The End, More or Less

As I've said in the past few posts, I'm back in the United States, which marks the end of my study abroad trip to Japan. It was fun, educational, expensive, and delicious, though if you were to ask me to put those in order, I don't think I could.

The best thing about going has to have been the people I was able to meet. I made a number of friends with whom I identified with in a surprising number of ways, and I was able to experience and relish in the rich variety of languages and accents, as well as getting to see little bits of the world from other people's points of view.

One of my goals while I was in Japan was to eat ramen. Sure, it sounds silly, but I'd only eaten instant ramen prior to coming to Japan, and I did so on a daily basis for upwards of eight years. So I wanted to eat lots of varieties of ramen. While I was able to try a number of shops' ramen - probably around 30 - I still couldn't tell you whether I like the miso-, soy-, or salt-based ramen best.

While tasty, my primary reason for coming to Japan was not to eat ramen, or gyuudon, or takoyaki, but to study Japanese, and my stay there was - of course! - invaluable to that end. I'm still very weak with kanji and my vocabulary is very small compared to a native speaker, but the difference between when I left and my current ability is no less than marked.

Writing on this blog was an experience all of its own, and I'm glad that I did. I'll be able to look back on this much like I might a journal.

For those of you that have been reading this whole time: your time and your comments are appreciated.

For who have supported me in other ways, be it in the form of money, cookies, a partner for Super Smash Brothers or DDR or that taiko game, or help defrosting my fridge because I forgot and was late to miss plane, I cannot thank you enough.you for your efforts and your friendship. I don't know how I would've survived this year without the help I received from others.

I hope that many others have the opportunity that I did, and I hope that maybe this log will help one or two of those people out at some point.

Good day and best wishes.
- William Lockwood

Pi

I refuse to take responsibility for lack of pie.

Bike Repairs, This Time With No Carbs

So... I had a dandy little fix for my shifter lever. Then I snagged my judo bag* on it and popped it back off again. Unfortunately, I lost a very small piece of plastic that triggers a lever which releases a spring which brings my bike up a gear.
*The Cathy bag, in case anybody's wondering.
Naturally, I replaced it with something similar to plastic: a dry noodle. I took a soumen noodle I found in my cupboard and broke four small pieces of roughly equal length off of it, then taped them together.

Then I did it again, this time being careful not to snap the noodle by taping too vigorously. At left is the second one that didn't break. I cut it apart so you could see I could stack them and make that super-cool picture.

So... as it turns out, 80%, 15C thermal cycling, and a few heavy rains turn a noodle into a wet noodle. Normally, you don't care when that kind of thing happens, but you don't normally include noodles in bike repairs, either.

To illustrate - and because I was bored in Photoshop a few days ago - I took a few additional pictures.
If you were to look at figure A, you'd see an arrow pointing to the hole where one end of the noodle was glued. You'd also see a bunch of suspiciously mold-resembling spots that are little bits of superglue. I don't know how it did that, but that's what it is.

If you were to look at figure B, you'd see what the noodle-repair looked like in one piece.

If you were to look at figure C, you'd see why it is that it doesn't make for a great replacement for a piece of plastic.

At that's the story of how I fixed my bike with a noodle. The end.

Ish.

Yesterday, while I was talking with Yanavy, I cut a part of a spoon to size and I'm going to try that next. It's actually made of plastic, so I have high hopes for it. I've left it inside for a day to cure, and I had planned on putting the assembly back on my bike tonight, but I don't want to try and explain to the manager tomorrow morning why I'm riding my bike out the front door. I'll probably put it on tomorrow night as a break from studying for my doom kanji test.

A Yabari Moment

We were talking about shamisen today in class. A shamisen (三味線 "three flavor strings") is kind of like the Japanese version of a banjo, though the way that they're played is very different. To begin with, or at least, to begin with my very limited knowledge of the subject, banjos tend to strummed while shamisen tend to be plucked. I don't think I've seen or heard one strummed. In any case, the sounding chamber - the body - is made from a frame of some kind of wood, and then covered with the skin of a cat or a dog, whichever you happen to have handy.

Now, I don't know how I made this mistake, but I thought that the teacher had said that the strings of the shamisen were made from the skin of a cat, which would be... wrong. I said as much, and class went on. It was just a small Yabari moment.

元気先生: Do you know what part of a cat is used in the construction of a shamisen?
Me: The... stomach? (腸 "intestines" was a word I didn't know until later.)
元気先生: Er... The skin. You know... [strumming motion] right?

[I'm not certain how I construed this to mean that the strings (specifically the strings) were made from the skin of a cat, but that's the idea I got.]

Me: I, er, don't think that's right, but...
元気先生: I think it is.
Me, to Valentina: He's wrong.
Valentina, to me: He's Japanese, I think you're wrong.

This somehow upset me - more than it should have - and I started furiously researching.
Or at least, as furiously as possible with a pocket Japanese-English dictionary. I researched, in any case. As I said earlier, it turns out that the skin of a cat (or a dog!) is used for the sounding chamber, and that the strings are not only not made from the intestines of a cat, but "catgut" refers to a string made from anything except cat. I was exactly wrong. Ouch.

Oh, and to top it off, shamisen strings in particular are traditionally made from silk, unlike Western stringed instruments, though both usually use nylon or other plastic strings now.

Anyway, we saved the rest of the discussion for the break, and I looked it up on Wikipedia and - ha! - was mostly able to translate it on the fly. As an example, I admit that I don't know the difference between a donkey and a mule is, or what either one is called in Japanese.

Today's class was fun, but a little embarrassing because I Yabari'd - though I'm very much a noob compared to the Yabari himself.

Pudding/プリン

So Chikari, my cute パン屋 (bakery) girl brought me some yummy apple pie and...
this, a half-liter bucket of pudding. The pudding was delicious.

Shopping Wander with Fish and "Lady's Only"

I went out and did some shopping in Kawaramachi today. I should've gone to club practice, but I just didn't feel up to it.
So I went via Sanjo street because it has long portions that are covered and it was raining pretty decently. I was wearing my rain gear, so I wasn't getting wet, but the opportunity to undo my jacket and cool off was certainly justified the choice. Further, I found these delicious fishes. Some were filled with cream and some with bean paste. Kind of expensive, but something I've wanted to try for a while. They were decent.

I also found this sticker on the side of a public telephone. The red-outlined stuff is my appended translations. I'm not quite sure what to make of the whole thing, but the whole thing was worth it for the "Banana Milk" bit.

Numbers have a couple of ways of being read and you can take advantage of this to create mnemonics to help remember them, such as they have done here.

A Little Late, But Good Enough

I want to start this post off by saying that I'm straight. That is to say, chix FTW.
While Japanese men and women are about one pair of genitals apart, that's a topic for another time.

So last Tuesday, a bunch of the the 留学生 (study-abroad students) went out to an 居酒屋 (kind of like a bar) and for dinner. The people I was sitting with (seated at lower left in the picture later) decided to leave early and go get ice cream.

I later discovered that the reason we had gone to this particular place was because four of the five girls I was with had a crush on one of the guys working there. Now, these people are all fairly new to Japan and are not quite comfortable with the language.

This led to me using my Japanese for something I never expected to: asking a Japanese guy out.

...

Yeah, it was for Maggie, who stood there the whole time and made little noises at random times, but still... Well, at least I know I can ask out a Japanese girl now, if I need or want to, 'cause there's no way that could be more awkward than this.

I took a bunch of pictures while we were out at okonomiyaki, but didn't gel my flash, so they all came out kind of lame. Random picture from the set that I stitched together:

Interesting Choice of Words

Looking up a compound for some homework, I discovered that there's a kanji compound that means "business" and is pronounced けいき keiki. This is effectively the same way that you say "cake" (ケーキ keeki). Anyway, I was a little curious, and apparently there's a whole list of words prounced "cake" in Japanese:
契機 【けいき】 (n) opportunity, chance, (P)
景気 【けいき】 (n) condition, state, business (condition), (P)
計器 【けいき】 (n) meter, gauge, (P)
刑期 【けいき】 (n) prison term
継起 【けいき】 (n,vs) occurring in succession
軽機 【けいき】 (n) light machine gun
Now I will never know whether or not I want to eat some cake in Japanese again. I'm not going to take the chance that the person's talking about an LMG. Hopefully, I won't find anything dangerous that's pronounced クリームパン kuriimu pan, you know?

Yum.

Oreo Wafers?

I have a new partner at work now, apparently. I don't really know anything about her except that she speaks Chinese natively, speaks Japanese far better than I do, and has a decent command of English on top of that.

We were sitting around, waiting for the students to take a test and we somehow started talking about cookies I guess. She totally thought Oreos were made by a Chinese company, so I pulled my usual Wikipedia trick and was victorious. (There's not really a trick, it's just that people are really shocked when I have an article about something up within seconds of them mentioning it.)

So she gave me one of the packages (above) of Oreos that she had brought with her since she was on her way to a party. You can see that it is not what you might normally think of as an Oreo.

If you've ever bought those really, really cheap wafer snacks at Safeway that come in a pack of about 30 for $1, you're on the right track. Now take normal Oreo filling, minus 1/3 of the sugar, and coat the whole thing in chocolate. That's the Chinese version of an Oreo cookie.

I don't recall seeing any kanji-ish business on the wrapper, though, which seems weird because I understand that she bought them in China. I'm somewhat worried about whether or not they're a dairy product, but not so much.

It's a... Good... Too Good... Day?

Today has gone scarily well. I'm not kidding.

To start with, I woke up early. That's a good thing, by the way.

Then, I made breakfast and it just, you know, worked. It was delicious, the texture was nice, and it actually looked appealing. The seasoning worked well, and all the flavors blended nicely. Rare indeed for my cooking.

Did I mention that my school has the day off due to some freaky PE festival that we don't have to go to? I should mention that. It means I basically get my very own holiday, but without the crowds that ruin holidays here.

Next, I was helping Jes get some stuff set up on her computer, so she was actually talking to me. Problems that popped up promptly vanished for no known reason and without us really doing anything. I had solutions for most of them, but it was really nice to be overprepared for once.

So then I start reading about some DIY stuff and I'm in a particularly good mood from talking to Jes, so I exercise a little, grab a shower, and head down to the mall. Well, I went to the cycle shop I go to all the time, and he was more than happy to give me an old bike tube. In fact, he asked "Are you sure you only want one?" and we chatted for a few minutes. On my way out, I filled up my front bike tire, so the rest of the time riding around was extra comfy and easy.

So I deposit the tube at my bike and go into the mall to get some tasty treats. Because no trip to the mall is complete without tasty treats, right? Right! I ask for one tsubuan, which is kind of a shorthand way of saying that I want a two pieces of mochi (gelatinized rice) wrapped around a filling of tsubuan (red bean paste with a little bean texture left) and fried. When I tried to give her money to pay for it, she refused and said. "That's not necessary, you come here all the time. Go on, now." I checked once more and thanked her, happily on my way.

A few feet away is another shop that sells a different kind of mochi and I tried a new flavor of mochi that I honestly have no clue what it was supposed to be. That store always has issues with spelling, but even I can't figure out what flavor "Seeqester" is. It was frozen, so I couldn't eat it right away. Eh.

I head down to the hardware store to get some majikku teepu ("Velcro"). It's kind of pricey at $4.50 for a matched set of hook and loop sides that are each about 2"x3". I found it in bulk and asked someone who works there to help me figure out how much would cost how much. As it turned out, I was able to get about twice as much for two-thirds the cost that way, and it was the perfect size for what I wanted it for.
To top it off, I found some non-slip pads that I've been looking for and some glue that together were less than $2, so I have a second project for a little later. All told, I got out of there for less than $5.
How cool is that?

So I'm on my way home and I discover a new bakery that has pretty much just the stuff I like, and a bunch of new things I've never seen before - "leaf pie", for example, is some kind of thin strudel-like thing sprinkled with sugar in the shape of a piece of pizza. On top of that, they're all really, really cheap. Most bakeries here charge between $1.30 and $2.50 for their various bits. The most expensive thing I saw here was a new kind of fluffy クリームパン kuriimu pan ("delicious") and that was $1.16, which I of course bought. It was extra delicious.

So I'm about to get started on my little project. Here's what I got on my outing, minus the food, which I kind of... consumed.
The reason that today is scarily good is because things going this smoothly makes me worry about what's going to happen tomorrow.

But... I can't do anything about that, so on to hacking together some pieces!

Cuy and Culebron

I had one of the guys from my Basic Japanese class come by tonight and we watched parts of a couple of movies. Afterwards, he was telling me about something, and ended up looking guinea pigs on Wikipedia.
Me: "You guys have guinea pigs in Peru?"
Kilk: "Yeah! Haven't you ever had one?"
Me: "Yeah, I sure miss him..."
Kilk: "I know! They're so delicious!"
Me: "... Heh?"

Lo and behold, he wasn't kidding. Apparently, guinea pigs are a common food in Peru. On the news of other pets that you eat, they sometimes mix dog meat in with beef. I was able to verify the guinea-pig-eating with a couple of sources online, and Wikipedia comes through once again, though I didn't find that article until I went to find a site I had found previously. Here's a small quote:

"Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco shows Christ and the twelve disciples dining on guinea pig"

What spawned this sudden interest in Peruvian foods was Kilk explaining to me one of his favorite (I guess?) drinks: culebron. Plus or minus an accent mark on the O to make it sound less French.
Culebron is made by taking a live snake and putting it in a bottle, and getting some kind of alcohol, usually 35-50%, from what I've seen online. You then fill the bottle with alcohol and drown the snake. Then... I guess you drink it? I don't know what you do with the snake.

New New Hard Drive Setup

In light of my hard drive failure and the corresponding 250GB of data loss, I decided that enough is enough, and I've changed my setup around drastically. First of all, the heat can't be doing good things for the lifespan of these drives, so I bought a second external interface, but this one completely surrounds the drive and has a small fan on one end and an opening diagonally opposed to it. Inside that enclosure is a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM with a 32MB cache, and in my normal, slot-it-like-a-tape interface is (yet another) Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM with a 16MB cache.

Now, any sane person, after three WD drive failures, would stop buying the things. But I've figured out my stupidity. Oh yes, that was a fun conversation.

Me: I bought this 400GB drive here about two months ago, and now it's making this kind of clicking noise.
Employee: Uh... How long ago?
Me: About two months.
Employee: ... Do you have the receipt?
Me: You're holding it.
Employee: So I am.
Me: [Wait for 15 minutes]
Employee: It's a little... difficult.
Me: So you can't do it? That seems odd, because I'm looking at these drives and they all have a one-year warranty. Is it just my drive that's just like this one that doesn't? Just the one drive that I bought?
Employee: Yes.
Me: Doesn't that seem a little strange?
Employee: ...
Me: ...
Employee: I'm very... sorry?
Me: Well, thanks for your help.

As it would turn out, the drives that keep crapping out on me were used. Yeah, used. You know what you shouldn't do? Buy used electronics that have moving parts. Yeah. Apparently, you tell them apart by the fact that the used ones have pink anti-static baggies that they come in, while the new ones come in white anti-static baggies. How could I not have known? It's so clear and intuitive. Was that enough sarcasm to make the hate clear?
The best part is that the new ones don't cost a yen more. They're actually cheaper, in some cases.

Still, it's my fault for not asking or something.
If you need me, I'm going to be beating myself about the spleen with this kanji dictionary...

Wobble?

Earthquakes are so weird.

Sleep

I'm supposed to get up in about an hour to start getting ready, but I've only slept for about an hour tonight. I've laid in bed, staring at my ceiling, listening to the rain. It actually woke me up and one point and I had to go into the bathroom to try and turn it off. Then I realized the weird dripping noise was the drain outside, and not my sink.

A Piece of Proof?

Now, I'm really not that confident about my writing in English, let alone Japanese, but in an effort to show that I'm actually doing something over here, I thought there might be some interest in my end-of-quarter presentation.
I don't think any of you will be able to make much sense of it, but I can assure you that it sounds roughly like my 7-year-old little sister trying to explain nuclear waste using a four-year-old's grammar and the generic politeness level. I feel sorry for our teachers that have to listen to 100 of these.
Anyway, I haven't proofread this, and I probably won't since it's nearly 3AM (I am tired). and I need to present this tomorrow around 9AM. Also, it's hard to proofread your own writing. Also, I am very tired. Also... well, I'm pretty tired.

[Edit: I should have put this up earlier, but here's a vocab list that will probably help a lot if you try and read the Japanese. It's got some pretty brutal 漢字 in it.

[

なんでしょうかな～ (What is it?)
核廃棄物といったら色々な産業が作った有害な放射能のゴミや副生物です。核廃棄物は水道や大気中に出なかったらそれほど危ないものではありません。　それらは体に入るまでに大部分は事実で少ししか危なくないですから。体に入ったら、なかなか速く損害し始めます。
広い範疇の二つあり：高レベルと低レベル放射性廃棄物です。減力発電の色々なもの、または種類が多くのものは低レベル放射性廃棄物です。アメリカのこれほどのことに関する規制では、普通のコーヒーなどは低レベル放射性廃棄物でも、みんなの安全のためにそれほどにきびしい規制は必要だと思われています。もっと普通の例は防護マスクやフィルターや二冷却税の管など名者です。これらのようなものの放射性能は割合に危なくなくても、あるえりますから、十・五十年間に待っての方がいいと思われています。この期間の後に普通のゴミになって、土に埋められることになります。
高レベル放射性廃棄物は本当に危ないものです。放射能が高くて、百・千・億年間も残ります。例として、放射性同位元素の一つは沃素の百二十九中性子の半減期は億五十万年間ものです。他の例はウラン・プルトゥニアムの使用済み核燃料またはもう使ってしまった核燃料です。

いつから始まりましたか (Since when was it a problem?)
核廃棄物は千九百の後半までに問題ではありませんでした。その時までに、人口な核廃棄物はなかなか珍しかったのですから。その上、一番目 使用できる原発は千九百五十四年でした。

何の結果ですか (What causes it?)
普通 核廃棄物源の中から病院と原子力発電と原子爆弾の軍縮です。癌を殺すためし、体の液処理を確認するために、病院では色々な放射性 液体を使います。

どこ問題ですか (Where is it a problem?)
オーストラリア以外工業先進国の全部原子発電を使いますから、核廃棄物を作ります。オーストラリアも病院がある結果、少なくても核廃棄物は世界の環境問題だと思います。
特に核廃棄物の捨て場がある国では大問題です。誰でもは家と近くにそんなものが日しくなくても必要ですか、質問は「どこがいいですか」というふうです。
テロルをしたい人ご多すぎるから、この国は核捨て場に関してとても心配です。

どうしましょうか (What’s being done?)
今の人気がある核廃棄物の処理の選択肢は大部分に二つです。
一番目はどこかに埋めることです。ある人は深く土に埋めて方がいいと思っています。ただし、他の人は潜り込みところに埋めて方がいいと思っているのです。潜り込み所に埋めたら、核廃棄物を地球の中に戻すので、問題なくなると言われます。
その他の選択肢は高レベル核廃棄物を変えることです。ブリーダーと言う原子力発電をしたら、機能的に核燃料を使えて悪い放射性物をそれほどの悪くない放射性物に変えます。でもブリーダー種類はプロトゥニアムを作るので、便利すぎで取り消しました。

]

And that's all there is of that. As much as I would've liked to write it in Japanese to begin with, I couldn't get anything straightened out and it was all very confusing to write. By writing it in English, I was able to mostly keep up with what i was thinking, which allows for a much more natural writing style.
And that's all there is of that. As much as I would've liked to write it in Japanese to begin with, I couldn't get anything straightened out and it was all very confusing to write. By writing it in English, I was able to mostly keep up with what i was thinking, which allows for a much more natural writing style.
I have a sneaking suspicion that translation by way of hitting something with a dictionary helps to rid the writing of any naturalness it has... S'what I did. You may also notice that I reordered the paragraphs. The flow is a little awkward in this English one, I felt.
Here's the English draft I translated it from:


[What is nuclear waste?
Nuclear waste is the trash and byproducts of the nuclear power generation industry and the disarming of nuclear weapons. It’s not very dangerous until it gets into the water supply or the atmosphere, where it can be ingested or inhaled. Once on the inside, it starts doing damage fairly quickly.

There are two broad categories: high-level and low-level.

Low-level nuclear waste is anything that was used in the process and may be contaminated. Some people joke that the United States’ laws on this are so strict that a normal cup of coffee would qualify due to the amount of radiation given off. More serious examples would be the protective suits workers wear and the pipes that carry coolant. Low-level waste typically becomes no more dangerous than normal trash after 10-50 years.

High-level waste is the really dangerous stuff that lasts hundred, thousands, or even millions of years. Iodine-129, for example, has a half-life of 15 million years. Example include spent uranium/plutonium fuel and the (usually Boron) control rods.


Where is it a problem?
With the exception of Australia, all the industrialized countries of the world produce both high- and low-level nuclear waste because they use nuclear power generation. Until very recently the world’s nuclear waste was all stored above-ground, but they make very attractive targets during war and for terrorism, in addition to natural disasters. In addition, countries fear that nuclear waste may be stolen and reprocessed to make nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.

When did it start?
Nuclear waste didn’t really become a problem until the second half of the 19th century. Prior to this, the only sources of nuclear waste were largely experimental, as working nuclear power plants were not developed until the late fifties. The burning of fossil fuels releases significant amounts of concentrated radioactive material into the atmosphere, and still does today. Someone who smokes cigarettes also receives a considerable dose of radiation due to the concentration of radioactive materials in tobacco plants.

What causes it?
The most common sources for nuclear waste are nuclear power generation facilities, disarmament of nuclear weapons, the medical industry. Various radioactive materials are used in the treatment of cancer and to track fluid flow throughout the body.

What is being done?
The most popular options right now are various forms of burying it. Some suggest burying nuclear waste about 1000m underground in stable geologic areas and simply ignoring it for a few thousand years, while other s say it would be best to bury nuclear waste near subduction zones of the Earth’s crust and let the waste be carried into the mantle, where such things are not a problem.

Another solution is to transform the long-lived high-level nuclear waste into short-lived waste by transformation, such as in fast breeder reactor or through chemical means.]

Now all I need to do is read that a few hundred times so I don't forget how to read the kanji once I'm under pressure...

Grades

With the end of my first semester drawing near, I'm a little concerned about grades. I got a 35/60 (58%) on a grammar test we got back today. To be fair, the Sara's very studious and she only got 42/60 (70%). The class did, as a whole, poorly enough that we're essentially going to retake the test in lieu of the test she was intending to give next week.
I haven't been doing well on tests in that class, though I got some pretty good marks on the first few quizzes, this is one of the classes where I hope my attendance will save me, since I think I've only missed one day, and that was one sanctioned by the head of my program. By "sanctioned", I mean he gave us taxi money to go to a festival, in addition to canceling class.

As for my other classes...

• Basic Japanese is... I dunno. I got some poor grades at the beginning, but I think I've been average 16-18 out of 20 (80-90%) on the tests since then. I've done less than stellar on a couple of the tests, but I also got a 91/100 on the last test and I got an 87% on another.
  
• I've missed a couple of classes of ICP, but all but one were things that teacher wanted us to go to. In addition, though, I got a 65% on our first essay, and still haven't turned in the second. The third is due at some later date.
• Kanji... No clue. Seriously, my grades have wavered in this class a lot. It's one of the two classes I'm most worried about. A C would be good enough here.
• JCT is... also not so good. Again, a C would be good enough, but for that to happen, attendance will need to be a large part of the grade.
  I did pretty poorly on the kanji tests at the beginning because I was disorganized and couldn't keep the test types and content straight, and I had issues with that even on the last one. I've taken to asking this teacher, when I first see her that day, whether or not there is a test.
• The rest I'm not so worried about, because they're largely based on attendance.

I'm being somewhat purposefully vague here. I'm not entirely comfortable listing out which classes I'm taking.

Now, as negative as this post seems in general, I've heard from other students that I'll probably be surprised when I look at my grades are, to the extent that I might think to myself "Where did they get these?" I don't know if that's the case, but I sure wouldn't mind that, as long as it's in my favor.

Translation Errors

If you've ever wondered where errors in translation come from in seemingly simple sentences, I found I great example today to illustrate it. Even if you've never wondered, I still found a great example today. Is that not dedication?

ashita	tenki	ni	naru
あした	天気	に	なる
tomorrow	weather	(to)	become

The most often implied subject is the speaker, so someone might translate あした天気になる as "Tomorrow, I will become the weather." Obviously, unless you're talking to someone very, very special, this sentence is simply wrong. Guesses at the true meaning?

Well?

"The weather will good tomorrow." See? Much better. But remember that Japanese doesn't have future tense, so if you're looking for it, give up. It's implied by the fact that we're using the nonpast and a time noun that's in the future.

Heian Shrine Visit

With about twenty other people, I'll be going to a shrine later today to talk to the people who run it. They want to know what foreigners might be interested in, and what it is we may already know.
Or at least, I think that's what we're doing.

I intend to bring my camera with me, in any case.

Sempai-Kouhai. Also, Curry.

[Edit: "Sempai-Kouhai" refers to the relationship between people of different rank. People who have been in a club/company longer or who are in a higher grade in school/program are your sempai and you are their kouhai. It is your duty to take care of minutae for them, and their duty to take care of things you can't handle. Also, they will generally pay for meals if they are the ones to suggest eating.]
The title's a bit off, but I had my first experience with the whole older-people-paying thing today. After leaving work, I went to a curry place a teacher mentioned. This was my first time going there, and I accidentally ordered curry that was exactly as spicy as I was hoping for: challenging, but not inedible.
As I was leaving this place, I happened to have the fortuitous timing to run into another one of my teachers. As it turns out, he had just gotten paid, so was carrying a decent wad of cash. He demonstrated this a couple of different times and I saw at least a couple man notes (~$100).
Man rhymes with "gone", for those that care.
Anyway, we went to this Italian place and said he was paying and I should pick out some ice cream, some food, and, please, only one or two drinks. I ended up getting a milkshake and some kind of yogurt-based drink, but I recommended he try a panini, which he did. Once he finished his triple-scoop ice cream with whipped cream on top. And then had some kind of alcohol whose name I couldn't pronounce.
I discovered that he used to be a video game otaku, but couldn't find anybody else who was, and isn't now, but plays go at a high level, apparently. He's going to Tokyo tomorrow for a tournament of some kind, if I understand properly.
Anyway, that was my first experience with that, though I don't remember all of the formal stuff for it, so I can only hope I didn't offend him.
Oh, and the curry was... I want to say it was delicious, but it was curry. It's kind of like a hamburger: it's pretty hard to make bad curry, but it's difficult to make it amazing, too.

Arashiyama

Grah, I meant to post some stuff today, but I was too busy catching up on webcomics and now I need to go to judo club. Well, rest assured that I at least had an interesting weekend. On Friday, I took about 50 pictures, and this is the only one I can post here.
Yes, she's putting her clothes back on.
Everybody afterward agreed that they were not nearly drunk enough to do something like what they had just done, but nobody drank anything afterward. To answer your questions: no, I didn't drink and no, I didn't lose my underwear, which more than I can say for one guy, who had to search for about half an hour to find it.

Oh, and I just remembered this green tea Kit-Kat that I found. Too weird to not take a picture of, right?

Maybe just disturbing.