to learn more.
I like the Japanese movie director, Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro), and am a fan of his work.
Ohira village is very beautiful. I enjoy getting used to living in Ohira.
I look forward to meeting you all. Nice to meet you."

That's a pretty rough translation, but is basically the jist of it. As I've mentioned to people before, Japanese is difficult to translate into English and vice versa. There are so many lingual and cultural differences that a lot of time you just can't do it exactly. It also helps if you are better at Japanese than myself.
By the way, for anyone who doesn't realize... if you click on any of the pictures I have posted, you can see a much larger version of them.

Here are a couple more pics from our trip to kisakata when we climbed
Mt. Chokai.

These are from a welcome party for Lindsey. That's the mayor,
Masahiro Atobe, between us in the pic of only the three of us.

This is right next to the Japan sea and near where we camped when we
went to climb Mt. Chokai.

It might smell bad, but it will make you feel worse.

They have amazing t-shirts in Japan.

I've been in the newspapers quite a bit. Here's one of the first
articles I'm in. I'll try to get you a translation when I am on a
computer. Right now I'm on my phone.----------------HERE'S the translation (roughly):

"I'm Luke Harwath. Nice you meet you!
I'm from America and I'm 22 years old. At university I studied Japanese a little and can speak a little Japanese. I can also write a little bit of Japanese. I want to learn more.
I like the Japanese movie director, Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro), and am a fan of his work.
Ohira village is very beautiful. I enjoy getting used to living in Ohira.
I look forward to meeting you all. Nice to meet you."

That's a pretty rough translation, but is basically the jist of it. As I've mentioned to people before, Japanese is difficult to translate into English and vice versa. There are so many lingual and cultural differences that a lot of time you just can't do it exactly. It also helps if you are better at Japanese than myself.

We're having a great time here! Starting to get a little colder, but
the view is still great!

Not quite like Iowa. This is a Japanese corn field.

Fun