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 ^^