That's new...

I spent a lot of the night putting Friends episodes on Maciej's ITouch. He was really sad about going back to Manchester and returning to work. As a fellow Friend's addict, I thought it was the least I could do.

We woke up around 8 and wanted to eat one last ramen.

Dramatic right?

Maciej in the morning, bummed to go.

Stray kittens we saw on the way.


Japanese people put out filled water bottles around their house to keep stray cats away. Apparently the reflection or something scares the cats so they stay away. There seems to be a superstition against cats in Japan... care to enlighten us anyone?



Meow

Grr. You point camera at me. And you no bring food.

Well unfortunately nothing is open in the morning (odd right?) so Maciej said we could just grab a burger at McDonalds. Poor guy couldn't catch a break. It was the breakfast menu. Which wasn't really bad, but sooo not worth it. All of their breakfast sandwiches have pancake-like bread filled with syrup... I'm sorry but I'd rather have my bacon egg cheese BISCUIT... not waffle.

And it came with a much too unprocessed hashbrown (what's with the fresh fast food? lol) and a drink the size of a small thumbtack. The world seemed to also mourn at Maciej's departure.

Mmhmm. Wait, food's gone? I don't remember eating.

After our morning snack, we gave our hugs and said our goodbyes and I went back to my room. Nope, not our room anymore. *sniff*. My room

Haha, okay so it wasn't that dramatic at all. More like a "cya, later" and then I went to work. But what fun is it if you don't milk it for all its worth?

I haven't been able to sit down much at work. I got to work a little before noon and have been at it non-stop doing a couple experiments (after my talk with Kanami-san, I want to make up for lost times) at the same time. It's awesome. I get to interact with everyone and they're all at different speaking levels.

There are some people in lab who don't try to speak at all and I just occasionally say a Japanese phrase or something to them. Concerning those I interact more often with, there is a tier of English abilities. Hashimoto-san trains me solely in Japanese, though she's gradually increasing the amount of English she's comfortable with using. I think I learn the most comprehension from her. Granted I generally have no idea what words she's saying and can't really dissect the sentences, but I rarely do not understand her. Goes to show how much of the Japanese language is just intent. After that, I'd say Reiji (who went back to the army) is about the same in ability, but is much more vocal about what he knows. I didn't interact with him too much, but he was quite humourous. Nakamura-san is the one I work most closely with and probably the one I learn the most words from. She lived in the states for one year as a child, and it seems that was enough to give her a decent grasp on the language. With my limited Japanese and her limited English, we can communicate relatively easily. Hire is the other half of the funny duo with Reiji. When he speaks, he barely has any accent at all and it seems he knows a lot more English than he attempts to use but he generally can understand everything I'm saying. With Kanami, it's pretty much just like speaking to anyone of you. She's fairly fluent and the fact that she learned from an Australian person means her thick Aussie accent knocks out what would have been her Japanese accent in her English. It's quite funny though when she switches from Japanese to English. When she speaks Japanese, her voice is audible only to dogs and radios but once she speaks English her voice drops to that of an alto. It seems to be a subconsciously added accent to add to the "Hello-kitty" kawai image.

It's been a long day though and I can't wait to get home. I still have another hour or more here, but hopefully it will pass by soon. :)

And I keep buying grapefruit juice. It's really good and really fresh and is really good with the pulp. A liter has about as much sugar as an ice cream does, but meh, grapefruits are supposed to be healthy right?

Don't want to leave but can't wait to leave at the same time,

Tim Soo