October 16. 2004 19:27

To Tokyo!

In 3 hours I'm going to leave for Tokyo. I've got everything packed and ready to leave, just have to get a little snack before it and pick up a map of Tokyo at Kyoto Station, then I'll get on the Night Bus and go. My parents should be on their way around now, waiting at the airport for their plane to leave. The time has really flown by, it's suddenly the middle of October already and my parents will be here tomorrow... It's so strange. I think I won't be going to school much next week, I hope they won't mind too much, the teachers... I'll be back from Tokyo on Tuesday but then I'll be spending the rest of the week showing Kyoto to my parents. I've talked to most of them already, though, so...

Talking about school, there wasn't any today. Somehow the word about extra holidays never reaches me and Dion, so we were again waiting in the classroom for the animation class to start when a girl came and told us today was off. It was great, though, as I then could go to the cooking class at the International Center ^_^ We did Korean food today and there will be 3 more days when we'll concentrate on Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese food, respectively. The Korean food was kinda nice, not too great but ok, but I had just eaten lunch a while ago so I was too full after a couple of bites... We made a lot so most of the students couldn't finish theirs and took some home.

I guess I should tell a little about the dish... It was basically a dough base where we chopped some vegetables and onion and octopus. It was very interesting to handle octopus, and a whole one this time, not just the chopping you put in takoyaki. The tentacles were especially interesting... Squishy. We sliced it and then fried the mix to make these thick pancake-like things. Then we made a soy sauce mix for it and then the dessert. The dessert was very nice, it was sliced fruit in a mix of soda, milk and sugar. And ice to keep it cool. The milk+soda tasted a bit odd, nevertheless it was very good. I got some of that downstairs in the frige as well.

Now I found this note I made yesterday of a thing I forgot to mention... It's about my English lessons, which I'm trying to take now that I found a teacher that's willing to give it a try. We're learning Australian English there and there's just one girl besides me, Mizue. Mizue isn't very good in English, I have to say... But I think most of it is just out of shyness, she speaks a lot more when the teacher is not around. Anyway, I don't know much about different types of English, other than some words that are different in British and American English. I was surprised to notice that the Weasleys in Harry Potter use a lot of Australian words, like "reckon" and "mate" and "bloke". Interesting. Though they might just be words that came to Australian English from British, because Australian English has its roots in the British underclass language, especially that of South-East London... Dunno, but it's interesting. And it's fun to notice how the Australian students use these words, best noticed in the joke about "pom", which means an English person but also is a label of orange juice here ^_^

Well, now I think I'll watch some Inu-Yasha before I leave. I just got the last 20 episodes I haven't seen, so I'm eager to finish the series ^_^ Only 10 more to go! I really want to read more of the manga, though, it's a lot better than the anime and it's still continuing... It's a shame they had to start the anime before the manga was finished, it inevitably leads to nasty things like too many filler episodes when they have to wait for more manga to come out and stopping abrubtly in the middle when they lose the interest in doing more episodes even though the manga hasn't ended yet. Without these faults Inu-Yasha would've been a great series. Oh well, I'm in love with all the characters, so I'm watching it even if it has a million things I know could be done better... And then there are the million things that were made just right ^_^