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 ^^