Barrels of Fun (Friday, April 15th)

Although I'm still going to keep studying my berry off on the weekend, at least it means I'll have two days free of homework and "testo"s, so I can catch up on some of the stuff that has gone over my head, and take some time to master the hiragana and katakana characters a little better.  

We chose "elective" classes today, which will begin next friday.  I'm not sure what that's all about, since there's only two of us anyway in the class, and so if we pick different electives, I'm not sure you can call one person a "class".  For the accelerated class that I'm in, we don't get things like karate and instrument playing like some of the other programs, but continued academic choices like extra "kanji" classes, or "pronounciation" classes... which is fine by me!  I don't want to waste my time here with cultural fluff (kidding of course, but I do think that the academic options are of more value for me right now anyways, in terms of my learning).

The elder sensei "Uno" taught us this afternoon, and this is the only time she's taught us all week, and I sense that she sort of "rules the roost" in terms of the ACCP instructors, so I was a little more nervous than usual.  She lulled me into a false sense of security in the first ten minutes by having us repeat numbers in Japanese to her (which I was able to successfully do) but then turned the tables and had us pretending to call a fictional Japanese bank and ask their hours of operation (which I wasn't so good at).  I tried to say that the bank was on a "yasumi" or holiday for the date in question, and that hours of operation didn't enter into it, but I wasn't able to get away with it.

Here's some more great coffee cans.  These are my staple coffees, no sugar and milk added of any kind.  I really like the one that comes in the barrel shape.  It makes me feel like I'm a giant drinking straight out of a regular sized barrel.  Mind you, normally it's more beverages like ale that are stored in kegs, but after a long week, that seems appropriate.  Sure it's only coffee, but I can still pretend I'm tying one on and having a "hit of the bird," as they say, after a long week, since I'm on a budget and can't afford to go get trashed on sake.