Current mood:	stressed
Current music:	Nakashima Mika - Glamorous Sky

Stress and one hell of a dinner
First off, if anybody knows anyone else who could help me by filling out the survey I have two posts below, whether they watch anime or not, please refer them! Only requirement is that they're a college student, since I'm trying to compare that group.

Been pretty damn busy lately. All the final projects and papers and such are falling on my head now, so I haven't had much time to post up pictures or write LJs and the like. Since today is sort of a Japanese Labor Day over here, I've got a bit of time right now, but don't be surprised if this is one of my last posts before I get back in 2.5 weeks.

Example: Kasahara-sensei, our Japanese Modern History teacher, comes into the classroom yesterday and proceeds to hand us a thick packet of reading, about as thick as the one that we started reading the first day of class and just finished now. He then follows up by asking us what date we're going to be leaving Japan, and upon hearing that we have ONLY ONE MORE CLASS WITH HIM, tells us we still need to finish the whole next chapter and then assigns us one heck of a difficult final. We first have to write four 40x30 character pages in Japanese about the reading we've been doing and history therein, and then afterwards write a page in English commenting on the class. While I'm worried about the Japanese work (four pages is a heck of a lot, and I've never got the hang of commenting on fairly cause-effect styled history courses), the page in English will be easy at least. I can probably whip up a page flaming the class for giving us such a biased, dull text and then dig into the professor for handing us the final and extra reading without preparing us in the least. It's sad really. I really respect the man... I wish he'd spent the time togther teaching us about his interesting personal work (he's heavily involved with the Nanjing Massacre and Japanese Textbook issues) instead of this crappy text.

I do have plenty of good outlets for stress at least... Getting Naruto 4 on day one didn't hurt any :-P
It's mostly the same as Naruto 3, but they mixed it up a little bit by allowing sidesteps while dashing, and added a pretty cool three-man tag team mode. It doesn't seem like there's an option for four players on two tag-teams though, sadly. I can't quite figure out how to unlock more characters yet though.

Monday marked the first time I've eaten REAL sushi in Japan. Torii-sensei, whose Japanese Culture seminar we attend, had promised us we'd eat sushi for a while... but I never expected anything along the lines of what he provided for us. The EAP Study Center director had come to Tsuru that day to give a lecture in English in place of Torii-sensei's class. We learned about very influential Japanese exchange students, and then proceeded with the director up to the teacher's lounge where it was said Torii-sensei had been making us a feast.

And how. Torii-sensei and assistant set forth first for us black laquered boxes filled with the freshest, tastiest goodies I've yet seen in Japan. There was incredible sashimi, delicatly cooked eggplant, fresh oysters, foil-wrapped mushrooms and chicken, carefully seared steak and something else I have yet to identify. This in itself was more than enough... but then came a small mound of fresh baby shrimp and some special sashimi with real wasabi. After that, Torii-sensei (who I'd always thought of as slightly eccentric) set before us huge, live prawns. While mine thankfully didn't move a great deal, many of us learned great respect for our fearsome looking food that day. While I fared fairly well, having had lessons in deshelling shrimp before from Kristin's family, the ryuugakusei and even the Japanese girls who joined us for this feast had among them those quite intimidated by the prospect of snapping of the head and sharp-looking arms of a live shrimp, pulling off shell, feelers and tail and then popping it into the mouth. It was really quite good, but I certainly wouldn't do it again by choice.

Then Torii-sensei and assistant stood off the far end of the table, hand-shaping round after round of sushi for us to eat. All kinds of fish, squid, even uni(sea-urchin) toppings were made for us to gratefully sample. When I already felt quite full... then came dessert. Torii-sensei had provided slices of cakes, pastries and cheesecake from the local bakery. Amazing. I sure hope the school budget paid for all of this, because I certainly could never afford a meal of that type myself.

I'll provide what few pictures I have... when I have the time! Sorry!