taking stock

chicken stock?

anyway. at approx 2pm today, I passed the 4 week mark of my 7 month stay in Tokyo. I must say I think I've settled in quite nicely. gotten to know quite a few people, courtesy of Phoebe and David and their church. gotten closer to my housemates - who are pursuing very diverse paths - and my classmates - who are also pursuing pretty diverse paths. they're very different people from the kids at Penn or the kids back home in Singapore.

my housemate remarked that my life is very boring. well. sometimes i think it is too..

but hey, the situation is improving. i'm going for a taiko class this thursday! *grin* went shopping -kindof - today, though it was an unsuccessful attempt at finding boots that I liked and that were cheap enough for me to buy. plan to drag someone with me to shinjuku's "omoedase yokocho" - the lane of memories - to eat old-fashioned yakiniku on sticks (like satay) and/or soba, on old-fashioned counters where the owner/cook cooks everything in front of you, in old-fashioned looking shops that are so small everyone is eating shoulder to shoulder. plan to go climb takao-san sometime soon - it's a hill slightly west from where I live (about an hour away fr the city perhaps) that's about 600m high i think. need to get out of the city. going to watch sumo this sunday, as well as go to yokohama for a dinner with dad's friend, aunt jing.

and planning a trip to kyoto soon. :)

so yup, life's looking more interesting.

but that also means i will have less time to work on my thesis, which I have sat on for the past 4 weeks and which i am valiantly trying to make progress on.

by hook or by crook i should get most of it done by the time I start school at hitotsubashi.

having been here 4 weeks...i've started to think about what i want to get done by the end of my stay in japan:

1. travel to hokkaido in summer to see sunflowers
2. travel to hiroshima.
3. climb mount fuji in summer
4. become more fashionable
5. finish my thesis
6. become fluent in conversational japanese so that i can at least understand what the waiters are saying to me
7. make at least 1 good friend
8. get to know as many good (and cheap) eating places as possible
9. get to know some good jazz bars
10. stay in a ryo-kan at least once
11. learn tennis

time's ticking away... :) cheers to 6 more months in japan.