The Basket Case

Yesterday I went to my second basketball game ever. The first one was 22 years ago. So you might say it was somewhat a new experience for me. J asked a bunch of people, but ultimately only Em and (anagramatic) me went along. Apparently, it was her first, despite having fuzzy feelings about basketball. We cheered for the home team (Toyota Alvark), booed the Mitsubishi Diamond Dolphins (actually, only J did - apparently, Em and me are too Japanised already), ate overpriced bad hotdog and overpriced bad minidonuts, concluded Cola was average, and found my favourite cheerleader and Em's favourite player (although, "I liked him better when he was too far to see clearly"). Afterwards, we pigged out on tempura. Good times.

Anyway, what I thought was the silliest name ever (exacerbated by Japanese pronunciation - "arubaruku"), actually has a reason. I know I usually say "just #$% Google it", or "Wikipedia knows"; but since most of you can't read ja.wikipedia.org, the origin of the name is apparently the arabic word meaning "lightning strike" (and boy, they are fast!); and also, Al-V-ark serves as an Arabic-French-English wordplay for "The Victory Ark". Stilly, but hey.

Also, as someone pointed out, I owe you a school-related update, even though almost every one of the three people reading this blog already know. I passed my scary entrance exam, and I'll be starting my Master Course classes in April. I guess the teachers were properly wowed. Till then, I'll be attending the fun Intensive Japanese Course once again. Yay!

I moved. If you have the old address, ask for the new one.

Exam Saga Continues!

A quick note today: half an hour ago the results of the written part of the entrance exam were published. My number's up! (And I mean it in the literal way.) I will have my interview on Monday morning; if that goes well, I'll be a real Todai student. Wish me luck!

My Friday evening plan: fiddle with TeX and the presentation. My Saturday plan: Game Day in Castle Tintagel. My Sunday plan: go fishing for the first time in ages. My Monday plan: wow the teachers and pass the entrance exam.

Let's hope everything goes according to the plan, eh?

Entrance Exam

Today I had my written entrance exam. I was scared I'd fail like a kanji tattoo, but it seems like it's going to be fine. For those I haven't bored to tears yet, the exam I took had two sections (T and A, I kid you not!). The T section had 5 questions, and the A section had 6. T is mostly basics (maths, computing, physics), while A has some more specialised topics (Internet protocols, programming, logic circuits, GIS...). I had to choose 2 questions from the T group, and one more question from anywhere. However, despite always having been partial to T's, I chose 2 T's and 1 A instead of all three T's. Three T's is just too weird. Anyway, here are the questions, as far as I can recall them, after my 2-hour trial and/or tribulation:

1. {a_n} is a sequence of the form: a_n = a_n-1 + a_n-2, a₀ = x, a₁ = y
   
   
   
   1. There is a recursive algorithm to calculate a_n. Explain it, and show its complexity.
   
   
   2. [a_n, a_n-1]^T can be expressed as a product of Q and [a_n-1, a_n-2]^T, where Q = [ q₁₁, q₁₂ | q₂₁, q₂₂]. Calculate Q.
   
   
   3. Show an optimised algorithm for calculating a_n by using Q. Show its complexity.
   
   
   4. For x=1 and y=3, calculate a₄₈
   
   
   5. {a_n,m} is a sequence where a_n,m = a_n-2,m + a_n-1,m mod m. Show {a_n,m} is cyclic.
   
   
   6. What is the period of a_n,3?
   
   
   
   


2. There is a test by Alan Turing that determines the quality of artificial intelligence systems.
   
   
   
   1. What is its name?
   
   
   2. Describe it (in about 5 lines)
   
   
   3. In about 15 lines, describe its influence and criticisms, using these words:
      Loebner prize, common sense, John Searle, speech recognition, Chinese Room, natural language processing, Eliza
   
   
   
   


3. In C,
   
   
   
   1. define the sort function of signature: void sort(int array[], int n).
   
   
   2. for a structure List { List *next, int v }, define the reverse function of signature: List *reverse(List *list).
   
   
   
   

I think I didn't do too badly. I'm pretty sure I aced the TOEFL two weeks ago, and that I'm over the threshold with the current offering. And if I am, I'll probably do well on the interview next week, since I'm told they'll be asking me about my research plan. And I know in quite a detail what I want to research. The quotas are not too bad either, despite what I thought before: 45 candidates for 19 places is not too bad. So even if I don't manage to pass, I'm satisfied that I did the best I could, and didn't make a monkey or a cabbage out of myself.

Week of the Four Elements

Yesterday, during a Game Day, there was an earthquake. Not just any earthquake; it was reported as 6.9 on the Richter scare. However, we were lucky that it was 320 km away and 340 km deep (making it about 457 km from here, and making me smart enough to pass the math test if they only ask me about Old Man Pythagoras). Where we were, it came down to shindo 4 (shindo being a Japanese scale of earthquake intensity, read all about it on Wikipedia). I was on a 2nd floor (by Japanese reckoning) of a sturdy 2-floor building, so it felt like a 1-2 minute long amusement park ride. Don't worry, I'm okay. You're reading my blog, for crying out loud!

As if it wasn't enough, I hear they're planning a typhoon for tomorrow. I've been warned not to shop in underground malls.

Going back in time, last week I went to see fireworks. Twice. Once on Sunday eight days ago, and once on Thursday four days ago. The former was with Edogawa Boardgame Club, the Japanese group that kind of adopted me, and we had a large reserved space on Edogawa bank to lie and watch the magnificent skies. The latter one I went with my Komaba friends and their Komaba friends, and we each rented our own plastic square meter for ¥2000. (Actually now that I'm writing about it, might be even less than 1 m.sq.) The price included listening to a concert, and explosives. It was kind of steep, but worth it. Then, since we were already spending, we proceeded to a karaoke bar. Good day, all in all. I learned a Russian song. Well, the chorus, anyway.

EDIT: Wot4E continues. I was woken today at 5:09 am by another quake. This one wasn't as bad here as the last one, but I wasn't in a sturdy 2-floor house today. Also, sensors say Shizuoka region fared much worse from this 6.6-pointer, as it was only 20km deep, and much closer to the land. No amusement park ride this time.

The Soft Drink Incident

After a long time of life more-or-less as usual, another culture shock. A bad one. I'm still traumatised as I'm writing this.

Yesterday, I was in Akihabara Donki, and I found Ramune in their fridge.

Ramune is a soft drink well known to many anime otaku, so being at least somewhat related to them, of course I've been wanting to try it. But so far I've only found it in two restaurants so far, never in a shop - so I immediately decided to buy it. However, it was just next to the cash register, and I was next in the line, so I just grabbed the nearest bottle - the red one.

When I came back home, and realised I was thirsty, I remembered the Ramune I bought, and started to open it. Now the Ramune bottle is a bit strange, and there are numerous Youtube clips demonstrating the proper way to open it. Basically, it has a marble inside, and you have to push it in with a provided instrument; then you turn it so that the marble gets stuck between two "reefs" in the bottle before tilting the bottle to drink or pour (otherwise the marble gets in the way again and stoppers the bottle from the inside). What I forgot was that Ramune has a tendency to spray when opened. It of course did, and I did the only thing I could think of - I popped the top into my mouth, in order to avoid spraying Ramune all over my room (or at least mitigate it, since I was not quite quick enough).

Bad mistake.

My reading is still quite slow - in Croatian or English, I can't not read something if I see it, reading is automatic and subconscious. Not so with Japanese - I have to invest effort and time, even if it is just a couple of words it will not be automatically processed. So only then I finally paid attention to the label, and what I saw horrified me, almost as much as the one gulp I got.

キムチ風ラムネ

or, Kimchi-style Ramune. Who does not know what Kimchi is, look it up on Wikipedia or something.

Next to that, a picture of garlic and chili - and yes, you can taste them both, and very strongly.

Anyway, it's the most godawful drink I've ever had the misfortune to have in my mouth. It's positively vile. I've even done some research on the net, and most people agree that even people who like kimchi (I'm not one of them) think it's vomitworthy. Some people probably remember the dream tea that Oz brought back from America. This is worse. If I had to choose between a glass of dream tea every day for a month or a glass of Kimchi Ramune once, I'm going with the tea. So you people who remember that can kind of get the intensity of my feelings on this subject.

Now I'm quite pissed off, because, a) how can anyone produce something like this? and b) since it's being sold, some SOB is actually buying it!

That's not the end of the story though. Today I related the story to one of my lab friends, who is kind of an experienced Japan-dweller, Nihon-sensei kind of person. When I came to the middle of my story, he started smirking and saying he thought he knew what happened, but fortunately it wasn't it.

There is a trend in Japan of hiding things that could be embarassing. For example, a third of the people you see on the Metro are spending their time reading a book, and half of those have the said book in an opaque paper book cover. The book cover does not serve to protect the book - it serves to prevent other people from seeing what you're reading. Of course, it does not really work - if it's really a book, fine, but in many cases it's manga, and if there's nekkid girls inside, people do not need to see the title page to realise what kind of book it is. Still, the book covers are widely used. Also, you can find sex toys that look just like deodorant bottles - you would not look at them twice in the shop. In the same vein, apparently, some companies have started packaging lubricants in bottles with the same imagery as popular soft drinks and teas - including Ramune. The name differs a bit, but the shape and colours are quite similar. I also heard someone tried the matcha lubricant, and that it even tasted of matcha. But it was not matcha.

So in the end, I count myself lucky, I guess.

How to be polite

Japanese signs are fun. Especially the "manners" campaigns. Check these out:

http://www.conbinibento.com/2004/07/16/lets-minding-our-manners/
http://www.tokyometro.jp/anshin/kaiteki/poster/index.html

Don't be scared, the Tokyo Metro site is in Japanese, but posters are easy to understand.

Hair

There's a hairdresser across the street from my Uni. I didn't notice it until today. Since it's getting way past time I should have had a haircut, I'm starting to look at my options, so I stopped and read the menu. [Yep, in Japan, hairdressers have menus too.]

You already know about "Cut & Blow". But today I saw something new: Head Scalp. For just ¥3500. But that's okay, it's just weird Janglish. But how about Nose Scalp (¥2000)? Any idea what that is?

Apparently, it comprises of the removal of fine hairs that apparently grow on the nose. Not nose hair, mind you - facial hair growing on the nose. By way of waxing, or something similar.

Nose scalp FTW.

And then, not two minutes later, I encounter the weirdest hairdo I saw since I came here. A half-meter spike. Of grey hair. The gentleman must have been 50 or 60.

Way to go, man! Major props! Chutzpah bonus!

On Whistle-Blowers

A quick observation.

Workers working on tracks of Inokashira line are a common sight at my station. They thump the stones, bonk the tracks, pull the tubes, and generally behave in a normal workerish manner. And since they're working on the train tracks, they have frequent breaks.

Whenever the train comes, the foreman signals the crew with a loud whistle sound. It is a bit uncanny, since the foreman knows when the train is coming before the announcement is made. When they hear the signal, all the workers line up against the wall, hold their arm up as if greeting the train, but more often than not they drop it before the train comes. I suspect that is one of the little work safety rituals common here in Japan, like the station attendants pointing both ways to make sure the platform is secure.

However, one would think that a loud whistling sound would come from a whistle. The thing that sparked this observational post is that today was the first time I actually saw a whistle. A sub-foreman (is that even a word?) had one, and signaled the crewmen along with the foreman.

So if the foreman doesn't use a whistle to produce a whistling sound, what does he use?

The answer is, a special megaphone-like device, which emits a very cunning imitation of blowing a whistle when you press its trigger.

The thing is, the Amazing Whistling Bullhorn is not any louder than a real whistle (as I found out today), it doesn't sound much different, and it's definitely Bigger Than A Cat (okay, a kitten). [Those who don't know, Bigger Than A Cat is a reference unit of size for some of my friends and me, ever since childhood. It's no weirder than, say, "gallon", or "foot".] And it presumably needs batteries. So, why not use a whistle? Is a lo-tek whistle too lowly an instrument for a foreman? Or is it work conditions issue, protecting the poor foremen from employing their lungs too much? Or an union thing, seeing how whistle-blowing would be the only physical labour they would be doing - as apparently their job description is just observing how other people toil, and not toiling themselves?

Note to readers: I have no problem with the foremen, despite the slightly satirical tone of the post. Knowing a bit about how the Japanese system work, they have earned their apparently toilless office. Still, the whistle thing confounds me. Opinions?

Kabuki-za

Today I went to Kabuki-za. We had a group discount. Having seen the Kabuki-za prices, I first thought it was a big discount. It wasn't. We just had the crappy seats.

The crappy seats are on the third floor, about a mile from the stage, and Japanese-sized. This means that those with smaller Perception scores will presumably only see smudges moving across the stages, and that most male Europeans will at some point during the performance experience regret of never having had leg amputation. The fact that the full course of Kabuki lasts for more than 4 hours does not help.

However, physical pains notwithstanding, it was a pretty cool experience. If in Japan, it's definitely one of the things that is nice to see. However, not all of it would I be willing to repeat often. There were three pieces in today's set; the first one was interesting, the second one, not so much, while the third one was the only one I could really call fun.

Now, what was what?

According to the flyer, the first piece was called "Sugawara denju tenarai kagami" (Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy). It was a famous historical piece, adapted from Bunraku, lasted over 2 hours, and even the Japanese need an earpiece to understand what they're talking about. For those who wish to know more, it's on Wikipedia, and we were shown Act II scene 2 and Act III scene 2. Between the flyer in my lap and the voice in my ear, I managed to get the story (despite having dozed through about a third of it).

The second piece was mainly a dance performance, lightly interspersed with some comic interludes (or, as GW fans would put it, monkey business). Japanese dance is highly stylised, it doesn't interpret the music but rather the singing of the chanters sitting in the background (which is even more incomprehensible), and I must have slept through about a half. The name was "Kyokanoko musume ninin Dojoji" (Two women at Dojoji temple). According to the pamphlet, "Musume Dojoji is considered to be a pinnacle of the art of the onnagata female role specialist". It's definitely something to see, but I guess for many western people not really something to watch for an hour or so.

The third one, which I enjoyed the most (and managed not to doze on) was "Ninjo Banashi Bunshichi Mottoi" (The Story of Bunshichi), adapted from a Rakugo story. It's funny, it's touching, and even if the language is a bit archaic, and there is still the wailing quality of the Kabuki voice, it is much more accessible - I even managed to understand some (it really isn't so bad, as long as you know enough to switch all the "de gozaimasu"s for "desu"s). At least in those moments my ear wasn't full of Oshima-san, our pre-recorded commentator for the piece.

My frequent references to dozing can be explained in three ways. Four, if you count the least applicable one ("really boring"). They are:

1. My vampiric biorhythm. Again I couldn't sleep during the night, and my body tried to compensate by knocking me out during the day.

2. My blasted need for oxygen. I never dozed during the first 20 minutes after the break. But afterwards, my brain just wanted to go to Standby.

3. My appreciation of the soothing sounds of human wails, wooden block claps, shamisen pangs and shoulder-drum poings.

And I'm writing about this this openly and trying to conceal my shame over being an uncultured barbarian only because I can say that I was doing the ultimate Kabuki experience. If anyone starts pointing fingers at me, I can just explain to them that I was doing what the natives were doing. What I mean is that, just around me, at some point or other, I could spot at least a dozen dozing Japanese.

Cool thing about Kabuki, and I guess necessary when one remembers how long it lasts, is that it is expected to have your lunch there. Everyone comes to Kabuki with a bento, or buys one there. So it's kind of like what cinema would have been like had it existed in Far East couple of hundred years ago, with local equivalents of pop-corn (like ¥200 taiyaki).

Regarding the prices: Front row seats are sell-your-soul expensive at ~¥18000. The cheapest non-crappy seats were 1F and 2F back rows at ~¥12000. 3F back rows (where we were) are quite affordable at ~¥2500. There is also ¥650 charge for renting an earphone, but we got it for free with our group discount (¥2000 for the whole thing). There is also an option of paying ¥1000 for the behind-the-back-row spectators, or so-called 4F, for one piece only, and if I understood correctly the guide whom I asked about it, there may not be seats, but standing places instead. This is a good deal for those who have time limitations, cashflow problems, length requirements, or formicas in posteriori.

After that, as if it wasn't enough, I went on to continue my day of reckless spending, and bought a new pair of jeans, with a new belt. The old pants have me look like a skater, only not as stylish.

Energy Saving

So, in my Japanese class, prompted by the text we'd just read or grammar point we just learned or whatever, the teacher asked us to describe things we can do to save energy.

- One could use the low-consumption light bulbs.

- We can turn off computers when we don't use them.

- Turn off the lights while taking a shower.

- We can... wait, what?

Apparently, in Argentina (and also Australia, according to our Argentine source), they turn off the lights while they're taking a shower.

- You mean, all the lights outside the bathroom?

- Yes, and also in the bathroom too.

A collective "Huh?!?".

- At night too?!?

- Yes, of course, at night too. We often sing in the shower, so the government made a campaign to switch off the lights during the shower to save energy.

Sento update

This will seem familiar to my regular readers. But don't go "omg, he got lost again" just yet. Technically, I didn't get lost. Sento did. I knew exactly where it should be, but it did not have the common decency to meet me there. Instead, all I saw were some construction sites. (Or maybe it was there all along, but hiding from me, using the construction site curtains for cover. Tricky bastard, if so.)

So, I did not manage to get into a sento yet. Stay tuned.

Oh, another thing, about the Dobro (the Croatian restaurant). This, too, will seem familiar. We got the VIP treatment. Because I was Croatian. The Croatian chef himself came out of the kitchen to serve us our meals himself, and he was explaining every meal to my friend. And we got just a teeny bit extra, since we were splitting each dish in two, so that we both got a full set (like, we didn't need to worry about sharing a prawn). And when my gourmet friend expressed an interest in Croatian cuisine, the chef gave him a Vegeta cookbook! (I'm still unclear about where he's supposed to find Vegeta, but I guess it's his problem.)

Oh yeah. The prawns were a part of the mixed grill for two, which we also ordered. Chabapuchicchi were also part of that, as well as some chicken meat wrapped in prosciutto, peppers, eggplant, pork, potato, and I have no clue what else any more. Various, I tell you. Sundry.

And, for an appetizer, beef pate. Which I did not quite enjoy, prefering my pate to include at least some liver. Preferably 15% or more. And maybe, make it a pig product. (No pate in Tokyo. At least not in any obvious places. Sniff.) Wasn't bad, I'd just have prefered something else.

Anyway, the dinner was yummy, and we were treated especially well, so, what's not to like. Except the bill. Did I mention Bill? It's like Bill crashed our party, but we knew in advance Bill was coming, so we were dreading the moment all evening?

Naah, just joking. It was a lot, but no regrets. Okay, maybe I'd prefered my Canadian friend was of a smitten female persuasion. :) But if wishes were fishes...

Does sento wash away bad news?

I had my presentation on sarma today. It was really boring. There was a presentation on Rockies-As-Shown-By-A-Travel-Agency, a perfectly delivered, very touching story about porcupines and personal space, and a presentation-cum-degustation of a Malaysian dish, a presentation on Fusui (or Feng-Shui, if that's more familiar), beautiful presentations on Malaysian jungles and highlands and Israeli saline depths, and a Look-How-Cute-Little-Anteaters-Are one. Of course, there was also an utterly incomprehensible piece on peonies, but even that was a detective novel compared to my Recipe-of-the-Week column in Foreigner Daily.

Various and sundry replies for Linda: The baito is actually a sweet gig. I'm programming odds and ends for my lab. So I don't go anyplace I'm not already going to, and not doing anything I wouldn't already be doing. The only downside is, I'm not meeting anyone I wouldn't already be meeting. But shou ga nai.

As you might have guessed, I did go research local sarma. I went with my gourmet Canadian friend, and I was a bit nervous ("What will he say about our peasant cuisine?") but in the end he really enjoyed himself. Me, I was nitpicking all the time how nothing is really what I'm used to, even though everything was very good. My complaints were mostly based on the fact that it is a haute cuisine restaurant catering to japanese palates, and I'm used to plain old home cooking.

As you might or might not know, sarma is very sour and salty. As (some other of) you might or might not know, Japanese don't like strong flavours. Result is, I felt it was bland. Still delicious, but not the dish I know and love. Also, you only get a midget of one sarma roll for the price I don't want to put on the blog. It is not cheap.

Chabapuchicchi had a similar problem: not enough spices. White codfish (bakalar na bijelo) was the most authentic, from what we had. Shutorukuri (and congratulations for the first one who manages to decipher what that is) surprised me with paprika added to the cream sauce. I know paprika and dairy go well together, and are often mixed in Croatian cuisine, but I haven't yet experienced it on that particular dish.

However, I'm not sorry I went, even considering the hefty bill. I might go back soon, for lunch, if I have time - they have a set lunch for ¥1000, which is more than affordable, considering - but I doubt I will splurge for a dinner there any time soon.

I am continuing my weekly visits to the cute nurses in the dentist clinic. They say there's nothing better than having a pretty girl in your mouth, I don't think this is exactly what they mean. But it's good for health. I'm still in the root-canal-cleaning phase. Dunno why, but I can't but be reminded of Alien 3. One visit is not that expensive, but it accumulates. And that's just two teeth. Sigh. At least that's a regular expense, not a surprise to my wallet.

Unlike the scholarship money cuts. Yup, we got wind of the rumour that our monthly deposits will get cut by about ¥15000 a month or three hence. Plus, the JASSO policy of refunding 1/3 of whatever medical costs after the national insurance is getting axed next month (which is why I'm hurrying with my oral chimney-sweeping efforts).

More bad news: With regrets, I've decided to stop my attempts to start Aikido again. Every week my knees feel worse - last time I had trouble walking for the next couple of days. Not fun. I don't know what I'm going to do, maybe ask about using the Uni sports hall, and starting to swim. Swimming is boring, but it's exercise, and I guess much better for me than destroying my legs in the name of health. I just hope the water is tolerable. (And that for once I do what I tell myself to do.)

Speaking of water - I still haven't gone to a sento, so...

Excuse me for interrupting myself, but I'm really annoyed. I don't know whether it's myself, or English, or Japanese, or... Whatever it is, I hate mixing writing styles. Namely, whether to write the long O as "ou"/"oo" or simply "o". It just seems so bloody inconsistent! But the fact is, if I'm writing something in Japanese and don't want to use a native script, I'll probably go with the accurate kana transcription: "ou" most times, "oo" where applicable. But if they're just words that got into English, I feel silly writing "sentou" when whoever knows the word will probably recognise "sento" sooner. Besides, I'd feel like a pompous prick. So I resolve to remain consistently inconsistent, and peeved at my peevishness.

Ahem. Okay. I still haven't gone to sento, and I think I might like to try to go today. I think I might enjoy it after working on the presentation for so long. On the 'Net I found one near Omotesando station, which is on my free route, and I'm thinking to go and try to find it. I don't have any tattoos and I've read up on sento etiquette, so I hope I'll be fine. Before that, a quick stop at the cafeteria, to see if there's still anything edible.

Till next time!

Pizza

Saturday was a cool day. We had an all-day gaming event, and after that people said there was this cool little Burmese restaurant. So we went. I hardly even knew there was such a thing as "Burmese cuisine", but apparently even people from Burma do eat, so there we went. It was a couple of minutes away from Takadanobaba station, and apparently it is a Burmese restaurant heaven, as there is at least 3-4 more in the vicinity. It was a first time I've been to that station, but seeing how there's over a hundred stations in Tokyo and I don't get out all that much, it's nothing to be surprised about.

The restaurant was small, but kind of cozy. Dalmatian feel, almost. We ordered a bunch of different things and split it between the six of us, so we had a lot of variety in our dinner. But I was particularly impressed by two things. One was a drink, and was listed on the menu as "Grass Jelly". (I actually wrote "Glass Jelly" first, then corrected it, and it's not even the first time I did it; I have no idea why. I guess I'm becoming more Japanese by the minute.) Anyway, Grass Jelly (and again I had to actively control my fingers to keep them away from the L key) looks like water with bits of black jelly suspended in it. It tastes very sweet, and the closest thing to compare with would be the Icelandic lichen syrup. But without the whole coughing crap.

The other thing was tea leaf salad. Yummy! Don't ask me to describe how it tasted like, I just can't. There was a lot of things in it: peanuts, sesame seeds, rice vinegar, probably oil, and several varieties of green. I totally enjoyed it.

Speaking of restaurants, I have to make a presentation for my Japanese class, and I'm doing one on sarma. Like a real scientist, I have to cover my bases, and so I think I'll be going tomorrow (or some time soon if I don't get a table) to a Croatian restaurant. Err, make that "the" Croatian restaurant - since there's just the one in Japan. Sarma should be a bit pricey, but I miss it, and it's not that different from some other restaurants I've been to (like, oh, I don't know, Burmese). Good thing is, I actually managed to save some little money, and also I'll be getting my part-time job salary from next month, so it should be all good. I don't even spend that much on the dentist as I thought I would.

The dentists scare me, in couple of different ways. First, I was scared of the prices - I am going to a hi-tech private dentist, and they said there's a lot of work to be done in my mouth, so I was afraid I'm going to leave a lot of money there. But it turns out that I was wrong about that - the dentist turned out to be not only quite skilled, but also very cheap in comparison to back home. So now I'm scared about getting a nerve pulled, which is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous about that. I hope I don't lose my nerve, and get a nervous breakdown. Waiting for something like that is quite a nerve-wrenching experience, you know?

Okay, enough of that. While on the topic of money and work in mouth - last week I was at a gaming till rather late, and then decided to walk back home from Shibuya rather than brave the overcrowded last trains. It's just two stations, which translates to about... oh, maybe 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, I never measured. Anyway, I was passing the Love Hotel Hill (actually, the Japanese name is Hill where the Road Starts, or something like that, but it's universally called LHH by the gaijin population, I believe), and I got offered マッサージとブロージョッブ by a party previously unknown to me. That's a first. Wasn't even very expensive, I think. If I understood her correctly, it was actually about the same price as StarCraft: the Boardgame: Brood War expansion. But I had a book to go home to, so I did not partake of the services.

But was I tempted? Hell, it's like finding a piece of American pizza lying on the ground just inside Disneyland.

I mean, it's pizza!

But, on the other hand, it's full of fat, probably with germs on it, and you have to pay the considerable entrance fee to get to it.

And then you start thinking about Prosciutto Speciale back home... :(

December

Yet another belated blog post. Way, way belated. No excuses, I'm plain lazy.

There were several memorable events in December. First, our Japanese group held a bonenkai. But without much drinking. Which is not really a bonenkai, but whatever. Only one guy got pissed. He was red and talkative, and normally he is neither, so you just knew something was off. It was fun - only pity that one of the girls got sick that very day, so the group wasn't complete.

We went to an izakaya, where the Canadian got us a good price for a rather large dinner set. "Good price" doesn't mean it was cheap, just that it was cheaper than it would have been otherwise. But it was quite nice. I especially liked the zosui after nabe... That was just delicious. And mushroom tenpura was also very good.

Several days later, the missing girl, the other Malaysian, the Chinese girl and me went to see Sea Paradise in Yokohama. (Hmm, I could have just written "me and the class girls". Oh well.) It's a big Disneylandish place, the centerpiece of which is a huge aquarium located in a pyramid. No, not making it up. Pyramid. It's made from glass, though, not stone. And there's all kinds of marine critters swimming around in its five storeys. And on top, there's a huge pool where dolphins and seals and a walrus and a penguin and an announcer of indeterminate species perform in a show.

There's also several amusementparkish rides, and a rollercoaster. We bought a day pass to the whole island, so if we wanted to go take the rollercoaster five times, we could, with no extra charge. Since the rollercoaster was anything but cheap, we thought we had a good deal going. However, as we came to the gate, six seconds before we would have boarded for the first time, the attendant shut down the ride. The wind was picking up, and they were closing down the rollercoaster for safety reasons. So we didn't get to ride it at all. Not even once, since the wind stayed strong the rest of the day. So that part really blows.

Otherwise, it was really cool. One of the best things was the lunch. When we became hungry, the first thing we spotted was a yakiniku place. I hadn't had yakiniku yet, and thought it would be nice to try it, but we saw the price and it was... rather more than I usually paid my meals. Like, quadruple. However, as we walked around, we saw that pretty much everything was more expensive than usual - the tourist complex effect. Then we decided it's better to eat the expensive stuff in expensive places than to eat cheap food in expensive places, and went for yakiniku anyway.

This proved to be an excellent, and in the end really inexpensive, decision. We got a tabehodai. Which means, eat as much as you can in 90 minutes. Well, we did. Thoroughly. If you haven't googled it yet, when you go for nikuyaki, you get raw meat, already flavoured with spices and sauces, and you grill it yourself on the little griddle built into every table. There's vegetables too, but the main point is meat. The four of us ate maybe 10-15 plates of various species of meat. Stuffed ourselves silly. And that's not all! For the soup is included as well, as is rice, salad bar, and - desert! And by "desert", I mean a really really tasty treat: almond tofu. Or almond jelly, if you prefer. Yum-m-my! All for 2000 yen. It might be four times the price of my regular cafeteria lunch, but it's also the most meat I've eaten since coming to Japan.

Last notable event was the New Year. There was about 15 of us foreign students, and we went to hatsu mode - or first prayer of the year. It's the traditional way to spend New Year's Eve in Japan. We went to Zojoji, the main temple of Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, where we just missed the opportunity to stand in a 3000-person line to recive the paper on which we would have inscribed our wishes, attached to a balloon and sent into the sky at the stroke of midnight. Instead, we visited the Eiff... err, Tokyo Tower, which is just next to the temple. It was very crowded, so I decided, with another guy, not to go up at that time, and go grab some food instead, since both of us missed our dinner.

When the time came to enter the temple, it was... indescribable. In a feeble attempt, I'll only say that the crowd was in a fifteen-meter wide and hundreds of meters long "queue", and when we finally went in, there was a war inside. Half of the people were fighting to approach to throw in their coins and make their prayers, the other half, having finished what they came to do, were fighting to escape to the door. It was a war, I tell you. War!

Afterwards, I went home. Most of the people went on to Meiji shrine, and then to see the first sunrise of 2009. But I was cold and my feet hurt, so I passed.

The last of the notable events, I had dental surgery today. Huzzah!