Good god this weather sucks. The air is unbelievably humid and you never dry out. No rain to speak of, but lots of clouds. Apparently, because the weather is unseasonably cool this year, typhoon season started early, as opposed to September, as I was told.
Today was ok, I badly gave a presentaion, had my oral exam and ate my next-to-last cheffie. The last one is Beanie-Weenie. Blech. Oral exam was nothing special, I answered her questions while she recorded the interview on tape. The presentation was about Japanese tv. Everyone had to do one on a topic of their choosing. When I got started, I thought you had to do it with a partner but apparently you didn't. It didn't matter anyway, because it wasn't explained to us very well and I didn't prepare for it. I just read off the composition I'd written and turned in. Only 2 of a total of 8 or 9 were actually interesting.
I walked to the station with Bren and discovered that he is actually really ripped Jackie Chan style. He does martial arts but I'm always forgetting that because he wears loose clothes that tend to hide his body and he really doesn't look like the type to do martial arts. I mean, he's from Indiana for god's sakes. I felt his arm muscle. It was rock solid. *sigh* I would never have known if I hadn't grabbed him to keep him from walking into traffic. He was upset about missing an appointment with his conversation partner and not paying attention.
Woo, host mom just went shopping for food. I'm alone! I don't feel terribly comfortable when they're here. She seems to do grocery shopping nearly every day. I don't understand why the refrigerator and cupboards are stuffed with food if she buys the dinner ingredients every day. The refrigerator scares me. It is full of tiny tupperware containers of stuff and it smells terrible. I wonder how old that food is. It's the same size as an American refrigerator but holds way more food. Japanese refrigerators have large exterior drawers for vegetables and the freezer and whatnot and the shelves in the door section are much closer together. My family also has a small chest freezer which I discovered the other day buried under random crap.
Anyway, I got to the station shortly after a train left so I had to kill time. I did so by buying Hamutaro activity books and more manga pr0n. A book this time. I've discovered that there is actually pr0n everywhere. Most of it is on low magazine shelves and not in bags. Anyone, including small children can spend an afternoon thumbing through pages of Japanese women tied up in ridiculously elaborate ropes and hardcore hentai manga. I've heard that some places have an "over 18" section, but the stuff I bought yesterday was just sitting out among the magazines. It certainly qualified for "over 18". The book I bought isn't so good, but I bought it just for the hell of it anyway. You can't actually look through the books before you buy them, so I got one with an English title and acceptable-looking art style. It's called "Desire" and I'm pretty sure I've seen some posted to the hentai manga newsgroup before. There were several volumes in the store, the highest being 14. I rode home with a couple of friends on the train, and they found it amusing that I bought 3 children's books and pr0n.
That goddammed cat is in my room AGAIN. I left my door shut and it opened it. I wanna kill that thing.
I'm so tired. I was trying to study earlier, and didn't want to, so I laid down on the floor, as I often do, and started falling asleep almost immediately. I let myself sleep for a little while, but I made myself try again to study. I so wanted to stay asleep.
Dinner was weird food. There was some tasty pork, some boiled daikon with ground pork and celery, and some frightening concoction of large tomato wedges, egg, and seaweed. Oh, and some kimchi from a jar. It didn't come close to the kimchi at the Beijing at home. Yes, I get kimchi from a Chinese restaurant. Hiroshi was "out".
I've already torn through another 10,000 yen note this week AND I've used my credit card for some things I bought. I got a new train pass today. It will last me the remainder of my stay. That was 6800 yen, 1200 for porn, another 550 for porn, gifts, snacks, um, a camera I've already used up. Where did it all go?