Homework on Top of Not Feeling Well

I was working on writing an e-mail to my keigo (that's Japanese for talking to your superiors) professor, but decided that my blog needed attending to. Also as in the title, my stomach is a grumbly-tumbly and I don't feel so hot. It must have been the food that I ate today for dinner...

Yesterday was a lot of fun. I was not planning on leaving the house, but when I woke up I had a message from Jeff sitting in my inbox. For those of you that do not know, Jeff came with me to Japan on my first journey here. That was 2 years ago on a 1 month program to Tokyo. We also came with Steve, who was in Japan a little over 2 weeks ago. Jeff spent the year studying in Singapore and hasn't been back to the states since he left last year in August. He has been traveling around China and this past week in Japan which is pretty cool. Unlike us, he did not have a 2 month spring break which is why he has all this free time. Anyway, he just arrived in Tokyo and wanted to grab lunch at the all-to-famous tsukemen place Yasube. It was the 2nd place we ate in Japan together. I immediately emailed him back saying to meet at 1pm at Takadanobaba. That is exactly what we did.

Jeff came with his girlfriend who he met in Singapore. She is Chinese and didn't speak much at lunch; Understandable because Jeff and I had a lot to catch up on. We talked over a nice steaming bowl of noodles and soup, reminiscing about our old adventures in Japan. He has been up to a lot lately and there was absolutely no way to talk about everything in the course of a day. I really miss those days....

Jeff's girlfriend wanted to go shopping for clothes, so we parted ways. Jeff and I went over to Yoshimoto sensei's lab in order to find out what is going on with Jeff's old host family. It is always good to get in touch with those people again. Like me, Jeff had not even done so much as an email after he parted with them 2 years ago. Needless to say, Yoshimoto sensei was floored when we dropped in on him suddenly. After a couple phone calls, he hooked Jeff up with the info he needed to get in contact. I love how professors can do that. I opened my mouth and asked about what the current students were doing at the moment and we got told to meet up with them at Takadanobaba. So we did.

Once again we only met with Shunichi, Saki, Michel, and Eric. I havn't talked to the other 3 students here much at all, only saw them for a moment at Karuizawa. We went to a coffee shop and had some drinks on Yoshimoto's tab. Sweet. We talked for probably an hour, then parted ways and went home.

So more big news on the homestay family front. We just got another student come to live with us for 7 weeks! This guy unlike the last two is from America! His name is Nathan and he just graduated from a university in Wisconsin. He's a computer science major with a minor in Japanese. He took Japanese for a full 4 years in school and has only been to Japan once on a 2 week long trip. I know I didn't rant about the other students too much, but that is because they were not nearly as interesting (at least in a way I could relate to them.) His personality is a lot like Steve's. He loves to play video games, read manga, and watch anime. Someone I can relate to! I think we had an hour long conversation this afternoon about video games! It was great. His Japanese is not nearly as good as I thought it would be after studying for 4 years, but I guess without much exposure to Japan you kinda lose that drive to study. It is interesting because I can see how far I have come since I have gotten here. My level was the same as his if not lower when I first arrived in September. Glad to know I got something out of this trip!

Today I went to class. Yay. After that I visited Nakano as I had not been there in ages. I found 4 new super famicom games to buy, but my list of games that I still want is dwindling down. The one's left are pretty expensive and rare such as Harvest Moon, Bomberman, and Puyo Puyo. I also broke down and spend a whopping 200 yen per book to finish off Death Note. I only have a couple more books to buy and then my manga adventures will be over. Maison Ikkoku being one of the main ones... When I got home I sent an email to my mom to convince her to let my buy a 360. I decided that I will probably get one regardless, but at the moment Amazon has a deal that if you buy an elite console with GTA4, you get a $75 gift certificate, good for of course, more games. I really don't want to drop the money, but in the end I think it is well worth it. There is a huge library of games that I have only gotten a peek of through other people such as Reid playing them. I think this is a good time as well because the new 65nm processor is being put in new 360's which reduces power and heat. That means that it probably won't die on me ^_^ Also, I can borrow lots of games from said people above. ^^

Ahhhhhhhh... I wanna go to sleep now, but I gotta finish my homework first. Rats...