Tuesday, November 24, 2009

What?!? An update?!?

Shock!

Anyways, let's start with yesterday. Yesterday was technically a national holiday, but Waseda decided to hold class anyways. I'm not sure about the extent of the holiday. I don't have class on Mondays or Wednesdays, though, so it didn't make much of a difference to me.

Met Dan and Rebecca in Takadanobaba around 12:30, went for lunch at a nearby Indian place. 790 yen for salad, curry, and naan-tabehodai (all-you-can-eat naan). I got the mutton curry. It was delicious, but despite being marked as "spicy" on the menu, was completely tame; I'm not sure it would pass as mild at India Quality back in Boston. Delicious, though. They're planning to make this restaurant a weekly trip, which could be quite dangerous.

After lunch, walked to campus down Waseda-dori with Dan and Rebecca, followed them to the student coop. I bought a small notepad, which I plan to write journal-ish notes in to help me keep some sort of regularity in updating this blog.

After Amy got out of class, we went to Picaso and Blue Parrot. Picaso is essentially a mini-Don Quixote (a Japanese discount store chain). Blue Parrot is an English language used book store. Both are on Waseda-dori. I bought a copy of Words in Context; it looked useful. Amy bought a large Japanese grammar tome that made her inner (and outer) linguist quite happy.

Class today as usual. Afterwards, I went to the coop and bought a A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar on Celia's recommendation. 2500 yen after member discount, and worth every one.

It's been in the high 40's to low 50's lately, which normally would be no problem. However, since my room pretty much matches outside temperature, I've been freezing my rear off. I finally asked otou-san if there was anything I could do, at which he promptly pointed out the switch for my heated floor. Whoops. We'll see if it works.

I've also noticed that Japanese laundry seems to be fairly brutal on my socks; in two months, a few of them are close to being worn down. It's a good thing I brought extras.

That's all for now. I have ideas for a number of article-ish posts, though I need to get around to actually writing them.

2 comments:

  1. okay, where are the pictures? And can you please take pictures of the laundry machines?

    I know I'm ridiculously housewifeish... but I have a fascination with laundry and a very real need for clean.

    If their machines are beating the crap outta your clothes then maybe there's a chance of getting my son's clean too!

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  2. Pictures would be under Links on the right.

    I can probably get you some pics of the laundry machine, though it is indeed ridiculously housewifeish. ;-)

    You might be interested to learn that clothing is typically air dried. The few clothes driers I've seen just blow air around without actually heating it; they're pretty useless.

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