Sashiburi

Three weeks since I last posted... whoops. A lot's happened since then.

Let's start with the current. I'm sitting in the living room. Okaa-san's preparing dinner. Otou-san's watching TV and reading, Mio's watching TV and looking at music sheets. Oh, and humming the Sailor Moon theme song. Yousuke's in his room.

Anyways. Amy and I started dating about two and a half weeks ago, so I've been spending most of my free time with her.

Last week was the Japan Study retreat to Karuizawa; Waseda was on break for Wednesday and Thursday. Waseda owns a resort property out in Karuizawa, about a two or three hour bus ride from Tokyo. Stayed overnight. Wasted time until dinner, then we had a meeting about our cultural practicums. Then we had a party, which was fun. Then some of us went out to the field to watch the pre-meteor storm (the real thing started at something like 2 PM). Fun, and a lot less light than the city. Not quite enough for a full view, but much better. Cold, but hey.

Dinner's going out on the table. Looks like fried calamari? Yum.

Let's see. Prep work for teaching a class session at Mita High School, a public high school in Minato ward. I was partnered with Hana, a Waseda student who's studied abroad. Taught the class on Monday. Fun, though definitely nerve-wracking. I was surprised to find about a quarter of the students blatantly not paying attention. As in, sleeping in class levels of not paying attention. Should've put them on the spot, taught them how American classes work. Would've been entertaining. Ah well. Self-intro, then a short quiz about Boston and the US. After that, Q&A. Then group work; we put them into groups of 4 or 5, and they had to think about a given subject on the States (food, cities, etc.) and give a short presentation. The presentation about American cities being noisy, dirty, and dangerous was...

... dinner. Yup, it was fried calarmari. Tasty!

... anyways, that presentation was... interesting. We wound up running out of time, since they only gave us about 50 minutes. Two hours definitely would've been better. After returning to Waseda, some of us went to Shin-Okubo station and met up with some of the folks who went to the elementary school (I had class then). Shin-Okubo's a Korean-heavy area; we went to a yakiniku-ish Korean place for dinner. Fun, delicious, tons of meat. Also tried a couple of Korean alcoholic drinks, though I still have no idea what they were. Pretty good, just no clue what I was drinking.

I have a bunch of ideas for mini-articles (not so much journal entries) that I'll have to write up at some point. Though that would require me to be less busy.

Oh, and I got a haircut today. I've yet to take a shower, so I'm not entirely certain how it turned out. Seems okay, though, and 1000 yen beats the heck out of 4000. Not that I'd necessarily get a better cut at the pricier places. There's a chain of haircut shops with locations in train stations that charges 1000 yen, but they (literally) do a 10-minute cut. Amy found a place near Waseda that does it for 1000 without the 10-minute factor. I was amused when they took a vacuum to my head after the cut. They cut my hair without wetting it first, which I found rather surprising. They also touched up with a straight razor, which was nice, but I'm not sure how I feel about their not using shaving cream.