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