Silver and Gold

研究= research, not train. Well that's almost 100 on a kanji quiz...

So I've been making it as best as I can here, and I think for having literally 0$ left, I 'm doing a great job. USPS lost my mail with my card in it, so I'm pulling resources again. I haven't had to borrow any more money yet, which makes me feel a little better, since I'm already stressing over the inconvenience I've already put people through. But two friends of mine want to go to an all-day ska festival and made me begrudgingly accept their offer to pay for my ticket, so I'm owing more than ever. At least you can't say there's nothin to do in Japan, it just all costs money!

So breakfast and dinner are covered by the dorm (well by covered I mean included in the dorm bill, which  also need to pay), and every evening they give us a huge cooker full of rice that we can take as much as we want from. So I've been filling up lunch containers with rice, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (6 pieces of huge toast for a 100 yen, already had the PB&J) and using that for lunch. It's good and I'm definitely saving some money. It'll be interesting to see what everything's like when I finally get my cards back. (If FedEx doesn't manage to lose them too)

Golden Week is coming up next week, which means travel, travel, travel. It's also our only real break for school so everybody's going to be really enjoying themselves and doing everything they wanted to do over break now that the weather's getting nicer. If a miracle happens and I somehow find myself with some extra cash ( I DID apply for an English tutoring job, not that it will probably happen this week, but always stay optomistic, right?) I want to try to see Nara, Kobe, and Kyoto, all of which are old Japanese cities, with a lot of great restaurants and ancient sights. If I can't get money...well it'll be a good chance to walk around town, see how quiet everything is since everyone's gone, and enjoy some rest out in the sun.

The main point of this post which I save for down here (mostly because I forgot until right now) is that I'm going to be on Japanese TV! A comedy show came to our dorm yesterday because the host lived in our dorm 30something years ago, and filmed the upperclassmen, the freshmen, and some of the internationals. We weren't supposed to take pictures but of course I managed to grab one, just of the backs of the camera crew, but for a small show and a 15 minute TV spot they had a huge crew, just one more symbol of daily Japanese (in)efficiency. I'll be sure to find out what I can on the TV show, it will probably be more entertaining for lack of understanding than actual comedy; it has a freshman doing a traditional Osakan comedy routine, the internationals standing around looking foreign and laughing a lot, and the entire dorm singing the dorm's anthem. It was a really interesting experience to see how some of the guys in the dorm who always act so big and bad practically ran from the sight of the camera.

Everything's still adjusting here, but it's great to kind of have a routine, and once everything's back to normal it'll be great to get out some and be able to post some pictures of the greater Kansai Area!