A brief summary of the past week.

Weekend: Lots of fun. Went to some izakaya (essentially restaurants that serve small to medium-sized dishes, and are really fun to go to in decent sized groups), did some karaoke (also fun to do in decent sized groups, and there are plenty of songs in English and Japanese, as well as Korean, Chinese, and Tagalog), and just generally had fun over all hanging with both our Japanland and gaijin friends.

The week thereafter: Classes and the end of orientation. I ended up getting put a level ahead in Japanese, which means I have about four or five chapters worth of vocab, grammar, and kanji to catch up in. So far, it hasn't been too bad. Grammar was a breeze, and I have a decent part of the vocab down. I've even picked up a surprising percentage of kanji by just tracking down their definitions on my own.

Otherwise, my classes aren't too bad, but I might drop one of my afternoon lecture classes if I maintain my current level of Japanese, given that even the professors recommend that we keep our classes down to four (two Japanese classes + two afternoon lecture classes), as opposed to the five Tiff and I had (Tiff dropped her fifth, I'm still waiting to see if I'll be in a high level for both my Japanese classes).

In other news, we both bought bikes for cheap (I got mine for ￥6500, and Tiff's was ￥7000), and I've started to help Tiff learn to ride. She's been doing pretty well for herself, but I want to make sure she's an expert in steering and braking before she gets out on the mean streets of Hirakata.

Unfortunately, no pictures... yet. I'm gonna try to get out and get some pics of the general area, but my ability to do that will be dictated by what's going on tomorrow and Monday, which we have off (Respect for the Aged Day, YES).

Oh, and one awesome fact: because of TD Commerce and Japan's ゆうちょ銀行 both dropping the ball on charges, I don't get hit with any fees for international transactions.


And last, but not least, our addresses:

(one of our names here, only use one!)
c/o Center for International Education
Kansai Gaidai University
16-1 Nakamiyahigashino-cho, Hirakata, Osaka
573-1001 JAPAN

The town name is quite a mouthful (penful? ... painful?), so here it is, broken up: naka miya higashi no - cho.

Also, I have to stress that you must not forget to write either my name or Tiff's in! Writing both is no good because we have separate mailboxes, and if you just don't put a name, CIE will assume it's theirs and just open it right up. I know you're not sending us bombs or anything, but we'll have to go through a whole ugly bureaucratic process to get it (like everything else in Japan).