Karaoke

A full third of the past 24 hours (That's 8 hours for those not terribly inclined to do math while reading a blog post) has been taken up by Karaoke with people who are about to leave for their home countries.

The last 24 hours have been a lot of fun.

(I wasn't the one leaving, but somehow I managed to be the focus of this shot)

(Props if you can recognize the show who's theme song they're singing)

Photo batch

As promised I've posted up a batch of photo's from my trip. Some of these were already on the blog. But for this batch I basically took a copy of anything that met the following criteria:

1) Photo is was in focus

2) Photo was not a duplicate/too similar to any other photo previously selected. 

So this first batch is 77 pictures spanning my first uh....  5 days.

Click here to see the photos. (you need to be logged into facebook apparently. Sorry. My other image upload pages are currently maxed out on space)

~Daniel

Meanwhile, Still During Finals

One final and 7 assignments (That I just found out about yesterday) to go. I'll be done for the semester in about 18 hours.

However, today I didn't have any classes nor work, so I took Leon up on an invitation to go to some onsen.

(It was pretty Awesome)

Also, I recently found out that I can braid my beard. And even more recently I found out that I can braid things into my beard.

(For Example: Toy Story Alien cell phone charms)

I would like to point out that it was one of my co-workers that suggested braiding that thing into my beard. (Not that I needed much convincing) But yeah, I was working at an English cram school for the past week to  earn some cash. It was a lot of work, especially for being in the middle of finals. But I made 41,300 yen. (Over 500 USD) for a week of work. I couldn't really pass it up. Originally I was going to try and use that to buy a car in order to save money on train tickets. But I found out that the route I would be taking is a toll road, and the toll would cost me more then the train tickets. So scratch that idea. Instead I'll just be using it to live off of. Hopefully I won't need to transfer as much money to Japan now because I loose about 20% due to the exchange rate.

At any rate, here are two pictures of the class that I was teaching. I'll probably write more about it after finals. (Click the pictures to enlarge them.)

(Myself, The other teachers, and the class. Can you figure out which ones are the teachers?)

(My students writing down what they would want in their "Ideal City". Can you pick out the one I wrote?)

See you after finals!

~Daniel

I love GOOOOOOOOLD!

Just finished reading the tale of King Midas.
In Japanese.

I wish all my kanji assignments were that interesting.

Midterm in 7.5 hours. Going to get some sleep before then.
Hopefully I'll be able to wake up.

Awesome-Sensei

Today I learned that one of my teachers is truly awesome.

I'll spare the long story at the moment for the sake of sleep, but here's the short of it:

I was unable to make it back to school early enough to pick up a graded assignment that I need to study for my final, so he dropped it off at my apartment for me.

Nanri-Sensei, You. Are. Awesome!

Middle of Finals

Just 3 more final exams and one speaking test to go, and then I'm done with Finals!

Actually, despite having the most tests of any given college semester, this is probably the least stressful finals period I've ever had.

And just because I feel like uploading a bit more then just text today, here is a shot of what my desk looks like at the moment.

(I clean my desk about every week, yet it still almost always looks like this)

 Also, thanks to the awesomeness of my mother, I was able to enjoy burritos. This may be directly effecting my mood in a positive manner.

(They were quite tasty. Many thanks to Mom for sending me Beans and Tortillas)

Next post will probably be after finals.

Oh yeah, I'm working at an intensive English summer program each day after school for an hour to earn money at the moment. They're paying me like $50 an hour to teach pre-prepared material to students with a good level of comprehension. It's quite fun, and I'm making a hunk of change to boot. I'm pretty happy with it, even if it is in the middle of finals.

Ok, Later all!

~Daniel

Mobility

I lent my bike out to a friend today because his had a flat. On his way to school My bike also got a flat. When he went to get it fixed, they discovered that my rear wheel was cracked. It cost him 4,000 yen to replace the tire (with the current exchange rate, about $48). I only paid 3,000 yen for it in the first place. My friend also remarked that after 5 minutes of riding my bike his back hurt. Based on this, it's possible that my bike is in fact perpetuating my back problems.

I've recently been considering getting a car for the rest of my stay here. (The bike thing is one more mark in favor of it) Apparently you can get a car for about 100,000 Yen (About $1,200 at the current exchange rate). I have my international drives license, and that would be good until I leave. It would make my travel options much more open, and over all save me some money perhaps (depending on mileage..... Or since they use metric here killometerage). I still need to talk to somebody about the process though.