Japan - Days 91-94

The past few days have been... well, you'll see
Thursday started amazingly well. I went into the lab at about 8am in order to start up my reaction, so that I could come back to my room and collect the parcel my Japanese friend was sending me (they'd tried to get an early morning delivery, but the earliest was between 9 and 12). I got back to my room at about 8.50, and almost instantly received a phone call saying the delivery man was outside waiting for me. For some reason, he was in the building next door to me, but he came out and found me, and I signed for the parcel. Inside was a bunch of stuff, including an advent calender, a bunch of instant ramen, and a birthday card and letter :-) Then, while I was having my breakfast, I got to talk to a friend online who I'd not gotten to talk to in a while. I tried to stop thinking to myself "Wow, today is going really well," because I knew it would jinx it, but whoops, it happened anyway. For starters, on the way to the lab, I managed to ram some guy's bike as he stopped in front of me (my brakes need checking I think). Then, in the lab, I found out that I didn't get Monday and Tuesday off for autumn vacation after all (according to my supervisor, research students don't get many holidays >.> Oh joy), and I discovered that the abstract I had to write for this conference wasn't just like a scientific paper abstract - I was shown the template which was supposed to be attached to the e-mail I received. Ouch.
However, after this, things picked up a little. Japanese class went pretty well - Me and Mike did our final interview (he was playing Keith Richards) and even though I started laughing at one point, we still scored 19/20 ^^ Derek called me in the afternoon and told me that Molly was getting people together to have a little dinner in aid of Thanksgiving, so Derek invited me along. First off, after finishing in the lab, I went home to dump my bag, and found a note on my door saying that I could potentially move into a building in Good Ichinoya (as opposed to Shitty-noya, which is where most of my friends are currently living) for the final semester here. My friends in Ichinoya and Hirasuna got their forms the day before so I was starting to lose hope of getting one, so I was happy when the I found I'd got one. I would have returned it there and then but the office was closed ^^' After this, I cycled along to meet Derek so we could head up to Ichinoya.
We went into Kat's dorm for the dinner, and used one of the big kitchens (complete with tables and chairs; even for Shitty-noya, it sure beats the hell out of the Oikoshi kitchens -.-). Molly had me run down to the convenience store in their community centre to grab some milk for the dessert recipe (essentially chocolate Rice Krispie cakes but with Sugar Puffs instead), and then I proceeded to pull the meat off of a ready cooked chicken so they could heat it through with a sauce. In the end, there were 5 of us there - Jen appeared a little later, and we all tucked in. It was good ^^ Afterwards, Michael came too, and we all hung out in Kat's room for a while, listening to music and watching Youtube. We ended up watching a show called 'Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series', where a guy's taken clips from Yu-Gi-Oh and put his own dub over them. Pretty damn funny XD We went to the combini to get a drink, then decided to call it a night. Me and Derek had to cycle back in the rain :-( I did a bit of work on my abstract, and me and Derek met up a little later to go on a combini run, before finally calling it a night.
Friday wasn't good at all. I spent most of the day working on the abstract, finishing it at almost 9pm, and missing going to gyoza as a result. I also had to dissect a mouse and remove certain organs from it, but I messed up killing it again, so someone else had to finish the job for me v.v Also, I discovered that this conference starts on the day Japanese classes start, so I'm going to miss the first three lessons of the semester -.- And it sounds like I won't get much of a Christmas vacation either
As I finally got out of the lab at about 9pm, I was completely pissed off. I knew some people were meeting for drinks at some point, so I was planning to meet them and get smashed. I bumped into Ciaran and Cenk outside the convenience store on the way home, so I stopped with them, grabbing some dinner and my first drink while I was there. I ate my dinner, chugged my drink, dumped my bag at my room, then came back to the combini. I discovered that a bunch of people were going to Tokyo on Saturday, but had to back down from going because I'd already made other plans, which will be described in due course. We sat drinking at the combini for a couple of hours, during which time I had another 3 (albeit weaker) drinks, then ended up going down to Shein's bar, where I stayed for an hour or something, before the combination of tiredness and the rising feeling of sickness made me decide to go home at about 1.30am. Luckily, the ride through the night alleviated my sick feeling, so I made it home alright and swiftly went to sleep
Saturday morning was the usual routine; cycle ride to WonderGoo, then up to Iias to use McDonalds' wi-fi, then down to DayzTown for a blast at DDR. I got back to my room, dumped my bag, swung by Book Off (grabbing cheap copies of Tales Of Symphonia novels 1 and 3 while I was there), before going onto campus to find where Molly was hosting another Thanksgiving meal. I wandered around for a while before calling her to tell me exactly where this place was, as I couldn't find it. Eventually she came down to find me, and took me upstairs where I was introduced to a bunch of people who Molly, Michael and occasionally Kat are helping to learn English. They'd pretty much finished cooking by the time I arrived, and Kat arrived just as we were sitting down to eat. It was a pretty fun time; the food was great, and we spent a few hours just chilling afterwards. I asked Kat and Molly to let me know when they were heading to Farrukh's leaving party/Zivile's birthday party in the evening, so I had some people to go with. Me and Derek went for some gyoza, and he said he'd drop by for a bit of the party later on. Anyway, 10pm rolled around, and Molly was getting me to text Kat as she'd run out of minutes (she's on a pay-as-you-go plan) so they could meet up to come to Hirasuna and meet everyone else. Eventually, everyone congregated around Coco, and after we got a couple of pre-drinks we headed off to Rebirth. As some people didn't have bikes, a few of us walked with them to the place (the others, sensibly, cycled slowly beside us). Once we got there and met a few more people, we... had some more pre-drinks XD There was a shop just opposite the club which closed at midnight, so as we arrived at about 11pm, we went and grabbed a few drinks while we could. I also got a couple of bars of chocolate to take away the sharp citrus taste of the Chu-Hai I'd bought. A few of us went to another convenience store down the road to get some more drinks, before finally going up into the club, where we stayed until about 3.30am (bearing in mind the place was supposed to close at 3 ^^'), before clearing out to Shein's Bar.
Now, here's where things started to get very interesting. As some of us didn't have bikes, we opted to walk, following on the trail of the ones who had bikes. However, we soon lost them (Andrew ran off to try and keep up with the bikes; he was already pretty drunk), so as I had a rough idea of where we were, we walked to the main road and followed it, eventually catching sight of Cybex and confirming our position. We found Andrew laying in a bush a few minutes later, as he'd decided to quit chasing the bikes. He walked along with us, managing to break a plastic chain-link barrier stopping cars going into a car park as he went (we tied it back together with a hairband). He then proceeded to climb over some fences and through some peoples' gardens to reach Shein's, though the rest of us opted for the less intrusive, slightly longer route. Eventually everyone got to Shein's, but by this point I was knackered so I spent most of it half-asleep. At one point, Kat and Andrew went into the toilet together and switched trousers, so Andrew was wearing tight denim shorts and some leggings (he gave a bunch of the girls lap dances XD), and Kat looked a bit MC Hammer-ish in super-baggy jeans. Andrew managed to smash a glass, knock over a box of light-bulbs AND break a pane of glass in the bar door during the course of the evening. Well, morning. I left at about 6am (the sun had risen already) and, while Kat and Andrew bought more alcohol at the convenience store, I opted to head home, as did Molly
Stupidly, I set my alarm for 9am on Sunday morning, meaning that I was both exhausted, and quite possibly had some alcohol left in my system, when I woke up. I waited on Jen to text me about going shopping, and we eventually decided on meeting at 11.30am. I decided against my usual trip to Iias. I couldn't take my usual route through campus to Ichinoya, as the Tsukuba Marathon was going on and I couldn't really cross the road with all the runners, so I had to take the route around campus. I met Jen, and we waited for about 25 minutes at the bus stop before deciding the bus was cancelled, and walked all the way to Tsukuba Centre. First off, we stopped in DayzTown so I could have a blast at DDR, finally attempting the tougher difficulties, before going to the bookstore and Seibu, then walking back. I stopped at my room, deciding to pick my bike up from Ichinoya later was I was exhausted. However, I laid in my bed for 2 hours, unable to go to sleep, and started getting all panicky and jittery, so I called up Derek, who'd just woken up himself, to ask if we could hang out for a bit to get me out of my room and doing something. We hung out for about half an hour, and he waited with me at the bus stop while I waited for the bus to Ichinoya. Andrew messaged me about going for dinner with people at 6pm, so me and Derek decided to meet up again then, and I bussed up to Ichinoya to collect my bike. I cycled back to my room, waited until about 6, then met everyone at the community centre, from which we headed to the Chinese restaurant. Naturally, I had karaage :-D
After dinner, me, Derek and Molly went to 7-Eleven, and then stood talking outside the community centre again talking for a while (Ciaran was there and told us about how he and Kat had ended up at Shein's apartment after seeing off Farrukh at the bus station; well, at least they didn't end up on Mt Tsukuba again XD), before going our separate ways
So now here I am, having finished my laundry and now watching Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series. I shall sleep in a few minutes as I am absolutely exhausted. Night all ^^

Japan - Days 88-90

Almost a third of the way through the Japan experience, and nearly 100 days :-O
Monday started badly, obviously. I went to the lab early to prepare for my presentation by printing out my script and my handouts. Naturally, the printer ran out of paper, but luckily I found someone in the lab to ask where the spare paper was. Then, I found the stapler but there were no staples in it, but again, luckily, I found some in a drawer by my spot in the lab. I stapled everything together and went down to the classroom to practice and wait.
Crunch time finally arrived, and I tried my best with the preparation I'd done. My supervisor asked me a few questions while I was doing the presentation, and I got asked a few afterwards. I knew questions were going to come, but I still wanted to sink into the floor when they asked questions I couldn't answer. This presentation was never going to go well, but hey, it's over now.
In Japanese class we did some practice for the Wednesday/Thursday interview orals, which went okay, even if me and Mike did just spend most of the time talking ^^' Lab work was alright, I can't remember off the top of my head what I did, but I know that near the end, the woman in my lab who shows me most of what to do showed me the PCR protocol for the samples I took from the embryos the week before last. Not thinking about kanji class on Wednesday, I said I'd have the results for her by then. Realising my mistake, I realised that I'd have to go in on Tuesday - a public holiday for Labour Day - to complete the experiments in time. Oh well, thought I, everyone will be busy with writing reports for classes or practicing for finals, so I'll spend the time waiting for the PCRs to run practicing for my kanji and oral tests.
For kaiwa club, we decided to go to an American-style restaurant with the innuendous (if that's even a word XD) name of Big Boy. I had something called the triple cheese steak, which, albeit tasty, looked deceptively larger on the menu -_- Still, it was tasty, and I'd not had cheese in a while. Also, while talking to my friends during dinner, I was told about something veeery interesting; apparently horse shampoo is useable by humans, and the variety called Mane and Tail makes human hair grow thicker, longer and shinier. Molly said it apparently makes hair grow a couple of inches in a couple of months, so I really want to find some to try it out :-D A bunch of people went to Mo's apartment afterwards, but I didn't know if I was invited and I felt a bit awkward going if I wasn't. Turns out I probably would've been able to, but anyways. I came back to my room and spent a couple of hours trying to write a poem, but I couldn't think up anything good :-( At about 1am, me and Derek went to the combini for a snack run; I got a back of pizza-flavoured potato chips and a green tea-flavoured Chuppa Chups lolly, which gave me flashbacks to when I was in 6th form, taking in a tonne of lollipops for me and my friends XD After I got back to my room, I stayed up studying/procrastinating a few more hours before I decided to call it a night.
Tuesday, the 'public holiday'. I woke up early and got to the lab for about 9am, because I'd worked out that if I did, I'd be done by around 4pm. I wasn't the only person in the lab, however; there were 2-3 others. The experiments proceeded pretty well, but only about 50% of the lanes of my gel came up with bands, so I decided I needed to repeat it on Wednesday. As there were two breaks of around 3 hours each, I used those breaks in either completing another experiment (for which I got results at last, AND I'm starting to get my head around what the data means, thanks in part to the presentation I butchered), checking out the used book shops, or grabbing a salad for lunch at the convenience store, where I happened to bump into one of my friends XD
After my experiments were complete, I went for a cycle up to WongerGoo and Iias, looking for Pokémon Special (as always), horse shampoo and the McDonald's wi-fi hotspot. The Pokémon Dream World was down for maintenance, but the GTS was up, so I managed to get a Dageki and a Hiyappu at last. Then I got a message from Jordan about going for sushi, so I headed back, and hung out with Derek for a while before meeting the others. As it turned out, only 5 of us turned up - me, Jordan, Zivile, Mo and Steven (Kat and Molly had had a girls' day out shopping and had eaten while they were out v.v). It was Jordan's last sushi meal before leaving too; he goes back to the States next Tuesday :-( It was a good meal though. After this, we went home, and again, me and Derek went for a snack run in the late/early hours - I got a grape flavoured lolly this time. When I got back, I set to work memorising my half of the presentation for Japanese class, and the kanji for the final kanji exam. When I couldn't fit any more in my head, I went to sleep.
Wednesday. As people seem to be getting to the lab a little later nowadays, I decided not to rush myself, and only left my room at about 9.10am, as I'm supposed to be there sometime between 9 and 10. I got in and set up my experiment (which has almost a 3 hour run time) and spent the rest of the morning practicing kanji and looking over the presentation script. When 11.15am rolled around, I met Jen for lunch at the bakery (the inside seats were all taken so we sat outside) and then headed over to the ISC for last-minute kanji practice - her K200 class had their final today too.
All in all, the kanji test went pretty well. It started amazingly, and got kinda hard towards the end when they started throwing in words with readings that I'd not quite memorised and such, but with a mixture of intuition and my frantic last-minute studying, I finished with quite a bit of time to spare. The teacher was marking the tests as they were completed, so the early finishers got their marks before class ended - everyone else is getting theirs e-mailed to them. Overall I got 92.8% (130/140), with the breakdown as follows:

• Reading - 73/80 - 91%
• Writing - 30/30 - 100%
• Comprehension - 14/15 - 93%
• Usage - 13/15 - 87%

I think that means I passed :-p
Next up was Japanese class, and the first of our two interview roleplays. Me and Mike decided that today, we'd run the Harry Potter interview, so just before class started I went to the toilet and, checking my reflection in the mirror, drew a lightning bolt on my forehead with a biro XD The interview itself went pretty well. I made the class laugh by performing 'Expecto patronum', so I think the gambit of acting out a fictional character paid off. Now I need to practice the interview part for Mike's Keith Richards interview tomorrow.
Back at the lab, I realised I had a voicemail from Derek, so I called him back and he invited me to eat with him in the cafeteria later on, to which I said okay. I spent somewhere in the region of 2 hours in the mouse room, recaging them, cleaning them out and the like - both the USP2 and the ICR (imprinting control region) ones - during which time I got a message for Jordan inviting everyone for Korean food. I called up Derek after I finished up in the lab to ask him if we could meet afterwards for studying, so I could go for Korean, as that fills me whereas I doubt the cafeteria food would.
After dumping my bag in my room, I headed out to the Hirasuna cafeteria, where I found Derek just sitting down. I hung out with him for about 15 minutes before going to meet up with the people going for Korean. There were 6 of us this time - I guess people are very busy with finals and such given the lack of people today and yesterday ^^' I decided on bibimbap today, and as always, left feeling like I'd doubled my body weight XD [Edit: During the meal, we had a smallish earthquake which went on for about half a minute, it was pretty cool ^^]. Back at my room, I called up Derek to tell him I was back, so we headed down to the combini, where I bought a lemonade lollipop (which I haven't opened yet) and a bottle of Dr Pepper (I was craving something sweet after all the savoury Korean food), and now we're back at my room - he's studying kanji, and I'm procrastinating by updating my blog XD Anyways, I'd best get back to studying this presentation, so until next time, good night ^^
[Edit: I've been e-mailing back and forth with my Japanese exchange's mum all evening. She's sending me a parcel tomorrow morning, but it'll come between 9 and 12, so I'm going to run to the lab in the morning, early, set up the PCR and then come back here to wait for it, and hope that it comes early so I can get back to the lab before too long. I also received ANOTHER birthday card today XD It's been over a week since my birthday now, but it just keeps on giving :-p]

Japan - Days 85-87

Friday was a pretty average day, if I recall correctly. The professor and assistant professor in my lab had returned from their conference, though the students who'd gone were still absent for some reason. I had the professor show me the method for using stripping buffer to remove the antibodies from my membranes, so I can have another go at testing for the protein I want. In Japanese class, we had our roleplay tests - whereas the other J300 class had to do only one roleplay, however, we had to do two, one from each of the two most recent units. I got 'You are invited to go on a drive with your friend in their new car...' (although I got part B, when we'd been told by our Thursday teacher that we'd only get given part A), and 'Call Mori-sensei at his home and say you'll call back when he returns from work'. The first one wasn't too great, but the second one was fine; I had to go first again, this time wasn't through choice. While waiting for everyone else to finish their roleplays, I went up to the computer room and typed up a poem I'd written earlier in the day:

Double-edged Love Letter

Despite cruel twists of fate,
Shattered hopes, heart-breaking pain,
Still the faintest point of light
In the shadows doth remain.
As I stumble blindly onward,
Lead by heat, in search of light,
A warmth, so distant, calls me
Through the lonely, frozen night.
This existence, purgatory -
Far from Heaven, not quite Hell -
Is transcendable, but only
If you come with me as well.
In the darkness, life is bearable
But it could mean much more
If we were one, so that we could
Our happiness restore.
The proof of this was manifest
In tears I once did cry,
For love so strong is that for which
I'd gladly dare to die.
And yet, before that future where
We may become united,
These feelings could be dowsed
If some new ones were ignited.
For now, at least, a part of me
Still longs to be with you,
And hopes my dream from one year past
Will still one day come true.
But I accept it may not be,
So I remain divided;
Until the future is revealed
My heart is undecided.

In the evening, Derek invited me out for gyoza again. As I got out of the lab about 45 minutes before I was supposed to meet him, I took a quick ride up to WonderGoo to check out their used manga selection in case any more Pokémon Special had arrived, before heading back just as quickly, and we had gyoza for the second time in two days (definitely not complaining :-p)before coming back to the dorms.
On Saturday, not wanting to waste a day, I woke up at about 9am, and headed out to Iias to use McDonald's wi-fi again. After game syncing and GTSing and all that jazz, I cycled back down to Dayztown, where I had a blast at DDR. I think that with practice, I'll get a bit better at it, but for now, I kinda suck - I got A, B and C on the three songs I tried, at the level above lowest. After that, I headed to Seibu to grab some ramen. On the way there, I got a text from Mo inviting a bunch of us out for an all-you-can-eat curry lunch at the Jewel Of India restaurant. After cycling around for a while to kill time, I met Jordan, Zivile, Steven, Mo, and her friend Henry (also from England :-D) at the restaurant. The curries on the all-you-can-eat were egg curry, potato curry and chicken saag (spinach) curry, which were all tasty. Then we had a little bit of some kind of custard dessert, and we were done XD I then proceeded to head back to my room to work on Monday's lab presentation. As I was feeling pretty tired at this point, I decided to have a power-nap part-way through, when I got a call from Derek asking if he could come study at my place for a while, which he did. Once again, it turned into a conversation about the problems he's going through, but if he needs to get it off his chest, that's what I'm here for after all. He left at about 10pm, then at about 11.30, I got a message from him on Facebook asking if I wanted to go for a walk around the dorms with him, to scout out all the 'escape routes' his girlfriend could use when she visits in order to avoid detection by the cleaning staff. This was pretty fun, as it gave me a chance to stretch my legs and feel sneaky for walking around other dorms at night. We found a rental porn DVD on a ledge outside one of the rooms on the fourth floor, and a rather suspicious-looking stain on the pavement below; I'm pretty sure they were unrelated, but still, it made me chuckle. After this, I came back, did a bit more work on my presentation, then called it a night.
[Edit: After finishing working on my presentation for the evening, I went onto deviantArt and looked at a few poetry clubs, so I could submit work to them and get noticed more. I found a couple devoted to emotional poetry, so I requested to join them. One is still pending, and the other was automatic acceptance, as well as automatic acceptance of works submitted, too. There was a prompt on their homepage (from the summer, I discovered - I guess it doesn't get updated much) to write an emotive poem about music, so, while listening to Chopin's Grande Valse Brillante, I came up with this one and submitted it - it's already been favourited a few times since I posted it ^^:

Our Symphony

Your fingers dance lightly o'er keys, black and white,
Or pluck at the strings, to this listener's delight,
The air is your canvas; your palette the pitch,
The tone and the tempo, with which you bewitch
My heart, and my feet, as they move in a dance;
Your voice keeps me locked in this beautiful trance.
To you I am led by this song that you play,
So I take both your hands, lift you up and away
From piano, guitar, and yet still the tune goes
On and on, and we dance as the melody flows,
With our heartbeats as harmony; oh, what a sound!
Our love is a symphony, rich and profound.]

Sunday, I got a text from Molly at about 6.45am, saying that people were meeting at Iias to see Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 at 10.30am for the 11am screening (Japanese subtitles, original English audio). I slept for another few hours after getting the text, then cycled up to Iias for about 10am, allowing me to use the McDonalds wi-fi once again before meeting my friends at the cinema. The movie was very good, although I needed the toilet from about halfway through, so by the time it was over I was dying :-( Still, I enjoyed the film. We then went down to the food court for some lunch. I tried to order cheaply, and ended up with some sort of rice bowl with a tonne of tiny salty fish on top; as you can imagine, it wasn't all that great v.v We then took a shortcut back to the dorms, along a road I'd never used but which came out next to the Family Mart near the Korean restaurant. I then proceeded to return to my room to work on my presentation some more. After doing laundry, I texted Derek to let him know to tell me if he planned on going to Coco for food, so I could join him to stretch my legs. He did so about an hour later, so we went down there, and eventually to the 7-Eleven to grab some dinner. I got a pasta bake (which they heated up for me in the microwave behind the cashier - I love how they do that here :3) and some Giant Rainbow Pocky, which consisted of 7 giant Pocky sticks, each of a different flavour - chocolate, green tea, banana, orange, strawberry, grape and blueberry. I shall photograph the box in due course, but the Pocky themselves were VERY tasty :-D We went to eat in the Hirasuna Community Centre, which seems to have become a new haunt for a few of us lately, and then headed back. I think having so many cups of coffee throughout the evening made me a little jittery, but I was composed enough to work on my presentation and finally get it all done - now I just need to go into the lab early to print off the 15 or so handouts. I am dreading this presentation, I always do when it comes to things like this, but in less than 12 hours it'll be over ^^
Anyways, I'm about to head to bed now - early start tomorrow. Nighty night ^^

Japan - Days 81-84

Crap, I haven't updated since Sunday >< I hope I don't forget anything important
Okay, Monday. Most of the people in my lab weren't in because of a conference in Hokkaido, until Friday I believe, so I got to work with the stuff someone in my lab had set me to do while they were away. In Japanese class, we went over the last of the stuff in the workbook, before our tests starting a few days later. After Japanese, I cycled home as fast as I could, to dump my bag before kaiwa club, and to grab my iPod to have some music to listen to while waiting for my experiment to run. I got a few metres away from my dorm when the battery in my iPod died -_- Anyway, at kaiwa club, there was a distinct lack of Japanese people, so it went from being Japanese conversation club to English conversation club ^^' I was also given a present by another exchange student called Jon - a ramen-designed lollipop from the ramen museum in Yokohama - which makes it so much harder for me to stay annoyed at him for being arrogant and making really cruel Facebook statuses. There was a split in opinion as to where we should eat; Jordan was opting for Korean food, but some others wanted to go to a restaurant just off campus where a girl in the club called Jojo works. In the end, as it was a 50/50 split, some people went to each - I opted for Korean along with most of my friends who were eating that night. Ciaran's bike was broken, so we asked Kat nicely if she'd ride on my back rack so Ciaran could borrow her bike, to which she agreed. At one point as we were crossing the road, as I couldn't get up enough speed with a passenger, some dick revved his engine at us and sped up towards us, though luckily he didn't hit us; this is the second time a Japanese person has tried to hit me. Bastards... Anyway, we arrived at the Korean place alive, and proceeded to chow down. I had something called gomutan (I think), which was basically a soup with lots of vegetables in it. Following Jordan's example, I dumped my rice into it, which I'm pretty sure we're not meant to do, but it tastes sooo good. As there was a lower male:female ratio this time, however, there were leftovers afterwards as we just couldn't finish all the food; I'm so disappointed in myself XD We then went back to the dorms, stood talking outside Jordan's building for a few minutes, then headed home
Tuesday was a pretty average day, if I remember right. In Japanese class we had an end-of-year grammar and listening test, which went pretty well - I found out on Wednesday that I got 92% on the listening part and 90% on the grammar part. Back at the lab, as I couldn't remember if I had to clean the ICR (Imprinting Control Region, apparently) mice, I went down there to check, only to discover that a couple of other people from my lab were about to start cleaning them out, so I was drafted into helping them XD Afterwards, rather than going directly back to the lab, I took a slight detour to Book Off, and I'm glad I did - I found Pokémon Special 3 for 105 yen :-D Needless to say, I promptly bought it before heading back to the lab. In the evening, I messaged a few people, most of whom were busy, and we decided to eat together. My original plan was to go for Chinese, but in the end we bought some food from the combini and ate it in the Hirasuna Community Centre. There was me, Derek, Ciaran, and Molly (who complained about having to cycle all the way from Ichinoya in the cold XD)
On Wednesday, I had a kanji test on the last 5 units. I know I made a couple of mistakes, but on the whole I was happy with how it went; I should get the results back on Monday, which will allow me to review for the final test next Wednesday. In Japanese class afterwards, we did a little practice on our interview presentations; I'm still afraid I'm going to crack up when Mike refers to me as 'Potter-san' XD After getting back to the lab and cleaning the mice, I once again took a detour to Book Off. Unfortunately had no more Pokémon Special, so I made a stop on the way back to the little used book store by the izakaya, where I found that their copy of 'How I Became A Pokémon Card' was still there. It was priced up at 100 yen, and with a 30% discount which I'd seen over the door but forgotten about, it was only 70 yen. The lady who worked in there smiled at me very friendly-ly as I left, though I dunno if that was just because I was looking intently at the coupon she handed me, trying to read it ^^' After labs, I met up with Derek for a bit to try and memorise the recitation piece for our oral tests the next day in Japanese
[Edit: Just remembered something - after meeting up with Derek and going back to my room, I decided that I knew the script pretty well, so I tried my hand at some creative writing. I came up with an idea for a short story some time ago, but didn't really know how to expand on it. Well, I had a little think and finally came up with something. It's kinda... different, shall we say, but I'm pleased with how it turned out :-)]
Thursday - The Japanese oral test went very well. My teacher said that my recitation and my pronunciation were perfect - her only criticism was that, when I'm thinking, I should stay silent rather than saying things like 'mmm'. Afterwards, we did a bit of practice for tomorrow's oral - roleplay. After class, I went to the mouse house and had to separate the young mice out, male and female, into separate cages so that there was no unwanted breeding. I decided not to detour by the bookstores again as I'm pretty sure they won't have any more Pokémon Special for a few days at least ^^' I got a message from Jordan arranging a group meal at gyoza at 6.45; I got out of the lab at 6, so to kill some time I decided to cycle to Tsukuba Centre and back, through some of the roads I don't often cycle down, which was a nice change. Ended up in what felt like a race with another cyclist for a while too, which was kinda funny. Gyoza itself was good, as always :-D I sat with Derek, Molly and Mo, and for the most part we were all talking about cartoons we used to watch, and Derek and Mo were thinking of things they wanted to do when their girlfriend and boyfriend, respectively, come to visit over Christmas. I feel so lonely v.v After gyoza, me and Derek came back to my room to practice the roleplays for Friday. During this time, however, I got a call from my homestay friend and his mum, which was nice ^^ We agreed that I could visit them for New Year and celebrate that with them, which is what I'd been hoping, though it sounds like they're going to have their whole family there so I hope it's not too awkard ^^'
Anyways, that's about it from me now, so I'll try to update more often again for a while, so as not to forget anything. I'm going to go and update the last post with a few things I forgot first time around ^^' Ciao for now

Japan - Days 78-80

The past few days have been pretty fun :-)
Friday was the start of the weekend plans I'd been waiting for all week, though it didn't go quite as I'd intended. In the lab, I finished off an experiment, and then asked one of the people in my lab if we'd be doing the mouse dissections. She stared blankly for a few seconds, then realisation dawned on her face - she'd totally forgotten! She checked with my supervisor, then got me to go collect the mice. Then started the dissection process - killing the mice, cutting them open, removing their wombs, complete with embryos which looked like strings of beads at this stage, and then separating the embryos out from the uterine material for DNA extraction and slide preparation. The process took forever - in the end, I finished at about 8.40pm and had to go in on Saturday - my birthday - to complete the cell lysis experiment. My supervisor killed the first mouse, but I had to make several tries at killing the second one, which resulted in it biting through its tongue at one point, leaving blood on the tissue, and I was shaking while trying to kill the third one, so I had to get someone else to do it as I kept failing. Then separating out all the uterine material and putting the embryo into the paraformaldehyde intact was quite a challenge, but again, with practice it got easier. At about 5pm, the people in my lab held a little party for me; I had tried inviting them to my proper birthday parties, but they're all really busy right now, in preparation for a conference next week. We sat for about an hour in the common room, eating some expensive-looking but very tasty cakes :3 They even got me to blow candles out on top of one of them XD Then it was back to the lab to complete the procedure as far as I could that evening
Once I realised how late I was gonna be done, I messaged all the people whose numbers I had who were meant to be going to my party, telling them to meet at Coco at 9pm - I only just made it in time. Even so, I was the first one there by about 5-10 minutes, after which Molly arrived at around 9pm. It took people about an hour to all get there, but eventually we headed off to Hot Stuff. Admittedly, I took a longer route than I perhaps could have, but we made it there in the end. We lost some people on the way, but they found us again eventually. At midnight, my friends started singing Happy Birthday to me, and then everyone in the bar started applauding XD
However, this is where things started going downhill - people were talking amongst themselves, but didn't seem to take much of an interest in me. Then some of the girls, Molly in particular, started talking about going down to the bar below - Gold Rush - afterwards, because they had hot Japanese bartenders, a topic of conversation that does wonders for my self-esteem. [Edit: There was a guy in Gold Rush who we'd seen on a few posters in Hot Stuff, a Westerner with grey hair who's running for some post in local government I think. From the way he was talking, he's a total dick. I dunno if he was using this as a joke or as a quote, but one of the things he said was 'If a tree falls on a woman, and there's no-one around to hear it, why is that tree in the kitchen?', which kinda pissed me off. Also, he failed at darts - He was hitting the bottom left of the board the whole time. For reference, the highest-scoring segment is in the top right. I would say he was going for a double to get out, except he was hitting the single and STILL aiming in the same place. So yeah, dickhead AND a fail lol.] We went down there eventually, and I stayed for about an hour I think, before heading back when Anton and Asoon did; the others stayed for another 2 or so hours. When I got in, it was still just about dark, so I went to bed after setting my alarm for 9am
Saturday, my birthday :-D I started by opening the 6 cards I'd received at that point, from my parents, my brother, my grandparents, and my aunt and cousins. I then had to go to the lab for an hour or two to finish up the cell lysis experiment. As it had to spin for an hour, I went down to look in Book Off and another used book store I discovered last weekend, before returning to the lab to finish it all off. I tried messaging people to see if they wanted to go into Tsukuba Centre to hang out or go shopping, but going to the bar the night before meant that the ones who had gone were asleep, and the others were either busy or, in Jen's case, trying to adjust their sleeping patterns in preparation for 7 hours of karaoke XD So I started by cycling along to Dayztown, where I played in the arcade - a game of Silent Hill for starters (where I ended up losing most of my health trying to protect and NPC while I was being eaten alive by roaches), while I was waiting for DDR to free up, which I played 2 games of. It felt good playing it again, I don't think 've played it at all since I came to uni. After this, I went up to Iias, where I got some lunch at McDonalds and used their wi-fi, before having one blast at a crane game with Kibago (a new Pokémon) plushies, which I failed at :-( Then I stopped in WonderGoo looking for Pokémon manga. I couldn't find any that I didn't have already, but I DID find the second volume of the Tales Of Symphonia novelisation for only 50 yen, so I bought that. I then cycled around aimlessly for a while, looking along side roads for other used book stores, but didn't find any more. I did, however, get a bit mindfucked at one point - it turns out that the Family Mart I went to in the first couple of weeks, and the one I went to on the way to Honda-san's apartment, are one and the same - I just came in different doors each time. How I didn't recognise the inside of the shop is a mystery XD Anyway, as I was heading back to Oikoshi, I saw Derek sitting outside Coco eating lunch, so I decided to go sit with him, going into the combini to buy a small bottle of energy drink - I think it was 100ml with 2000mg of taurine or something, though I didn't feel any effect. I had 4 throughout the course of the day, but still, didn't feel very buzzed by them
After talking with Derek for a bit, we went back to our rooms. I told everyone that we were going to meet outside Coco at 6.30 to go for okonomiyaki at Kuraudo, for which 6 people turned up. It was reeeally tasty! I had the gyoza one, and the others had a few different flavours, of which I ended up trying a little and finishing most peoples' leftovers - needless to say, I once again got my money's worth. I messaged everyone else midway through to say we would meet at Coco at 9pm to head to Cybex, but we ended up leaving at about 10.30pm after waiting for a few people (as it transpired, a few people came late to Cybex anyway, after we got there, so all in all about 15 people were there throughout the evening). Some people got 4 hour packages, and the rest of us got 7 hours. Then the fun commenced :-D
Amid the singing, there was of course plenty of alcohol, though I didn't have TOO much for fear of being sick. However, Andrew brought a bottle of Polish vodka with him called Spiritus. It was 96%! I had a sip, and it felt like my tongue had dried out and was on fire; I almost spat it out! However, it didn't do to me what it did to the people who had more than just a sip - Mike had a big shot and spent most of the evening in the toilet; Molly had a lot mixed with melon soda, spent about an hour completely wasted and then 3 more in the toilet; Cenk, well, he gets sick easy so I don't know if it was the Spiritus or just general alcohol that did this to him, but he spent a while in the toilet too (he does that a lot when drinking XD). The rest of us had a very good time though :-) And of course, had plenty of ice cream and soda. We ended up finishing at about 6.30am, and it was light outside. As Jen didn't have a bike, and the buses were going to come about 30 minutes after we arrived at the bus stop, I escorted Jen home while she walked (she has no bike, and now refuses to ride on the back of anyone's as much on principle as being afraid of falling off). Then I cycled home and went to bed at about 7am, with an alarm set for 10am
Sunday morning, I woke up to my alarm still feeling pretty tired. I messaged a few people asking if they wanted to go into Tsukuba Centre, but they declined or didn't answer. So, I went to Iias once again and used the McDonalds wi-fi, then checked WonderGoo for books, before going to Seibu and getting more noodles and some lunch. When I got back, I checked Facebook and discovered that the jacket someone had left in our karaoke room the previous night/that morning belonged to Anton, so I met him at the 100 yen and gave it back to him after starting my own laundry. On the way back to the dorm, I stopped at a recycle shop that Mike had told me about the day before. It was packed with all manner of things, but I absolutely love shops like that :-D Didn't find the Pokémon manga I wanted, but saw some nice stuff that I'd definitely consider buying sometime, like a little Chii figurine from Chobits, and a tonne of old video games. After getting back to my room, I finished laundry and did some homework. I tried messaging people about getting some dinner at the Chinese in the evening, but again, thanks to karaoke they were either busy, sleeping or hung-over; I was just tired with a sore throat ^^'
And that's about it from me for this weekend. Karaoke was definitely the highlight, so my birthday was a good one ^^
Nighty night, I must sleep now, or I'll fall asleep in lab/class XD

Japan - Day 77

Well, I'm ridiculously tired, but I'm not gonna get a chance to update over the next few days, and as I hope for those days to result in long blog posts, I thought I'd better update now, before I go to bed
Today started in a pretty average fashion. Lab-wise, I finished off one Western blot, which didn't work out, and started another to see if the sample concentration was the problem or whether it was another factor; I'll find out tomorrow. In Japanese class, there were only 5 people - a drop from the 6 last lesson. We worked on the roleplay drills which will be used in our final exam. I need to memorise them, but I get the general gist already which is good. After Japanese, while we were walking back, we talked about where to eat in the evening. I mentioned the karaage place, The Beckoning Chicken, as I'd gotten a leaflet through my postbox about it (alongside another birthday card :-D) earlier on, and it sounded alright. Molly said that if I could get a bunch more people to go too, we could go there, and then I got told later that someone else had mentioned Chinese instead, so I decided to be diplomatic and send everyone a message saying we'd put it to vote when we met up at 7.30pm
I got out of the lab at about 6.30, and although it was cold out, I needed to get out to clear my head so I started cycling towards Tsukuba Centre. My camera batteries gave out as I reached the place I really wanted to photograph, typically, so I kept cycling through, intending to loop around Hot Stuff and back, but then decided I'd go look in WonderGoo for Pokémon Special. Again, all they had was the copy of 19 I'd left behind last time because I already had one, so I headed back to meet everyone, being the second to arrive, after Molly. All in all, 6 of us showed up, and we headed down to the restaurant
Apparently as we were getting seated, someone shouted to the kitchen about karaage, as most of us order karaage whenever we go there. And tonight was no exception - 4 of us ordered it, and as always, it was good :-D Afterwards, we took a quick walk around Bulldog, with Molly buying around 20,000 yen's (about £150's) worth of stuff, including a pyjama suit and a huge-ass pillow, all of which barely fit in her bike basket. We hung around outside Coco for a little while (Thursday night is Finlagan's night, where everyone gets majorly pissed, but as I've always got labs the next day I never partake, stupid labs -.-), then Kat and Molly left so I figured I'd leave too. I was warned that the internet wasn't working anywhere at the time, so I came back and had a nap, then opened up the internet when I woke up and eventually it started working. Almost as soon as I did, Derek messaged me saying he needed to talk some more, so we met up and talked for a little while before we headed back
And so here I am. I just uploaded some more photos to Facebook, and now I REALLY need to sleep. So, ciao for now, and hopefully the next time I upload I'll have a tonne of funny stories and equally funny pictures to show you :-D

Japan - Day 76

Wow, my 100th blog post :-D
Anyways, Wednesday, Wednesday. I left early today so I could afford to stop and take photos on the way to the lab, though I still arrived at 8.50am. I finished off my Western blot, which still didn't work, so I've made a list of things to do tomorrow to try and get it to work. I had to clear all the mouse cages after class, which took forever because as well as my usual mice, I had to move the crazy ones to clean cages too. They're almost big enough to climb out of the cages; one got its claws over the rim just as I was going to pick it up. Still, I got it done
Anyway, in kanji class we submitted homework and worked on two lessons' worth of kanji. We have a test next week, so I need to study. In Japanese class, there were only 6 of us there. We watched the model conversation on the DVD, and then looked over our pair presentations - I'm gonna be Harry Potter, and Mike's going to be Keith Richards. This should be... interesting XD
After labs, I went to the gyoza restaurant with Kat, Mike (American Mike), Molly, Derek and Ciaran. I had 20 this time, a step up from my usual 15, and was much more satisfied come the end :-D After that, all of us went to the 7-Eleven, then all except Derek sat and talked outside for a while. I bought a 'cheese-flavoured' ice lolly, but it just tasted of Mini Milks (very nostalgic :-p)
After being back in my room for a few hours, Derek came over at about 1am, and we chatted for about an hour about our respective emotional issues and our past and (in his case) present relationships. I think that's the longest face-to-face serious conversation I've ever had; I've had longer ones on MSN, I'm sure, but still. We do seem to have a lot of similar issues, so I guess it's good for both of us to have someone to talk to about our insecurities
Once Derek left, I stayed up another few hours, and am just now thinking about going to bed. I SERIOUSLY need to get an early night tomorrow night, or I'm never gonna survive what I'm hoping is going to be an epic weekend of partying :-D So with that, I'll be off

I hope tomorrow (and the rest of the week) looks as sunny as this :-D

Night ^^

Japan - Day 75

Today started off chilly, as usual, but thanks to my new heater, getting out of bed wasn't too bad once I'd had it on for a little while. I decided to take my camera with me today, despite the fact that it only had a little bit of battery power left. I had a breakfast of ramen noodles, which tasted great :3 Then I headed out to the lab, where I spent the day doing more Western blotting. I was asked to clean out some more mouse cages, presumeably because the person who normally cleans them (the assistant professor, I think) is busy. They were called ICR mice, and although I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, my guess is 'Incredibly Crazy Rodents', as they were zipping around their cages like crazy. I only had to change their water and food today, as they were almost all out of it, but tomorrow I have to move them to clean cages, which should be... interesting. Japanese class was alright, we had to submit homework but aside from that, nothing out of the ordinary. Except that I suck at keigo ^^' On the way to Japanese class, I tried taking a couple of pictures of campus. I got two before the batteries ran out in my camera, so I've recharged them and will try again tomorrow. Having looked at Derek's blog a few weeks ago, I decided I need to make my blog look more impressive, so I'll start uploading a few pictures here to brighten it up :-)

On the way to the International Students' Centre

Matsumi Pond in autumn colours :3

After labs, I decided that it might be fun to invite the people in my lab to my birthday party/parties. I texted one guy in my lab to see if he thought they'd want to come. His response was a little weird. I think he said that they'd like to come, but that the people in my lab and my friends outside the lab were different groups (duh), but it also sounded like he thought it would be good to invite them if I wanted, so I'll get on that tomorrow
I hung out with Derek at the combini for a little while, then we went to check if Kuraudo, the okonomiyaki restaurant I want to go to on Saturday, was open on weekends, which it is, luckily ^^' We took a bit of a windy way back so as not to get dragged along to one of the bars on the way home, but we probably would've been okay if we rode fast enough XD Then I came back to my nice warm room. Attempted to toast my ham and cheese sandwich close to the heater on full blast, as apparently Jordan managed to work a frying pan over his, but it just got it slightly warm and I got bored fast, so I ate it XD
Anyways, that's about it for me today. I just got done with some homework - for our final presentations in Japanese class, we have to do an interview with a celebrity, and I've decided to play Harry Potter XD This should be interesting... Anyways, night night ^^

Japan - Days 70-74

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I've been pretty busy these past few days
Thursday felt a little weird, as we'd just had a midweek holiday so I kept thinking it was Monday ^^' Nothing special to report in the way of labwork, really. Got a gel which started looking something like I wanted, but the controls didn't show any bands so I have to repeat with new controls. Plus there was a suspiciously high number of heterozygotes, so I guess we'll see how this turns out. In Japanese class, our Thursday teacher - Dan-sensei - was laying into a couple of guys about their pronunciation. Granted, one guy's in particular is pretty terrible (example - he pronounces えいが [eiga - film] as えんが), but it was still funny to hear her picking up on every sentence. In the evening, a bunch of us met up to go and eat Chinese food near to the 100 yen store, which was tasty. I had the karaage (fried chicken) set, and once again, ate a couple of peoples' leftovers. And an extra bowl of rice. I swear I'm gonna be huge when I leave here XD Also, I found out what the yellow tickets they give you after every meal are for - you trade in two, and you get either some 水ギョーザ - sui-gyoza (not sure exactly what's so watery about it, I guess I'll try it next time) - or a cup of drink from the vending machine; I went with melon soda :-D Kat had given me back the cat ears and tail I lent her after the Halloween party, but I left the carrier bag in my bike basket when we went into the restaurant. Thankfully, it was still there when I got back ^^' After that, we took a stroll down to the 100 yen store, then back to the bikes and on to home. A bunch of people were going to open-mike night at Shein's, but I figured I'd better not as I had to be in the lab in the morning -_- Kat went and was fine, though, so I'll probably try it someday, and lab be damned
Friday started off pretty awesome - at around 7.30am there was a pretty big earthquake :-D Well, not big as in buildings-falling-down big, but big as in I could hear the windows in the corridor outside rattling and I could DEFINITELY feel it. At lunchtime, I got a text from Molly saying 'Hey, when you guys finish lunch you should come to the tables in the 留学生センター [International Students' Centre]', so I figured it was because she wanted something. Turns out, I was right - she needed help with her homework. However, afterwards she did offer to tell me about a nomihodai happening that night. Japanese and the rest of the day in the lab was alright. I started working on translating part of the scientific paper I was meant to present the following Monday. When I got the message about the nomihodai (in aid of some guy's birthday who I don't know, someone from Nicaragua - he said for people to invite their friends, apparently), I headed back home to dump my bag, then headed back to the 留学生センター, where I was meant to meet the others. As I arrived about 20 minutes early, I went inside to go on the computers, and low and behold there was ANOTHER earthquake at about 7.15pm :-D About the same size, too. I posted a comment on Facebook, and noticed that most other people had as well (I liked all the statuses I saw XD). Then I went outside to meet Molly, who had been there about 15 minutes by the time I went outside, then we waited for Kat and Mike to get there. After this, we went down to the 7-Eleven a little way away, bought a drink, then drank it in the little park across the road. We even played on the swing set for a while XD Then we went back to the 7-Eleven to meet the other people we were going to the izakaya (essentially a bar - the same one I went to a while back before my second time at Cybex) with. On the way there, I noticed a second hand bookshop which I need to check out sometime. Well, in we went, paid for the nomihodai, and the fun commenced. Well, it started out fun anyway ^^' Like at the nomikai I went to with my lab, there's a drinks menu on the table from which you can order whenever, and they bring food at intervals. I think we had salad, karaage, toriyaki, potato wedges, and a nabe (a pot they put on a portable stove and you serve yourself from it, I think it was something seafoody). Drinks-wise, I had a huge-ass bottle of beer, and a big glass of acerola (some sort of cherry) Chu-Hai. I was feeling kinda drunk after the beer, but as it was an all-you-can-drink I decided to take advantage of it - when everyone thought it was last orders (it wasn't, as it turned out), I ordered another acerola Chu-Hai and a lychee Chu-Hai, but I never got to taste much of them. I think I know the problem, in hindsight - I drank way too quickly. I had to go to the toilet about 3-4 times to throw up; I think it's the most I've been sick from drinking ever. After about an hour in and out of the toilet, I decided I'd better go home; by this time it was about 1am or 2am I think. Once I got outside, I was fine, I guess it's the smell of alcohol that sets me off when I feel ill. Turns out I didn't miss out on anything much this time, thankfully - some of the others went to a guy's apartment and played a drinking game, and a couple of people woke up in an alleyway at about 4am XD Still, sucked being so sick though
Saturday morning, I woke up at 8am or 9am without an alarm (I'd set it for 10am), feeling slightly dizzy but certainly not hungover, thankfully. I got up, and texted a couple of people asking if they wanted to come to Iias with me (I needed to use their Wi-Fi on my DS), but neither Jen nor Derek replied, so I went alone. I used the McDonalds Wi-Fi (it worked first time this time, once I got a signal), and stopped at WonderGoo on the way back to Tsukuba Centre. They only had the one volume of Pokémon Special that I left last time as I already had it, so I left empty-handed. From here, I went to WonderRex, the recycle shop, and went to buy the figurine of Nia, from Gurren Lagann, and Pokémon Rumble-esque Palkia plushie. In the end, though, I settled for just the Nia figurine; I may get Palkia another time if it's still there. Then I headed to Seibu, where I bought myself another bookshelf, as I still had a crapload of stuff to sort out on my desk and floor. Once I got back, after balancing the flat-packed bookshelf on my seat and handlebars while walking the bike home, I waited for Derek to be free so I could borrow his screwdriver again, but as he was busy for a while and I was bored, I just bought one from the 100 yen store; I can always lend it out to people who need it and get some more use out of it. Once I assembled the bookshelf and cleaned my room up a bit, THEN Derek called me up, and asked if I wanted to go get some lunch with him at Starbucks in the library, as he had some work to do and wanted to get out of his room. We went down there and had some lunch, and I stayed with him a while as he was on a bit of a downer, then finally went home once he'd started up his work properly. Once I got back, I started texting around to see what was going on in the evening. Molly and Ciaran texted back, so we decided to meet at Coco at 8pm. Me and Molly arrived on time, and everyone else was about an hour late, so we took a walk around Bulldog (a store just up from Coco which sells stuff like clothes, accessories, kettles, pillows, and other random stuff). Derek arrived next, and as we figured we wouldn't be drinking that night, we got some dinner from the combini - I got a meal of takoyaki, okonomiyaki and yakisoba, in a round tray thing divided into 3 parts. After we finished eating, Ciaran, Cenk, Mike (Manchester Mike) and Maria arrived. Mike and Maria left again after a while, but the rest of us sat and had a drink (or two, in Ciaran and Cenk's case) outside the combini. I don't know whose idea it was to begin with, but me, Molly and Derek decided to go to Cybex. Ciaran and Cenk said they might come later, but they ended up drinking a tonne and were drunk-driven by Shein partway up Mt. Tsukuba, which sounded pretty dangerous ^^' Meanwhile, however, me, Derek and Molly had a 5 hour blast at karaoke :-D Again, I struggled to hit some of the high notes, so I sang a lot of songs an octave down, but it was a lot of fun, as always. I found some Sonic The Hedgehog songs, like Live And Learn (Crush 40 ftw!), which me and Derek sang together (he's a Sonic fan too :-D). So yeah, that was definitely a great night ^^
Sunday, however, wasn't quite so great v.v Before I continue, however, I will say this. I'm sure some of my readership will want to lecture me on the behaviour I'm about to describe, but I'll say now - I don't want to hear it. I know I was dumb, but I'm learning from it (again), so hopefully it won't be repeated. Anyway, back to Sunday. I woke up at about 9am, and then headed to Ichinoya for 10am to meet Jen so we could go shopping. We took a quick walk to a bakery I saw some time ago (which turned out to be a patisserie ^^') before half-walking, half-bussing into Tsukuba Centre. In Seibu, I bought myself some ramen (200 yen for 5 packs - I bought 2), some coffee, and some cereal. We then went to the home section and I bought me a nice new kettle :-D And a bowl and spoon ^^' Once I got back, I quickly tried out my new purchases. Worked like a charm :-D I spent the rest of the day trying to work on the scientific paper presentation I was meant to give the day after. I managed to complete the handout, although I couldn't log onto the library computers, so I intended to print them off in the lab early on Monday morning. I took a few minutes out to walk down to the combini with Derek, then worked on the presentation until about 2am, when I just had to sleep, after setting my alarm for 6am
Monday morning - it started with a nice dream, then I had to return to the real world and started working on what I was going to say for my presentation. At about 8am, however, I realised there was no way I could blag through it - I'd left it too late to be able to do it well, so I had to just apologise to my professor and see what happened. I got in early, about 8.30am, to try and catch him before the seminar started, but he only arrived at about 8.55am, so it was just in the nick of time. I said that I'd been preparing for Japanese and kanji class exams (which is what else I should have been doing), and he seemed to understand, and I said I'd do it next Monday instead. A few minutes later, I was informed that I needed to present something at the biology seminar I'm meant to be going on at the start of December, despite the fact that the organiser said that it was okay if I didn't. I'm going to go talk with my supervisor tomorrow and see what's going on. I was in a very restless mood in the morning, probably from a combination of lack of sleep, excitement about my birthday, embarrassment about not being able to present that morning, and having lots of work to do. I managed to get my experiment started on schedule, so I headed up to the 留学生センター to rent myself a free heater. We have to return them on March 23rd, so until then, no more freezing my nuts off in my room :-D I texted people to remind them to collect them, and Derek arrived just as I was heading out after picking mine up. As he had a class right away after that, and didn't want to drag his heater around, I offered to take it back to my room and let him collect it in the evening. We then bumped into Molly, so to be fair, as she had a class too, I extended the same offer to her. Her response to this was, 'If you could, I would love you forever', which, as you will see later on, is rather ironic given what happened when she collected it. Anyway, I ended up with my heater in my basket, Derek's laying sideways between my basket and handlebars, and Molly's in my hand while I held onto the handlebars at the same time. Wasn't easy, and they clattered a lot, but I finally got them all back to my room. I bumped into the guy from my building who works in the 100 yen store, when I was going up to my room, and it took me a few minutes to remember who he was - I just kept thinking 'I'm sure that's not Honda-san, but I don't know who else it can be', and as it turned out, it wasn't him at all XD I ended up telling him about kaiwa club, which he said he'd like to go to in the evening. I rocketed back to the lab, set up the next part of my experiment, then headed to lunch with Jen. I'd only had a small bowl of dry cereal for breakfast, so I was ravenous - I had a bibinba, wakame soup, and a bowl of rice. It filled me up, and made my stomach hurt a little as I ate it pretty fast, but I figured it would keep me full for a while; I was hungry again right after Japanese class -_- Japanese class itself was alright, nothing very special. Back at the lab, I wanted to talk to my supervisor about my presentation, but he was in a meeting all afternoon, so I didn't know where he was. At about 6pm, once I reached a point I could stop at, I headed back to my room to dump my bag, then on to kaiwa club. In the process, I realised that the arms/wings on my Reshiram key charm have started to tear off, so I need to buy some superglue before they come off completely. At kaiwa club, there was a distinct lack of Japanese people, maybe 4-5 compared to about 10-12 foreigners. After hanging around talking, as per usual, we went for dinner - today it was Kuraudo, the okonomiyaki place, which is also where I'm going for my birthday party on Saturday; Jordan asked if I minded, to which I replied, 'You can never have too much okonomiyaki' XD We sat on 3 tables of 6 people, everyone ordering a single okonomiyaki and then splitting it between the 6 of them on that table. We had gyoza, seafood, two octopus, kimchi, and Hiroshima special - the gyoza one was best, in mine and 2-3 other peoples' opinions; it tastes a lot like the real thing. Afterwards, we made a quick stop at the 7-Eleven, before heading back. Molly came to my place to collect her heater on the way through. However, 2 things pissed me off about this - firstly, she never even attempted to come up to my room and collect it, I was just expected to bring it down to her. Secondly, she never even said 'thank you'. This is nothing new, but still, it pissed me off. So much for 'loving me forever', huh?
Anyways, here I am now, sitting in my nice warm room :-) Gonna work on my Japanese homework for a while, then get some sleep - I sure need it. Night all
[Edit: Derek called me up at about midnight asking if I wanted us to go through the homework together, so we hung out for about 2 hours, doing homework and listening to the music that he and Molly had recommended to me, which was pretty fun :-)]

Japan - Days 66-69

Past few days have been alright, methinks
Sunday was a relatively uneventful day. Woke up early to go with Jen to the supermarket, and was back within an hour. I grabbed myself a bag of 6 raisin rolls for about 90 yen for brunch (didn't really do the job, but hey, it was cheap XD), and then came back home to do some homework. In between times, I put my laundry in the wash, and as I was coming out of the laundry room, I noticed a delivery man standing outside. I was expecting a parcel so I wondered if it was for me, and ran back to my room in case he phoned me. I never received a call, so I guessed it was for someone else. Checking my mail box when I went to move my laundry to the dryer, I found that it HAD been for me; there was an 'undelivered package' notice in my box. After my laundry was done, I cycled out to grab the package then came back, which thankfully didn't take too long. I spent the rest of the evening doing homework, then went with Derek down to the combini to grab some dinner
Monday was a looong day. Monday morning 9am, as usual, for the scientific paper presentations. Then homework submission in Japanese class, and listening to a few more peoples' Daily Speech presentations about things they want to do in Japan, or things that surprised them when they came to Japan. When I came back from Japanese, I went to the mouse room with the girl from my lab and we put some more mice together for breeding, and took the one pregnant mouse from the last time back to the lab, where my supervisor expertly killed it and dissected it. However, there were only 2 embryos in the womb, and neither of them was as developed as it should be, for some reason. In the evening was kaiwai club, where we went to Fujisen, the Japanese restaurant just down from Coco. I had the 鳥肉スタミナ定食 (chicken stamina set meal) which Jordan recommended, and it was very good :-) Jordan then came up with a 3-day plan for dinner - gyoza on Tuesday, Korean on Wednesday and Chinese on Thursday; his 3 favourite restaurants. Then a bunch of us hung out outside Coco for an hour or something. Afterwards, a few of us were invited to drink tea at one of the Japanese guys' apartments. Honda-san, a neuroscience student I'd been introduced to at kaiwa, seems to work in the fly lab beside Jen's. Me, Kat, Molly, Mo, Nori and Yurika were invited back, and after about 10 minutes trying to decide whether or not his apartment would be big enough for us, we decided it would be, and headed off. As Kat's bike was broken, she'd riden on the back rack of my bike both to Fujisen, and then to Honda-san's apartment. His apartment is AMAZING! The genkan (entrance hall) opens onto the little kitchen, then right into the combined living room/bedroom. We all sat on the floor around a little low table, and ate the snacks we'd bought on the way there, and dranks some tea. He had a bunch of cool decorations and science books, which made it look really cool. I wanna live in a place like that XD Also, as he found out I was a science student earlier on in the evening, when he made tea, he served mine in a genetics cup he had, which was nice. We stayed there until about 1am, which was a little later than we'd all intended as we were all sleepy, but still, it was fun. As we were off to the side of the campus and the others weren't 100% sure how to get back to Ichinoya, I asked Kat and Molly to text me when they got home safely, which they did, after which I went to sleep
Tuesday was a pretty good day, at least in the evening. The daytime itself was okay, I spent most of my lab time reading through a scientific paper which I'm going to present on Monday, about ubiquitination and how it helps viruses replicate. I got the call for gyoza and arrived slightly late on account of finishing up an experiment, but made it there before they actually went in. I had 15, which seriously isn't enough - I should go for 20 next time. Still, it is really tasty, I can see why Jordan says it's his favourite. After this, as Wednesday was 文化の日 (Culture Day - a national holiday), we decided to have a drink. Ciaran texted us while we were at gyoza, so as me and Molly were the only ones going right there, we grabbed some drinks from Coco, then cycled to Matsumi Pond, where we were all meeting up. We arrived about 20 minutes early, so we sat and talked a bit before Ciaran and Cenk arrived. We were sitting right next to the pond, so Ciaran was a little paranoid about falling in XD Over time, Mike (American Mike), Kat, Andrew, Bianca, Anton and Derek showed up too. At one point me, Derek and Molly decided to go to Coco to get another drink and some other people had requested some food, so as Derek didn't have his bike with him we walked it, so the round trip took about an hour, even with Molly, in her super good mood, pushing us along saying 'Faster, faster!' XD When we were almost back, she went to find Katsu and Kosuke in front of Coco (which we'd just left) so me and Derek delivered everyone's food. While we'd been away, a few more people who I didn't know had arrived, though they left pretty soon after Molly, Kosuke and Katsu came back. Just behind us there was a statue which someone had put a pumpkin hat on, which Mike hooked down with a stick and it got passed around a few times - I think Molly has it now. At some point during the evening, Cenk had gone to use the toilet in the humanities building (it was still open when we left at about 2am) and hadn't returned. Ciaran called him and he said he was sleeping in one of the toilets, so me, Molly, Andrew, Kat, Anton, Katsu and Kosuke went on a hunt for him. Walking around the building in the middle of the night, with various lights on and off, and no-one around, was really fun XD Anton had taken the hat-hooking stick with him as a staff, and had to snap it in two when he found it almost brushed the ceiling inside the building. We walked around for about half an hour, and even managed to find a teacher or someone in a suit who was still working at about 1am :-O After walking around and still not finding Cenk, we went back to the others, but not before Andrew had taken a small whiteboard, a poster and a bottle of Febreeze, and half-torn a poster from the side of a vending machine, and I'd worn a traffic cone as a hat briefly XD Ciaran went for one final look for Cenk as we were just about to head to Coco on our bikes, and finally found him just as we were heading off. As Katsu and Kosuke didn't have bikes, one of them borrowed Kat's and she rode on the back of mine again. We hung around outside Coco for a little bit, and were considering going to Cybex, but then everyone else wasn't in the mood so we decided to call it a night, deciding to meet at midday to go clothes shopping the next day
Wednesday - Culture Day. I woke up at 10am, just as I was receiving a text from my mum to say that my brother had arrived home safely after his homestay. By 10.30 I was dressed, and had cycled to the mouse building to carry out my weekly cleaning. I'd allowed myself an hour and a half to get it done, but as it transpired, I've become so practiced at it that I managed it in about 45 minutes. To kill time, I cycled up to Book Off (couldn't find any Pokémon Special though), then back down to Ichinoya to wait for the others. American Mike, Molly, Kat and Jen were coming, so while most of us took our bikes, Jen took the bus, and we met at Tsukuba Centre. First off, we grabbed some lunch at Subway. I got a cajun chicken sub with basil mayonnaise, which tasted really good, and a melon soda, also nice. We then walked around a bunch of (mainly female) clothes shops, before going down to Seibu. I found that they sell a kettle for 2000 yen, so I'll grab that at the weekend, along with the discount cup ramen if they still have it. After this, we took a slow ride up to WonderRex. I ended up getting 4 shirts, although when I tried them when I got back in the evening, I discovered that one seems to be a womens' shirt which was put in the mens' section. It has really pretty words, but I think I'm going to be wearing that underneath my hoodie only ^^' After this, we went to Iias where we were meeting a couple more people. We stopped in WonderGoo on the way there, and I picked up 6 used Pokémon Special manga for the price a single new manga would cost in England. On the way through to the mall itself, we went through a pet store right next door, as I wanted to show Jen the squirrel monkey and the cute kittens and puppies. However, all the others rushed off without us to meet the other people, leaving us in the pet store. We eventually caught up with them, and I snapped at one of my friends when we reached them. It took me a while but eventually I managed to calm myself down. After walking round a bit more, and making a stop in Bad Ass Coffee, we cycled back to get Korean food with Jordan and the others. I had the bibinba again, though for some reason there was no soup this time. Also, I finished off the leftovers of Molly's and Mike's bowls, plus having my second helping of rice and plenty of the side dishes. Needless to say, I got my money's worth once again
And so, that's about it for my past few days. Tomorrow should be Chinese food, if the labwork goes alright. Ciao for now