Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Thanksgiving / Baking / Future Plans

So I do not really have pictures today, but I do have a post! Just as good.

So I'll start with Thanksgiving -- it was a lot of fun! Ben, Laur, and I went out and got a Strawberry and Cream cake, and ate it together. Surprisingly we did it rather evenly without cutting it (I think so, anyway). It was really tasty, and a lot of fun to just sit together and chat over cake. I've never had such a small Thanksgiving, so it was really interesting. Afterwards we walked Ben most of the way home, and Laur and I went to this well-known gyoza/Chinese restaurant -- which was decently cheap and really excellent! Laur got some Peking duck, and I got Dan Dan Men/Ten Ten Mien (basically a semi-spicy Chinese Ramen). We also split some gyozas, and everything was really delicious and filling. It was a rather good holiday! I feel I should repeat that in case anyone was worried about how it would go, being away from home, especially since Halloween was not up to par.

Anyway, besides that I have been focused a lot on school and various intellectual interests. Pretty much I am reading a lot for class, and listening to a lot of philosophy/news podcasts -- which has been really nice. Beyond that, it's mid-term time, and soon it will be finals! We really only have about 3-4  weeks of class left, especially with the two week winter break coming up.

Other than that I have started baking here, which is a rather cheap way to eat filling food. I've saved up a lot of Mikan (Japanese Orange) zest, so I have made some really tasty treats. I have also been going to t.he gym pretty regularly, I have lost some weight. The gym is really obnoxious to get to  -- it is in the Student Center, and music circles (clubs) just practice their instruments in the hall, along the stair well. They are all loud, most are terrible, and are playing different pieces. It is like the worst post-modern orchestra you can imagine, and it drowns out whatever I am listening to with my obnoxiously loud headphones.

The only exciting thing that's really happened so far is that my class went on a field trip to the Ghibli Museum. I might put pictures of that later, but they sort of didn't want us taking many. Honestly it was not as cool as it should have been. It was mainly museum shops and cool architecture, basically just glitter. The best part was this short excerpt from My Neighbor, Totoro they showed everyone -- and which I could understand part of (it was mainly silent)!

For the future...tomorrow my class will be doing some sort of Taito drum lesson, which could be cool, and I think we are making Mochi on Thursday. Jordan comes to visit on the 22nd (until mid January or so), which is also my last day of class before winter break! I want to try to get her into the dorm for our Christmas party, and I totally want to make her go all sorts of places with me, but the only really big thing we're doing is a trip to Hokkaido for maybe 2 or 3 nights...though it'll take about a day to get there and a day to get back, so it'll probably be really tiring.

Other things -- I am probably going to submit pics to the AU abroad picture contest thing. Depending on how that goes I'll post my submissions here, too. Though, I should mention again that I put a good amount of pictures on my DA page at canteen-ninja.deviantart.com. I may or may not submit something to the Philosophy department magazine thing, depends on how much time I have. I also should have a page on imdb thanks to Dan Levine and "Acquaintances," which I will plug with a link to where you can stream it when available. I also hope to do a showing of this here in Japan!

Well, hopefully I will be better at posting in the future, jaa!

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