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