Sons of Loki

Not a lot been happening here, though I’ve staved off holiday insanity for the last couple of days.

Friday saw a trip to the Tachikawa immigration office, which in punctual style I reached ten minutes before it closed. The staff were friendly for a change, although they started laughing at my file disconcertingly before putting a tiny sticker in my passport which entitles me to work 14 hours a week.
I got the train back from Tachikawa station to Musashi-koganei on the Chuo line (technically the Chuo Line (Rapid), the same thing and entirely different to the Chuo-Sobu Line, which is also identical to and nothing to do with the Chuo Main Line). I’d cycled to Musashi-koganei station to save the extortionate 150 yen fare on the Seibu Tamagawa line, which is the line we have to get from where we live to connect to the Chuo. It’s actually pretty quick to cycle to from TUFS (well, 20-30 minutes), and given that the Seibu Tamagawa line is such a ridiculous money-sink it makes a big difference.
Anyway, I studied in McDonalds for a while and then, not wanting to stay in on a Friday evening, met up with Miles and Ella for dinner and karaoke in Kichijoji. This was enjoyable. Saturday, I was going to go to this music bar in Shinjuku with Ella, Fran and our Korean friend Hime, but ultimately that was cancelled due to Expensiveness and we went to happy hour at Hub, the Japanese pub. Craftily, the pub had conspired to include some kind of chemical in our drinks which lowered our inhibitions and made us more likely to stay and purchase more drinks, even at post-happy hour prices, which we did. Nevertheless, a merry time was had.
Japan really doesn’t do the British pub culture thing very well, at least not in my experience. It’s all izakayas, where you sit in uncomfortable booths and have to eat stuff and then get cheated out on a service charge you didn’t know about. Hub’s nice, though. It’s a place to just relax and drink and watch the curling (where Japan beat GBR, although our team did look like they’d just wandered out of Asda).

Sunday, I found out that j-rocksters the pillows were playing the final gig of their current tour at Tokyo Dome or JCB Hall (or whatever it’s called) and nearly went. I cycled around to find a Lawson convenience store and struggled with their ticket-booking machine for five minutes, trying to find the gig before giving up. Plus I didn’t really have enough money. Plus there’ll be other opportunities to see those guys.

I’ve decided to start shopping at the Lawson 100, the logical successor to Shop 99 of my old 2007 days (though they’re owned by the same company, stock all the same products, and there’s a Shop 99 about five minutes away from my nearest Lawson 100). The eggs are tiny and the coffee disgusting, but the price is right.

And I’m trying to learn 20 kanji a day from Heisig. I tried 50 a day before and burned myself out completely. It’s pointless to do that many – you forget them as soon as you learn them. I should hopefully finish a few weeks before the Leeds exam in May, which I am plus unconfident about given that everyone else is worried.

Yeah, I still don’t know. I got it together briefly enough to barely pass the TUFS exam, but the Leeds one is an entirely different, more difficult thing altogether. I know my parents will be telling me to just get my head down and study, but it’s not that simple. It’s a language. It’s a wild, uncontrollable beast. You track it for a year and you’re no closer to catching it. You study it for hours and forget it all in a heartbeat. I don’t even know how to study it. And yet study I must.

Anyway, this is what I want my contacts to do in a couple of years.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.