The Final Few Days… Fragment 1.

[Fragmented due to size again]

Final few days.

How depressing.

I am now back in England. Yuck.

So what happened in my last few days in Japan?…

Monday 15th August 2011:

On Monday I woke up a little late as all the lab work was completed and I only had to go into the lab to write my report and presentation (which could have been done equally well in my room, but I wanted to see people as much as possible before I left!). I sat at my desk writing, and chatting to people most of the day. There were very few people in the office as everyone had gone home for the (O)Bon holiday – Davis didn’t bother showing up either, despite not being Japanese.

I forgot to go for lunch because I was working pretty hard, and so come 5pm I was starving, still feeling pretty sick, and tired – so I left.

When I got back to the apartment, I continued working on my presentation, reading it through in my head a few times. I was SO nervous. I had plenty to speak about but was finding it difficult to make everything flow in a logical order and was worried about people finding errors in my logic or experimental design. It’s pretty intimidating having to present your research infront of some of the leading experts in their field. Kuroda-sensee is effectively the Father of Systems Biology too, so it was kind of daunting.

After working on that for a while, I had a nap, then a shower, then headed out to meet the UTRIP guys for dinner. It was Anet’s last night in Tokyo so we’d decided to go out for sushi to celebrate. There were 7 of us in total who went (2 of them were TODAI students from the department of Astronomy) – it’s never a good idea to go as an uneven number really. There were no tables large enough for us all, and so instead of splitting into two smaller groups, they decided to take a table for 6, and for me to sit on a stool about a metre away because I wasn’t planning on eating anyway ’cause of my illness. I was a bit peeved to have to sit on my own, but I could understand them doing it because if I wasn’t going to eat anyway, it made more sense for them to all eat as a group. So yeah, I sat on the stool – too far away for conversation but close enough for awkwardness. In the end I had a couple of pieces of sushi anyway because it looked oishi, but I then left early. When feeling tired of feeling sick, and sick of feeling tired, the last thing you want is to sit in a restaurant on your own feeling awkward.

I said goodbye to Anet, and then went back to my room for an early night. And several more run-throughs of my presentation in my head.

Tuesday 16th August 2011:
A magnificent day. I woke up early (Yes, actually early – 6am. Not Sophie early.) and headed onto campus for my closing ceremony. I dressed up nicely because the certificates were going to be presented by the Dean of the Graduate School of Science, so I didn’t want to look scruffy.

I arrived at Hongo-Sanchome about an hour earlier than I needed to, so stopped off in Starbucks (I’ve been good recently – hadn’t gone in ages!)  for a Frappuccino and some breakfast. Well… I say ‘breakfast’ – it was a sugar-coated cinnamon bun. Nutritious!

I then walked to the Department and waited for the ceremony. Stas was early too so we were chatting beforehand for a while.

When we went to the office, we met Soeda-san and the Associate Dean. We were told that the Dean himself was no longer able to attend, but that was alright. The ceremony was really nice regardless.

There were 5 students there for the ceremony: Me, Stas, Lin, Inna & Kyle. Davis came too (making the total 6) around 20 minutes late. He is usually late to everything, but I thought that going to the Dean’s office on time would perhaps be worthy of his tight schedule. But no.  Apparantly not.  We all received our certificates in turn. They were beautiful! Big, elegant certificates on lovely paper, presented in a velvet graduation folder. We then lined up together for some photographs.

After the ceremony, I headed up to my lab. I had bought the members of my lab some sweets and biscuits, so I left those on the table and then wrote a thank you letter via the mailing list to everyone there.

I did some last minute run-throughs of my presentation, made a few amendments to my report, and then sent a few emails.

At 4pm, it was time for the presentation! I was so nervous beforehand, and was scheduled to go first (which I am glad about). I stood up on the stage, prepped my slides, and began. I was even more nervous than I imagined I would be because 4 UTRIPpers had come to watch too!

It went well.

Honestly.

I was surprised. All the worry and uncertainty disappeared and I mananged to get through it without any slip-ups. I spoke for 20 minutes to.the.dot. which felt like a bit of an achievement. I also seemed to have people’s interest, and at the end, I was able to answer all of the questions thrown at me. Win.

I won’t say that it went perfectly, because I don’t believe that presentations ever do, but it certainly went much better than I anticipated, and by the end of it I was buzzing.

I sat down next to Anna, and Davis then went up to give his presentation.

I won’t comment on it too much, as my frustration at him for his lateness and attitude towards science has perhaps made me a little biased. What I will say though is that I don’t think his went as well as he anticipated that it would, and afterwards some people had commented that it seemed he spent his presentation trying to give excuses as to why his experiment did not yield data (and why this wasn’t his fault), rather than discussing the data (or lack thereof) itself.

He also finished his presentation with this slide [inset to right] which, as I’m sure you can imagine, resulted in a bit of a backlash of questions, which then went on for around 20 minutes.

Anyway, after the presentations were finished (around 5:10 pm) I had a short while free before our leaving party. I cleared my desk, then popped to the Co-op shop to buy a University of Tokyo hoodie as a souvenir. It was really nice! Lovely quality, and it is grey with the school’s logo.

I went back to the lab, and said goodbye to a few of the lab members who couldn’t come to the party (Kubota-sensee couldn’t go, for example). Those of us who did go (around 9 or 10 of us) then met up by the door and headed to the restaurant. Our leaving party was in a really nice Chinese restaurant in Ueno. The inside was mirrored and massive, and seemed to go on forever. I sat next to Professor Kuroda and Saito-san.

We didn’t order individually, but each shared dishes amongst us so that we could try more things. My favourite was a curried prawn dish. N’yom.

It was nice, and I got to speak to some of the lab members that I hadn’t really had proper conversations with before. After the meal, we all headed outside and said our goodbyes. However, I then sort of jokingly said that I wasn’t ready to go home yet, and so some of the lab members decided to take us on an impromptu night out in Akihabara!

It was SO.MUCH.FUN!

Saito-san is apparantly a bit of a regular on the Akihabara scene, so knew some amazing places to go! They wanted to take us to a maid cafe but I mentioned that I’d already been so we changed the plan. Instead, we first went to an ‘Idol Club’  called “Dear Stage” [http://moejapan.jp/dearstage/] which is apparantly Akihabara’s most well known Otaku hangout.

It was the weirdest place I’ve ever been! It was a small, brightly coloured room with a stage (duh) to the side. It filled up pretty fast, and within about 10 minutes of us being there it was packed! The show then began! It consisted of about 5 very kawaii Japanese girls singing A-pop (Akihabara pop… about 15x more over the top than J-pop) and prancing around the stage in school girl costumes. Perhaps more interesting though, was the audience. It consisted of typical otaku boys all singing their hearts out and dancing like their lives depended on it!

Words cannot do it justice.

They were dancing completely in unison, using all the same dance moves as each other, despite most of them having their eyes closed and being so lost in the moment that I’m sure they didn’t realise there was a single other person in the room except for them and the singer.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

The dance moves were bizarre. A friend later told me that they were based on traditional Japanese theatre art. I just thought they were hilarious. It’s a definite must-see.

When the show was over, we  walked around Akihabara and eventually found a bar that Saito-san wanted to show us. On the way though, we passed many Maid cafes, including a ‘Vampire Maid Cafe’ which looked pretty interesting, and a bit more fetishist than the usual. We didn’t go in, but I took a picture of the guys outside the entrance. You can’t see the banner too well in this photo though.

We also found a bar that Saito-san described as “A place where women go to look at men who love men. The men wear underwear, and pretend to love each other”.

Now that sounded interesting. We didn’t go in though. Apparantly men aren’t allowed in unless they work there. At all.

So then we went to a CosPlay bar, which was essentially the same as any other bar in Tokyo except that the waitresses were walking around wearing costumes from famous Manga. There were a few generic nurses, maids, police officers, etc too.

We had a few drinks there, spoke to the waitresses (One of which was desperate to learn English so was talking to me for ages. She kept telling me I ‘look like Hermione’ which was not exactly accurate.) and then left. I got the train back to Ningyocho station and then walked the rest of the way home.

I was pretty tired, and not willing to risk missing the last train.

I had such an amazing night though! Wow. Just… wow!

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I have now felt sick for 5 days…

… This is NOT fun 😦

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Time for an Update… or two… or three.

The last few days…

Friday 12th August 2011:

Friday was pretty damn okay. I woke up nice and early, headed onto campus, and finished writing up my project report. Yes – finished! I have one complete draft. Score.

All the practical work is now complete and so I’m done with labs. I’m pretty sad about this actually, because I really enjoy being in the lab – but at least it means that everything is finally coming together!

I now really need to start working on my presentation. It will take place at 4pm on Tuesday and so I need to draft up some slides and begin practicing ASAP. Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty ill for the last few days though, so that’s not progressing with quite the haste I would have liked! More on that later.

So… Friday… Friday (Gotta get down on Friday)… I sat at my desk for effectively the entire working day. Anything interesting happen during this? Not a lot. I had a few emails… Oh, and Toshi came back from his internship for the last few weeks so was talking to me and Davis for a while. Other than that 20 minutes of socialising, I did nothing to warrant blogging about, haha.

I left at around 4pm to go to Anna and Kyle’s UTRIP presentations. They were really interesting, and I enjoyed it a lot. After that, we had a brief beer party with the Astronomy department. They’re cool guys. Yoshi was there (from the Onsen) so it was nice to see him again. We all sat around chatting and drinking (apple juice, in my case), and then left after about 2 hours. Anna, Kyle, Anet and I then went out for dinner. We had Okonomiyaki again. It wasn’t as nice as the one I had with Maria, but I still enjoyed it a lot! There were 8 of us and so we spread out over 2 tables. I was with the UTRIPpers, and the other table was TODAI students.

After the okonomiyaki (and perhaps a few too many Highballs), we headed back to Hakozaki. Kyle stayed with the TODAI guys and I think they went out. I probably should have stayed too because I ended up spending the evening lay in bed watching “Breaking Bad” on my laptop. You know… ’cause I’m cool like that?

So… When I said Friday was ‘pretty damn okay’. I meant it. It wasn’t a bad day by a longshot, but relatively little happened. I feel like the bustle and business of the early UTRIP days have passed now. Too many people have gone home. The end is nigh.

Saturday 13th August 2011:

I will make this brief. On Saturday, I did buggar all (Excuse the unnecessariness).

Why? I felt ill.

Why? I’ve woken up for the past 3 days in cold sweats. I’ve spent most of my waking hours feeling nauseous. I have no energy. I feel completely and utterly drained.

Why? You tell me.

As much as I love Tokyo… It is knacking my immune system.

So yes. Saturday I spent in bed. Apart from a brief walk to 7-eleven to pick up some lunch, I didn’t leave my room.

It makes me feel terrible that my last Saturday in Tokyo was spent this way, but I felt physically incapable of anything else. I think I had (wo)man flu.

In the evening, I heard drums and music outside, so I went to my balcony to have a look. There was a festival going on in the park below. It looked pretty cool actually: Lots of people dancing around in yukatas. I was going to go check it out, but was getting dizzy when I stood up.

I could have perhaps worked on my presentation during the day, but I was just too exhausted. I could have blogged, but no.

Failofaday.com

Sunday 14th August 2011:

Today I was out of bed! Woohoo!

Albeit, at around 1pm. I was still in sickness-recovery-mode until then.

I met up with Maria and Hiroaki today. They had rented a car to take me around Tokyo. So far I’ve travelled everywhere (with the exception of the excursions to Kamakura and Fuji-san) via metro/train and so it was awesome to be able to see some of the city above ground for once!

We were originally planning on meeting up at 11:00, but because of unforseen (and unblogged) purposes we had to postpone. It was a shame, because we kind of lost half of the day, but never mind. We still had an awesome time.

After a brief drive around, we decided to go to the Shinagawa Aquarium. We had to queue for about 45 minutes just to get a parking space in the end, but it was worth it! It was a lot of fun, and really nice to get out of the insane August heat for a while. As we were going around the tanks looking at all the fish (etc), Hiroaki was telling me the Japanese names of them all and I was telling him the English.

I took a lot of photos, but you were not allowed to use the flash in the aquarium and so they are all too blurry to use on here 😦 Massive technology fail.

My favourite was the turtle. It was enormous! So cool! (Wow. I sound like a child, not a twenty-something research intern. Woops)

We went outside for a while and had some Kakigori while we waited for the dolphin show. It was so hot today (34 degrees Celcius) so it was nice to have something cool. I managed to screw mine up though by putting way too much syrup on, and so it tasted like I was drinking hot, gooey lemonade rather than actual kakigori. Yet another of today’s many fails.

I still felt horribly ill today. In fact, much worse than yesterday. I really didn’t want to miss out on spending the day with Maria though so I fought through it. I felt like I was going to actually be sick for most of the day. I was probably great company.

We watched the dolphins perform, and it was damn impressive! I really enjoyed this bit, but found the heat outside pretty difficult to cope with. After the dolphins, we headed back to the car because Maria was worried about me in the heat and thought I should sit down somewhere with air con. i.e. the car.

We then headed to dinner. We were a little early, so when we got to the block that the restaurant was in, we had a look in a bookshop for a while. The books in Japan are beautiful. I really wish that I could read them, and then I could justify buying one to take home. Unfortunately, it would just sit on my bookshelf unread, and as a book geek, that’s not something I can deal with.

We then headed to the restaurant itself. It was a really nice tempura place. I ordered something off the set menu because it was easier than ordering each piece individually, and Maria and Hiroaki were doing the same. The food was beautiful. I had various types of vegetable tempura – my favourite was the shitake one – plus gohan, miso shiru and daikon (not a fan). I felt so greasy and fat afterwards though haha – I’ve never eaten so much fried stuff in my life! So… what do I do then? Order icecream tempura for dessert – Yes – It exists! It’s bloody good too!

After eating an excessive amount of amazing tempura, we went back to the car, and Hiroaki drove me back to my apartment. They couldn’t come in because we got lost a few times and the closest we got to the apartment was a one way street, with no available parking. I said goodbye to the two of them (although I’ll see Maria next week when she comes back to England) and walked the remaining way back to the apartment.

When I got back, I could hear the music from the festival again, and since I didn’t go last night I decided to check it out. I headed to the park (and nearly trod on a massive cockroach on the way *shudders*) to take a peek. It was awesome actually. There must have been about 100 people stood in a big circle, all wearing yukatas, and dancing to the beat of a drum and some traditional music. I loved it! I didn’t stay too long though, because it looked like they were trying to get people to join in the dancing. Considering that, a) I’m a terrible dancer; b) I’ve spent the last few days feeling like I’m on the verge of vomitting; and c) I just ate a massive serving of tempura… I decided to go back before I attracted enough attention.

So now I’m in my room, blogging, considering preparing my presentation, and also considering getting a very early night.

Only time will tell…

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Three Days… Slightly rushed

Apologies for the lack of detail and general rush. I haven’t had time to blog in the past few days really, and I need to be at the lab for 7.45am tomorrow and so I can’t realistically write a lot tonight either.

Monday 25th July 2011:

Monday was pretty rough. I woke up, went onto campus bright and early (we had been told to arrive for 9am to start practical work) and then received an email from Soeda-san re: my mosquito bites. I was getting so concerned about them. She told me she would try to get me an appointment for the dermatologist, and so to come to the OIP office in the morning. I spoke to Kubota-sensee and then headed down straight away. When I arrived, she told me that the dermatologist didn’t open until 10.30 so I had to come back later. No biggie. I went back to the lab.

However, Davis didn’t arrive until 10.30, which made it completely pointless me coming in on time. When I asked him about it, he just said “I think it’s not necessary”. So yeah, there was my morning wasted. Unless you haven’t picked up on the vibe already… we fell out on Monday a bit.

At 11am, he decided it was time for lunch. I wasn’t hungry, but he kept pushing it so we had to go to the canteen. While there, he pretty much insulted my intelligence continuously explaining how I just “didn’t understand” and how it is much harder and more worthwhile being a Chinese student in a Chinese university. So I got a bit pissed off. We then left, and he continued insulting my intelligence and started insulting my appearance to a degree. Great start to the day.

We then had a Japanese class. It was the first of the intermediary classes, and I found it much to advanced for me. The class itself was taught in Japanese and so I couldn’t understand some of the instructions, which made me feel very lost and useless. After the session, I kind of decided not to go back because the level was completely inappropriate for me. The teacher was very nice, and I’m sure she was a great teacher… I just really wasn’t at that standard yet.

After Japanese, we went back to the lab. I hung around reading for around an hour, and then had my appointment with the dermatologist. I walked to Science Building 1 to meet Soeda-san, and she walked me to the appointment. The service was very quick and efficient, and the whole appointment was over very fast: I returned to campus within the hour. While at the doctor’s, I was told that it was just mosquito bites (as I already knew, but I guess it was reassuring to be told I didn’t have some kind of horrific skin disease, after what Davis has been trying to tell me for the past week and a half) and was prescribed some strong steroid cream. I was a bit skeptical, as the stuff Rachel had lent me hadn’t done much to help. The appointment was really expensive actually, and with the prescription came to around £50. Soeda-san paid for my appointment up front as they didn’t accept cards and I didn’t have enough cash… On the condition that I paid her back later. She is a very kind lady, and I’m really glad that she is organising the program.

When I got back, I had some practical practice. We were in the labs until around 6pm working. After labs, Davis started walking to the train station with me, and despite being rude all day, asked me ‘why I was sad’. I explained that it was James’ funeral happening right that moment, and so I got a little upset. He then told me to stop being sad because it was pathetic. I got really angry at him because I felt that was completely inappropriate, and told him to go ahead without me because he’d upset me. I don’t know whether it was a language barrier thing, or whether he is just inconsiderate and as rude as hell, but I wasn’t standing for it anymore.

I was pretty fuming at this point, and on the verge of tears again. I walked to the Akamon to meet up with Kyle, who’d said that he would take me for a drink because I didn’t want to be on my own during James’ funeral. We took the train from Hongo-Sanchome back to Suitengumae and then headed through the Suitengu area to try to find somewhere to have a drink. We were both starving, and so stopped off at a Japanese restaurant. The food was really good actually, and the service was fast. It was (I guess) the equivalant of Pizza Hut in the UK. It looked like a chain, but was pretty good value for money. I had kebab sticks with fish and vegetables that had been deepfried, Edamame beans, and a Highball. I said a toast to James while there.

After the meal, we headed to the park. We sat in the park for about 2 hours drinking whiskey (It’s apparantly legal to drink in public in Japan, and pretty common, so don’t worry!) and juice, and talking. I got really upset again about missing the funeral, and talked about James a lot to Kyle. I felt a bit bad actually because it was just us so I was probably really crappy company, and I really appreciate him coming out with me for a bit to take my mind off it. At about 10 I went back to my room because the mosquitoes were biting me again.

In all, it’d been a really shitty day Really really rubbish. I’m glad it is over. But most of all, I’m just glad I didn’t have to be on my own during the funeral.

Tuesday 26th July:

Tuesday was marginally better than Monday.

I accidentally missed the morning lecture because I fell asleep again after my alarm and woke up 20 minutes late. By that point, I could have just shoved on some clothes and run to the station, but I still would have been late and then would have spent the whole day feeling rough and exhausted. It’s too hot in Tokyo to rush. I had also been to all the other lectures (except for the one Soeda-san wouldn’t let me go to) and I knew that a lot of people had missed a lot of lectures, so I didn’t stress too much.

I got dressed and headed into campus in time for the end of the lecture. I then met up with the UTRIP folk when they came out of it (it turned out only around 6 people made the lecture).  They told me that the lecturer kept heaving and was nearly sick a few times in the lecture. It sounded terrible! I hope he was okay!

We went to lunch together in 2nd Refectory and afterwards I went to Soeda-san’s office to pay her back the money for the appointment. She was still on her lunch break though so I gave up and went back to Kuroda lab. When I got back, we started our practical work for the day. It was much better than before as they had set up a separate clean bench for me and so we didn’t have to keep swapping back and forth. It was also set up for a left-hander, so I was really happy!

The practical work was a little more complicated, and took quite a long time from start to finish. We began the serum starvation process for our experiments, which involved aspirating all medium from our cell culture plates, washing repeatedly with serum-free media, and then returning to the incubator. We had to do around 26 plates each. It became much easier with practice, and although the first few plates were slow, we got into the rhythm of it, and time flew by. Because of this, I missed the fireworks that some people were planning on going to as we finished around 6.30. Instead, I met up with some people outside Science Building 1 and we went to a Ramen restaurant that Sungi liked.

The restaurant was in Ueno. It was kind of strange… instead of ordering conventionally, you paid your money into a vending machine type thing, pressed a button, and it gave you a token. Then, when seats became available in the restaurant, you handed the ticket to a waiter, and they processed the order and sent you the food.

I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. My logic was… if it is cheap, it probably doesn’t contain meat. It’d worked well so far. However, what I ordered turned out to have pork or beef in it – It’s been so long since I’ve eaten meat that I really couldn’t tell from sight alone. But… I’d paid 850 yen for it, didn’t have time to cook dinner when I got in, or the money to buy something else, and so just ate the noodles anyway, eating around the meat. I guess I accidentally lost my beef/pork virginity again in that sense! I didn’t eat the meat, but the noodles still tasted of it. Blegh.  Not a fan.

The ramen was very salty, and I didn’t like it very much at all. As a rule, I’ve enjoyed Japanese food a lot, but that was just not good. Yucky yuck.

After the meal, I walked to the train station, while the rest of the guys walked home. I would have walked but I’m so paranoid about mosquitoes now and was wearing shorts and a strappy top.

I got home at around 9pm, had a shower, and went on facebook for a bit, and read my emails. I had a few messages from people from Book Group who went to the funeral the day before, and they had all told me similar things: It was a beautiful service, and James would have loved it, and been so proud of his family and friends’ bravery. Later, I went to bed.

Davis didn’t speak to me all day. I am annoyed that he didn’t bother apologising to me after he knew that he made me feel so rubbish, but I tried to behave like an adult and not let it get to me. I just hoped that he would remain civil.

Wednesday 27th July 2011:

I had to be in the lab for 9am today to start the practicals. I got up early, and went straight to the station. I arrived with around 15 miutes to spare, but we decided to start work a little early. We went to the cell culture room, and began the process. Today’s work involved stimulation of the cell cultures prepared yesterday, using EGF of various concentrations and incubation periods. We first tried stimulating the cells for 1 minute at a time: We pipetted the growth factor into the plates, swirled the media to ensure that it was well mixed, and then aspirated all media, before fixing using our lysis buffer that we prepared yesterday evening.

We then repeated the process but increased the time to 2 minutes. Because of the extended time period, we were able to return the plates to the incubator inbetween the treatments.

Once we felt comfortable with the process, we began to get a little more complicated. We then had to try stimulating the cells for longer time periods. Because some of the cells required 1 hour stimulation, and others required as little as 10 minutes, we organised the stimulations so that they overlapped and finished at a similar time, but so that we didn’t need to actively deal with more than one plate at once. It was a little confusing, but once I got into the rhythm of it, I experienced no problems.

It was really interesting: As soon as the cells were lysed with our buffer, the mixture became instantly sticky and gooey. Kubota-sensee explained that this was due to the the DNA being released.

We placed all the treated cells in the refrigerator, and finished up just in time for lunch.

Davis had the intermediary Japanese class, but I didn’t go as the previous one was so advanced. Instead, Kubota-sensee invited me out to lunch, and so we went along with Uda-san and Toyoshima-san. We went to a Japanese restaurant nearby, and I had the dish of the day which was a Japanese fish meal cooked in soy sauce, served with rice, miso soup and a sidedish that had tofu, vegetables, and a thick sauce. The food was really good! The restaurant was playing the weirdest music in the background though… It was a Disney theme tune CD (“Under the Sea”, “Winnie the Pooh”, “A Whole New World” etc) … played on the Xylophone. Perhaps the most surreal soundtrack to my life – ever.

After lunch, I went back to the lab, bought a coffee from the machine, and started reading for the afternoon’s practical.

When Davis arrived from his Japanese class, he needed to take a 20 minute break (it’s starting to annoy me a little that I can’t work until he’s ready), but then we started the afternoon practical. Urakubo-san was showing us how to prepare and pour a gel for SDS-PAGE, so that we could later do a Western blot. I hadn’t done this before and really enjoyed learning the process. It was a lot of fun actually, because at Uni the technicians always do this bit for us to save time. We had to mix up the solution, prepare the glass, clamp it, and pour in the mixture. Once it had set, we washed the gel, and preserved it in distilled water and saran wrap for tomorrow.

By this point, it was around 6pm. I went back to my desk, packed up, and then headed to Soeda-san’s office to pay her the money back for the appointment. This time she was available, and so I gave her 5000 yen, and had a bit of a chat. I spoke to her about the master’s program here, because I’ve started to consider it again. I’m really enjoying my time here, and although I can’t wait to see my family and friends again, and Matt especially, I am sad that I am half way through my program, and feel nowhere near ready to leave yet! However, if I came here I’d really need to work on my Japanese!

On that note, Soeda-san has been trying to arrange one-on-one lessons for me with a Japanese teacher because the intermediary class is too hard, but I have so little free time at the moment with the practicals. I’m not sure if it’s going to be possible!

After that, I went to Starbucks on campus and bought myself a Matcha Frappuccino, and a cinnamon roll. Piggy. I sat in the cafe and watched it get dark. Then I headed to Hongo-Sanchome to take the train home. On the way back, I had a bit of a piggish moment and bought myself some French Fries from McDonald’s. They were pretty rank actually, especially after unnecessary Starbucks. I’m definitely more of a fan of Japanese food than Western food at the moment… especially fast food. Blergh. Giving up on the junk food now. And not having dinner after that. Too full.

When I got back to my room, I went next door to give Rachel her mosquito bite cream back, and then started blogging and working on my presentation.

Oh yeah… Davis decided he wanted to give a presentation on himself, and so now I need to do one too. I don’t have a clue what to say really, because I have only done two years at University and so don’t have a speciality yet, and nothing to really speak about! Regardless, I’m going to try my best, and hopefully it’ll be interesting. I’m not sure if I need to make slides or anything.

I spoke to Davis a few times today, and so hopefully we will be able to be civil, but he still hasn’t apologised for his comments on Monday and so I’m finding it a bit difficult to treat him like a friend. However, I can treat him like a colleague and so I shall.

And… I think that’s everything now!

It is Sungi’s leaving party tonight but I won’t be able to go. I have too much to do and can’t stay up late, so I feel a little guilty.

Time for a bath and bed. I need to be on campus so early tomorrow and so an early night won’t go amiss.

 

 

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