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 :-)]