Another list, and some updates...

Things that have started/will soon start to bother me:
-"Irrashaimasseeeeeeeeeeeeee." When you are walking on the street, or through a shopping complex, people are hired to scream this in the most obnoxious voices ever. I can't demonstrate the intonation here, obviously, but it's a really abrasive noise. The end is elongated, and goes up really high towards the cut-off.
-The Trains. I don't know how I'll do this every day. You literally can't move a limb unless you go in with it in the position you want.
-The previously mentioned inward-walking. Seriously. Walk properly.
-The printing system. And how half the printers in the school hate me. And how I have to print hundreds of pages. Skidmore professors GAVE us articles, these ones make us print them. Evil!
-Pompous Europeans at school. Contrary to your beliefs, speaking Japanese at a high level doesn't make you the coolest person ever.
-American jocks looking to get Japanese girls.
-Intensive Japanese. I just bombed a test today. It's just getting worse and worse, it's consuming my life. And the kanji we are learning is USELESS. Why do I need to be able to write the characters (or even know the words) for "Specific Gravity" and "Directional Current." I can't speak even basic Japanese!
-Moodle. WTF I hate this. It's like Skidmore's WebCT, but with a lot more retarded thrown in. And it's used for EVERY assignment.
-Confusion of R's and L's. Today in class our teacher was talking about political terminology, and she started talking about "elections." I tried very hard not to laugh.

Hm...updates. I've been very busy this past week. Most days I've gone out at like 7:30 in the morning and returned late at night, like between 8-12. It's very exhausting, but I'm glad I'm going out rather than just spending all my time between school and home. On saturday I went with the walking club on a 8 hour walk (I didn't know beforehand it would be that long), it was a lot of fun. I bought a grape kit-kat to go! I am not joking, it's the weirdest food ever, but kind of tasty in a disgusting way.

Last night I met up with Kyoko, my mom's friend from college. We met in Ginza, which is a really rich area, and it was fun just exploring. At dinner, she gave me lots of alcohol, so I got pretty drunk, and when I got home I realized that I had studied the wrong material for the next test. So I did a drunk test-study session, which was very ineffective (and subsequently I bombed it).

And in case you are wondering about the photo...it was at a Chinese restaurant I just went to with a bunch of friends. But look carefully. There are two interesting things here. Very random for a Chinese restaurant, but kind of hilarious.