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tammaiyaFriday did not start terribly promisingly. XD; Every other morning I've been waking up earlier than I need to, but Friday, when I woke up before my ipod alarm was set to go off, I immediately went "mmrrrr fifteen more minutes until the alarm" and went back to sleep... for 45 more minutes. >< That's not as catastrophic as it sounds, I was aiming to get up at 9.30 and my class didn't start until 10.40 in the building really near my dorm, but it still wasn't great, especially once I spent like 10 minutes replying to an email Kaori had sent me on my phone about that afternoon. In the end I had to throw my laptop, an apple and a banana in my bag, skull some grape juice and rush out the door, because I hadn't bought any notepaper yet (I had writing utensils, at least) and didn't have time for breakfast. <<
Class was already starting when I got into the classroom-- but I felt better about being on the borderline of lateness when another girl showed up 20 minutes into the class. XD;
At one point I checked my blood sugar, and, big surprise, it was high, so I gave myself an insulin shot and ate the apple and a cranberry bar already in my bag. I almost got in trouble for eating, but I pulled the "but I'm a diabetic and I NEED to eat for medical reasons! D:" card. To be fair if I wasn't a diabetic and my blood sugar hadn't just skyrocketed, I totally would have just skipped breakfast and had done with it. Anyway, there have to be some pluses to being a diabetic, right? In any case it's not something I intend to make a habit of.
So. Class. Classes here are an hour and a half long-- it's kind of like school because there are actual periods and there's a set lunch break during which there are no classes. Most classes only run once a week, though, which is quite foreign to me. The class I took on Friday, though, is my integrated language class-- i.e. my compulsory Japanese class-- and runs three times a week in two streams. First stream goes first period Mon/second Wed/first Fri, and second stream is the reverse. (second/first/second) Guess which stream *I* chose? I will never like mornings. XD
An hour and a half without any breaks is a long time when you're used to hour-long classes (esp. when you have the attention span of a gnat and get bored even in those sometimes), but I guess the other side to that is there are no double periods here. All classes go for longer than one hour, but none go for two hours. Yay?
As for the content of the class itself, it has the potential to be a lot of work or not too much depending on how quick they expect us to go through the text. Which is fairly hard. Apparently Japanese uni students use it too. I read the first passage tonight; it was an essay about how climate and environment affects the mindset of the people who live in various areas.
On the other hand I didn't have any trouble understanding the teacher, so I'm counting that as a victory.
In the class itself, we went through the introductory stuff-- these are the textbooks you'll need, here are photocopies of the first chapter for those of you who haven't bought them yet (I'm buying my books from the co-op tomorrow, since Kaori has a membership card and said she'd go with me), this is how they're laid out, etc, writing our names on the class register (because once you choose a stream, you're stuck with it), self-introductions, the usual. I was one of only three new students. The other two were the girl who was late (she didn't realise what time period 2 started, although it is on the timetable) and one of the Taiwanese guys I was talking to the other day, whose name was Kyuu.
Btw, I didn't mention before, but the desks in the classroom were very separate and individual, like in an exam. I was sitting next to Brendan, but there was like a foot or two of space between us. Very odd after school (desks pressed together in variosu formations) and university (fixed lecture seats in rows) in Australia.
After all the intro stuff, we started working through the first chapter, starting with the kanji. Or rather... the first part was kind of a cross between kanji and grammar, because they were kanji but they weren't hard (化、性、的) and we were focusing on their usage as suffixes. Then we did some straight-up kanji reading comprehension, and after that, it was end of class.
In a chapter, there's three texts. For the first text, we have to go through the kanji and grammar in the supplementary book, then the vocab list in the main book, then read the text and go through the comprehension points. There's a similar but slightly different process for the second text, which has pronunciation points instead of kanji. The third text is intended as listening practice, so isn't to be read before class, although I think you're supposed to look at the vocab list. Like I said, if they expect us to do all that in one week it could get a bit harsh with other subjects on top of it, even if it is the only class that I have more than once a week, but we'll see.
After class Brendan asked if I wanted to go eat at the cafeteria with him and co, but I was meeting up with Kaori to deal with my immigration issues so I had to decline. Kaori and I met up, ran around a little for my certificate of eligibility (there was a voicemail from my mother that I hadn't had a chance to check before class, so we had to go back to my dorm to listen to it, then I had to ring my mother-- oh, those phonebills will be so nasty-- to ask for the tracking number, which she didn't have with her, then we went to ask at the student desk, where we disturbed Motoi-san from his lunch break but at least achieved success, because it seemed the certificate had been delivered and I signed for it), and then we grabbed lunch on the go from the Familymart combini and caught a train to Tachikawa. (Lunch, for me, = pizaman and afternoon milk tea. Milk tea in a bottle is ridiculously delicious. Probably ridiculously sugary, too, but it hasn't done anything horrendous to my BGLs yet so I choose to ignore that. Pizaman is also delicious, but I have the weirdest feeling that I've eaten something a lot like it before in Australia, maybe in primary school. Hm.)
Anyway. The main immigration office is somewhere off towards the east of Tokyo, surprisingly still in the middle of nowhere, but Tachikawa is much, much more convenient from Fuchuu and has the added bonus of being less crowded. It's a 20 minute walk from Tachikawa station; Kaori had a map with her, which was good, because while it was only necessary to turn about twice on the whole way there, it wasn't exactly signposted and it helped to know where we were going.
By the way, I walked past a shrine on the way there. It was small, but have a photo anyway!
Random cultural note for the moment: Japanese people walk all over the road. And ride bikes. The bike thing happens in Australia, but the walking thing, not so much. Pedestrian/bike paths are not a big thing here; I mean, they exist, but half the time you just walk along the side of the road, and this was especially the case in Tachikawa.
It was a fair-ish distance to the bureau, so Kaori and I chatted along the way. When she picked me up last Sunday she spoke entirely in English, but by Friday we were speaking mostly Japanese. It's easier than I thought I was, actually, to have a proper conversation in Japanese; back in Australia I never really tried because when you're talking to your friends it's easier to speak in your native language and you don't want to be slowed down by not having the words to express what you want to say.
Once we got there, it was... well, it was bureaucracy. We took a number and sat down, and this time the numbers were being called in actual numerical order, so bonus. There were two causes for freakout at this stage, might I add; one, there was a poster on the wall about what documents exchange students had to have to apply for change of status. There were SIXTEEN POINTS. I couldn't even READ all those kanji, and only had half the documents at best. Now, Kaori had looked up what we'd need (for which I was eternally grateful, because I had no desire to brave slogging through the Japanese immigration site in Japanese), but the documents listed there were much, much fewer in number, and we were kind of worried about which one would turn out to apply. (Result: Neither. I'll explain this in a moment.)
The second problem was that Kaori had her health check for uni at 4.30, and to get back to campus in time she had to leave at 3.20. It was 3 when we arrived, maybe just before, so you can imagine there was no way we were getting in by then, and Kaori wouldn't be able to get back until about 5, 5.30ish after you factored in all the trains. I was going to have to talk to the immigration official by myself, in Japanese. >>
In the end, though, it all turned out fine. I got through quite quickly, in less than an hour (a lot of numbers didn't show up to the counter), which, okay, unheard of where I come from (hoorah for going to a branch office!), and I had my DS and email-capable mobile on me, with which I played FFIII and spammed Becky and my brother, who are both lucky they didn't get those emails in Japanese by mistake. Once I GOT to the counter, I didn't have any major language fail moments, and when the guy saw my certificate of eligibility, it all went really smoothly. All he wanted was my passport, my application form, my university letter of acceptance (SO glad I decided to bring that from Australia) and my student ID card. He didn't even want the letter from the bank. He just took the application and the certificate, stamped my passport to say I'd made the application, asked for my postal address and told me they'd mail me when it was time to come back and I didn't have to pay yet. Since I wasn't even sure the certificate of eligibility had any purpose within Japan, it was a major win.
I finished at around 4pm, so it was time to meet up with Kaori halfway so we could go looking for a 100 yen shop (hyakkin). When I called her to say I was done, we decided to meet up at Musashi Sakai. Kaori had told me how to catch the bus back to the station, but I had a fairly long time to get to Musashi Sakai, which wasn't very far once you got on the train, and I decided to walk back. Also, I knew I'd seen takoyaki SOMEWHERE on the walk there, and I was determined to buy some, dammit.
On the way back, I bought myself Pepsi zero calories from a vending machine, which was actually my first experience with a Japanese vending machine, took a photo of a pretty traditional garden (oh god, I'm turning into my mother), and walked past a preschool/kindergarten of TINY ADORABLE CHILDREN in the playground. At one point, I asked for directions just to make sure I hadn't made a wrong turn anywhere-- it was a REALLY long way, and I was starting to get paranoid-- but the lady I asked said the station was just straight ahead. I chatted to her for a little bit and she complimented my Japanese, but I wasn't bothered by it because we were having an actual proper conversation. I know a lot of foreigners get peeved at how their Japanese is always been complimented, but it only annoys me when I've barely said anything, which so far has only happened once (a shop lady, when I said "let me think about it" regarding a coat I tried on).
Here's that garden, btw:
(It's not as pretty in camera phone photo, but anyway.)
I was kind of wondering if I'd missed takoyaki somehow, but it was right in front of the station, so. Yay! TAKOYAKI! Sorry, I didn't take a photo of the store OR the food. XD
I ate one of the takoyaki and hopped on the train. Kaori was arriving at about the same time as I was, after the time I'd spent walking, so I went to meet her near the Tamagawa line ticket gate and we sat around eating Takoyaki for a bit (I had, once again, managed a hypo).
After our takoyaki-break, we wandered around in search of a hyakkin, which turned out to be harder than expected. Eventually we found one that was kind of small but nevertheless had a lot of stuff, and proceeded to totally load up on kitchen and bathroom goods. I have non-disposable eating utensils, guys! And spoons! And a BATHMAT! *beams*
You have to appreciate, eg, the cuteness of my cups, so I took photos.
Kumachan and nekochan! Aren't they cute. There were also usagichan and... some others I don't remember, but I restrained myself on the basis that, really, they're quite small, and how many glasses do you need? No matter HOW cute they are? Particularly since it's not like I can take them back to Australia all that easily.
I got sponges and kitchen towels! :D You can also see my snack food. Which includes dessert pocky. Here, have a close-up on the dessert pocky box. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND WHY IT'S SO AWESOME.
This photo was supposed to be, see, it's clean now, stfu! except you can't actually see that much of the newly cleaned shelves/desk in this photo. Oh well. You can see my haircut, I guess? XD
You can see my haircut even better here. *was playing with the reverse camera option* The phone actually has a camera on both sides of the screen. The problem with the reverse camera is that you can adjust the size of the photo, so it's automatically tiny.
... Er, right, enough with the photos. *cough* After the hyakkin we went to a huge department store to do grocery shopping. Unfortunately I still only had a nebulous idea of what I needed (I have a terrible tendency to flail in confusion when presented with too much decision, especially as it pertains to raw vegetables), but I ended up with special K with dried strawberries (no weetbix. also, I was a bit o.O; at the fact that there were ACTUALLY STRAWBERRIES, the box wasn't just lying to me like it always does in Australia), nutella (because it's Australian and it was THERE, and also, chocolate spread!), bread (for the nutella), sunflower oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, seaweed, salad vegetables, apple juice, low fat milk, more strawberries, and no calorie coke. (It's sort of diet coke, but sort of not. They look the same aside from the name, but no cal coke tastes a little more like coke zero. Also, I gave up on trying to find caffeine-free diet coke. It doesn't exist here. Japan is the land of sugar and caffeine-- it's hard enough finding anything sugar free, just quit while you're ahead if you want anything decaffeinated.)
... Photos of my fridge! Why not.
Yes, my insulin takes up a lot of space. also, the apple juice has since been opened and relocated to the fridge door.
By that time it was late and I was carrying a lot of heavy crap. We briefly checked the bedding floor, which lead me to the conclusion that doonas don't exist in Japan and I'm going to have to buy another futon instead, which could potentially be an expensive exercise. Hm.
So. After that, I caught the train back to Tama station, got udon from the bentou place where I ran into Brendan and co, met up with them again at the cafeteria to eat, and then crawled back to my room, where I intended to stay for the entire weekend.
(As it turned out: NOT SO MUCH. Stay tuned for more Shinjuku on Saturday and Akihabara on Sunday.)
Class was already starting when I got into the classroom-- but I felt better about being on the borderline of lateness when another girl showed up 20 minutes into the class. XD;
At one point I checked my blood sugar, and, big surprise, it was high, so I gave myself an insulin shot and ate the apple and a cranberry bar already in my bag. I almost got in trouble for eating, but I pulled the "but I'm a diabetic and I NEED to eat for medical reasons! D:" card. To be fair if I wasn't a diabetic and my blood sugar hadn't just skyrocketed, I totally would have just skipped breakfast and had done with it. Anyway, there have to be some pluses to being a diabetic, right? In any case it's not something I intend to make a habit of.
So. Class. Classes here are an hour and a half long-- it's kind of like school because there are actual periods and there's a set lunch break during which there are no classes. Most classes only run once a week, though, which is quite foreign to me. The class I took on Friday, though, is my integrated language class-- i.e. my compulsory Japanese class-- and runs three times a week in two streams. First stream goes first period Mon/second Wed/first Fri, and second stream is the reverse. (second/first/second) Guess which stream *I* chose? I will never like mornings. XD
An hour and a half without any breaks is a long time when you're used to hour-long classes (esp. when you have the attention span of a gnat and get bored even in those sometimes), but I guess the other side to that is there are no double periods here. All classes go for longer than one hour, but none go for two hours. Yay?
As for the content of the class itself, it has the potential to be a lot of work or not too much depending on how quick they expect us to go through the text. Which is fairly hard. Apparently Japanese uni students use it too. I read the first passage tonight; it was an essay about how climate and environment affects the mindset of the people who live in various areas.
On the other hand I didn't have any trouble understanding the teacher, so I'm counting that as a victory.
In the class itself, we went through the introductory stuff-- these are the textbooks you'll need, here are photocopies of the first chapter for those of you who haven't bought them yet (I'm buying my books from the co-op tomorrow, since Kaori has a membership card and said she'd go with me), this is how they're laid out, etc, writing our names on the class register (because once you choose a stream, you're stuck with it), self-introductions, the usual. I was one of only three new students. The other two were the girl who was late (she didn't realise what time period 2 started, although it is on the timetable) and one of the Taiwanese guys I was talking to the other day, whose name was Kyuu.
Btw, I didn't mention before, but the desks in the classroom were very separate and individual, like in an exam. I was sitting next to Brendan, but there was like a foot or two of space between us. Very odd after school (desks pressed together in variosu formations) and university (fixed lecture seats in rows) in Australia.
After all the intro stuff, we started working through the first chapter, starting with the kanji. Or rather... the first part was kind of a cross between kanji and grammar, because they were kanji but they weren't hard (化、性、的) and we were focusing on their usage as suffixes. Then we did some straight-up kanji reading comprehension, and after that, it was end of class.
In a chapter, there's three texts. For the first text, we have to go through the kanji and grammar in the supplementary book, then the vocab list in the main book, then read the text and go through the comprehension points. There's a similar but slightly different process for the second text, which has pronunciation points instead of kanji. The third text is intended as listening practice, so isn't to be read before class, although I think you're supposed to look at the vocab list. Like I said, if they expect us to do all that in one week it could get a bit harsh with other subjects on top of it, even if it is the only class that I have more than once a week, but we'll see.
After class Brendan asked if I wanted to go eat at the cafeteria with him and co, but I was meeting up with Kaori to deal with my immigration issues so I had to decline. Kaori and I met up, ran around a little for my certificate of eligibility (there was a voicemail from my mother that I hadn't had a chance to check before class, so we had to go back to my dorm to listen to it, then I had to ring my mother-- oh, those phonebills will be so nasty-- to ask for the tracking number, which she didn't have with her, then we went to ask at the student desk, where we disturbed Motoi-san from his lunch break but at least achieved success, because it seemed the certificate had been delivered and I signed for it), and then we grabbed lunch on the go from the Familymart combini and caught a train to Tachikawa. (Lunch, for me, = pizaman and afternoon milk tea. Milk tea in a bottle is ridiculously delicious. Probably ridiculously sugary, too, but it hasn't done anything horrendous to my BGLs yet so I choose to ignore that. Pizaman is also delicious, but I have the weirdest feeling that I've eaten something a lot like it before in Australia, maybe in primary school. Hm.)
Anyway. The main immigration office is somewhere off towards the east of Tokyo, surprisingly still in the middle of nowhere, but Tachikawa is much, much more convenient from Fuchuu and has the added bonus of being less crowded. It's a 20 minute walk from Tachikawa station; Kaori had a map with her, which was good, because while it was only necessary to turn about twice on the whole way there, it wasn't exactly signposted and it helped to know where we were going.
By the way, I walked past a shrine on the way there. It was small, but have a photo anyway!
Random cultural note for the moment: Japanese people walk all over the road. And ride bikes. The bike thing happens in Australia, but the walking thing, not so much. Pedestrian/bike paths are not a big thing here; I mean, they exist, but half the time you just walk along the side of the road, and this was especially the case in Tachikawa.
It was a fair-ish distance to the bureau, so Kaori and I chatted along the way. When she picked me up last Sunday she spoke entirely in English, but by Friday we were speaking mostly Japanese. It's easier than I thought I was, actually, to have a proper conversation in Japanese; back in Australia I never really tried because when you're talking to your friends it's easier to speak in your native language and you don't want to be slowed down by not having the words to express what you want to say.
Once we got there, it was... well, it was bureaucracy. We took a number and sat down, and this time the numbers were being called in actual numerical order, so bonus. There were two causes for freakout at this stage, might I add; one, there was a poster on the wall about what documents exchange students had to have to apply for change of status. There were SIXTEEN POINTS. I couldn't even READ all those kanji, and only had half the documents at best. Now, Kaori had looked up what we'd need (for which I was eternally grateful, because I had no desire to brave slogging through the Japanese immigration site in Japanese), but the documents listed there were much, much fewer in number, and we were kind of worried about which one would turn out to apply. (Result: Neither. I'll explain this in a moment.)
The second problem was that Kaori had her health check for uni at 4.30, and to get back to campus in time she had to leave at 3.20. It was 3 when we arrived, maybe just before, so you can imagine there was no way we were getting in by then, and Kaori wouldn't be able to get back until about 5, 5.30ish after you factored in all the trains. I was going to have to talk to the immigration official by myself, in Japanese. >>
In the end, though, it all turned out fine. I got through quite quickly, in less than an hour (a lot of numbers didn't show up to the counter), which, okay, unheard of where I come from (hoorah for going to a branch office!), and I had my DS and email-capable mobile on me, with which I played FFIII and spammed Becky and my brother, who are both lucky they didn't get those emails in Japanese by mistake. Once I GOT to the counter, I didn't have any major language fail moments, and when the guy saw my certificate of eligibility, it all went really smoothly. All he wanted was my passport, my application form, my university letter of acceptance (SO glad I decided to bring that from Australia) and my student ID card. He didn't even want the letter from the bank. He just took the application and the certificate, stamped my passport to say I'd made the application, asked for my postal address and told me they'd mail me when it was time to come back and I didn't have to pay yet. Since I wasn't even sure the certificate of eligibility had any purpose within Japan, it was a major win.
I finished at around 4pm, so it was time to meet up with Kaori halfway so we could go looking for a 100 yen shop (hyakkin). When I called her to say I was done, we decided to meet up at Musashi Sakai. Kaori had told me how to catch the bus back to the station, but I had a fairly long time to get to Musashi Sakai, which wasn't very far once you got on the train, and I decided to walk back. Also, I knew I'd seen takoyaki SOMEWHERE on the walk there, and I was determined to buy some, dammit.
On the way back, I bought myself Pepsi zero calories from a vending machine, which was actually my first experience with a Japanese vending machine, took a photo of a pretty traditional garden (oh god, I'm turning into my mother), and walked past a preschool/kindergarten of TINY ADORABLE CHILDREN in the playground. At one point, I asked for directions just to make sure I hadn't made a wrong turn anywhere-- it was a REALLY long way, and I was starting to get paranoid-- but the lady I asked said the station was just straight ahead. I chatted to her for a little bit and she complimented my Japanese, but I wasn't bothered by it because we were having an actual proper conversation. I know a lot of foreigners get peeved at how their Japanese is always been complimented, but it only annoys me when I've barely said anything, which so far has only happened once (a shop lady, when I said "let me think about it" regarding a coat I tried on).
Here's that garden, btw:
(It's not as pretty in camera phone photo, but anyway.)
I was kind of wondering if I'd missed takoyaki somehow, but it was right in front of the station, so. Yay! TAKOYAKI! Sorry, I didn't take a photo of the store OR the food. XD
I ate one of the takoyaki and hopped on the train. Kaori was arriving at about the same time as I was, after the time I'd spent walking, so I went to meet her near the Tamagawa line ticket gate and we sat around eating Takoyaki for a bit (I had, once again, managed a hypo).
After our takoyaki-break, we wandered around in search of a hyakkin, which turned out to be harder than expected. Eventually we found one that was kind of small but nevertheless had a lot of stuff, and proceeded to totally load up on kitchen and bathroom goods. I have non-disposable eating utensils, guys! And spoons! And a BATHMAT! *beams*
You have to appreciate, eg, the cuteness of my cups, so I took photos.
Kumachan and nekochan! Aren't they cute. There were also usagichan and... some others I don't remember, but I restrained myself on the basis that, really, they're quite small, and how many glasses do you need? No matter HOW cute they are? Particularly since it's not like I can take them back to Australia all that easily.
I got sponges and kitchen towels! :D You can also see my snack food. Which includes dessert pocky. Here, have a close-up on the dessert pocky box. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND WHY IT'S SO AWESOME.
This photo was supposed to be, see, it's clean now, stfu! except you can't actually see that much of the newly cleaned shelves/desk in this photo. Oh well. You can see my haircut, I guess? XD
You can see my haircut even better here. *was playing with the reverse camera option* The phone actually has a camera on both sides of the screen. The problem with the reverse camera is that you can adjust the size of the photo, so it's automatically tiny.
... Er, right, enough with the photos. *cough* After the hyakkin we went to a huge department store to do grocery shopping. Unfortunately I still only had a nebulous idea of what I needed (I have a terrible tendency to flail in confusion when presented with too much decision, especially as it pertains to raw vegetables), but I ended up with special K with dried strawberries (no weetbix. also, I was a bit o.O; at the fact that there were ACTUALLY STRAWBERRIES, the box wasn't just lying to me like it always does in Australia), nutella (because it's Australian and it was THERE, and also, chocolate spread!), bread (for the nutella), sunflower oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, seaweed, salad vegetables, apple juice, low fat milk, more strawberries, and no calorie coke. (It's sort of diet coke, but sort of not. They look the same aside from the name, but no cal coke tastes a little more like coke zero. Also, I gave up on trying to find caffeine-free diet coke. It doesn't exist here. Japan is the land of sugar and caffeine-- it's hard enough finding anything sugar free, just quit while you're ahead if you want anything decaffeinated.)
... Photos of my fridge! Why not.
Yes, my insulin takes up a lot of space. also, the apple juice has since been opened and relocated to the fridge door.
By that time it was late and I was carrying a lot of heavy crap. We briefly checked the bedding floor, which lead me to the conclusion that doonas don't exist in Japan and I'm going to have to buy another futon instead, which could potentially be an expensive exercise. Hm.
So. After that, I caught the train back to Tama station, got udon from the bentou place where I ran into Brendan and co, met up with them again at the cafeteria to eat, and then crawled back to my room, where I intended to stay for the entire weekend.
(As it turned out: NOT SO MUCH. Stay tuned for more Shinjuku on Saturday and Akihabara on Sunday.)
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Date: 2008-04-14 08:29 am (UTC)Richard says
Date: 2008-04-14 10:12 am (UTC)I hope you keep up these long messages - I've read every one so far and I really enjoy them. I'll understand if things like, you know, study get in the way.
Speaking of, I should go do some, but glad to hear you're doing so well
Richard
PS: Who is this Kumachan of which you speak? Do you have any other pictures? I only ask because he/she looks like a toy Claire and I won out of a skilltester machine (one of the many we really need you to identify...)
Re: Richard says
Date: 2008-04-14 10:17 am (UTC)I'm trying to keep it up-- I probably would have caught up on Sunday, except my laptop died and I had to go out to Akihabara to buy a new one. ><
"Kuma" means bear, and -chan is a cutesy suffix you add to the names of children, close female friends, animals etc. So "nekochan" is the glass with the kitty on it, and "kumachan" is the glass with the bear. You can't really see it in the photo, but it says that on each glass. :D
Re: Richard says
Date: 2008-04-14 10:35 am (UTC)How is the new laptop? From all accounts you picked up a really good one from the second-hand market. Anything like computer fairs at CIT? (Somehow I doubt it...)
I lvoed the pictures of your fridge, funnily enough. I'm a real deli nut because I like to see packaging from all over the world, so seeing all of the cartons with japanese writing on them is kind of cool to me (I'm a nerd. Or a dork.)
Re: Richard says
Date: 2008-04-18 01:05 am (UTC)It's pretty good. Sometimes it being Japanese continues to be annoying to me-- like when I c&p English, it turns all my punctuation marks stupid-looking, and I still haven't found a way to type Japanese without using the Japanese keyboard. >< Other than that, though, it's been good.
Heeeeeeeeee. Well, happy to oblige. XD I won't judge, we all know what an enormous nerd/geek/dork/what have you *I* am.