Tokyo Tofu

If you read my Japan blog, you might recall the time that I went to a party at Kyoto Women’s Univeristy. They had invited a few people from JCMU to come to a party to speak in English to their English majors. While I was there I met a girl named Megumi (you can see her on the very left of this picture), and after I went back to JCMU we continued to email back and forth, until we met up again with her and her friend, and Cassidy came along to visit Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, and Kiyomizu one freezing cold day where it was pouring rain for most of it. Well, now Megumi is staying with a host family in Toronto until the beginning of September, and since we’re so close, she’s going to come and visit me for 2.5 days next week! Somehow I’m going to get the day off of work and we will have fun on U of M’s campus and do whatever else she wants to do.

So last Friday I attempted to gather a bunch of JCMUers for a little reunion/Snakes on a Plane viewing party. Well, of the 20 some people that I invited, I heard back from 4 of them, and 3 of them emailed me saying that they couldn’t come. But luckily Brian, who had been reminding me about SoaP for about 4 months, did come as promised, so it was a party of 4 people. We had some Snakes on a Plane cake that my sister spent the whole day working on, while playing Taiko Drum Master and Guitar Hero on the PS2 and looking at what I’ve gotten to so far on my Japan scrapbook. Around 9:15pm we headed out to the theater for the 9:40pm showing. We went really early because we figured that the theater would be packed, but sadly there turned out to be only about 20 of us that showed up for that showing. Those 20, however, were incredibly enthusiastic and vocal, with one girl even coming in with a plushy snake around her neck. The movie turned out to be incredibly entertaining, with about 25% of the entertainment value coming from the other people in the theater laughing and interacting with the movie. I was very sad to learn that it only made $15 million its opening weekend, but it lived up to the hype!!

And here are some pics of the Snakes on a Cake. It turned out awesome.

Yeah so I’ve been slacking on the blog. Face it, nothing I do in Ann Arbor will be as exciting as my adventures in Japan. However, once school starts up I will attempt to be as faithful to my regular life blog as I was to my Japan life blog, if there is anyone out there that is actually reading. I might also be changing the design on this one because the temple is starting to bore me a bit…(maybe I’ll be really boring and just modify the theme from my Japan blog with a new picture and some different colors…). Anyway, faithful readers, don’t despair, my blog will make a comeback…sooner rather than later.

Cuteness.

Just got an email from U of M informing me that Econ 454 aka ‘Economics of Japan’ is being cancelled due to the professor taking a year off for medical leave. That leaves me trying to find something to replace to at the last minute. I was using this class as part of the ‘cognate’ requirements, meaning my classes about Asia/Japan that aren’t from the Asian Studies department. Now I get to ponder if I want to replace that with a 4 credit class on Japanese Minorities, filling it with the stupid English comp class that U of M is MAKING me take despite the fact that I got to skip them back at GRCC because I got credit from an AP English test, or take the substitute econ class, Econ 340, which is International Economics. Boo. -_-

Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings, whether online or in real life. I had a fun, leisurely day of a birthday, working on my Japan scrapbook and doing some clothes shopping. My mom treated me to dinner at Logan’s Roadhouse (we had to drive to Canton because there aren’t any in Ann Arbor), and then came home and had some cake that my sister made for me. Now I’m writing this and am about to go to sleep, where I’ll wake up a year older but won’t really feel like it….

I suppose its time for an update. I’ve been somewhat of a busy bee lately, despite it still being the summer break between classes. Yesterday, I received two job offers for positions that start in the fall on campus. One is with the School of Education and the other is with the UMHS Cardiovascular Center. So yeah, neither one have anything to do with Asian Studies, but money is money. I’ve already accepted the UMHS job, which will be 10 hours a week, and I’m going in for an interview today for a job that the School of Ed guy told me I should also interview for, as it pays like $4/hr more than the job he is offering me pays. The only bad thing now is I’m not sure how I’ll squeeze it into my schedule to be able to work more than 7 or 8 hours a week at it, since it wont be weekends or after 5:30pm-ish. Well, we’ll see….

THe pondered birthday trip has been nixed. Mostly because I’m broke, and $3.15/gal gas scares me. This fall I will be taking the bus to and from campus as much as possible, since it would be insane to not take advantage of the fact that I can ride the buses anywhere FOR FREE. A neighbor also came over when we were having a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and said they could drop me off next to the MLB everyday at 8am since they both work on campus, so I will probably be meeting with them soon as well…..

The car stereo that I bought thinking I’d be going on a 5+ hour drive to Niagara Falls has been installed, by moi. I must have saved at least $50 doing it. I ordered it from http://www.crutchfield.com and not only did they have the cheapest price on the stereo (Circuit City wanted $10 more), they also sent me free instructions with pictures, a free wiring harness (Circuit City wanted $25 for that), and a free pocket to go under the new stereo to cover up the space left by the larger old stereo. Took me about 2 hours to get it in, but overall it was really very simple. So if your car stereo dies, save yourself some dough and try installing the new one yourself, you can probably do it.

Friday I will be driving down to Cassidy’s house for a day of scrapbooking! We will be working on our Japan scrapbooks together. She tells me there are some nice scrapbooking stores near her house, so we may or may not go to them (since I just spent a crapload of $$ at Pages In Time back in GR about a week ago). She just better be ready for the amount of stuff I’ll be bringing over hehe…..

Saturday I’ll be heading towards Detroit again to go to Brigeth’s graduation/going away party since she will be going to France next month! I’m not sure where she will be staying (maybe Paris), but I hope she knows now that I have an excellent excuse to visit France sometime in the next year…….maybe spring break? (I bet there is at least one HRC in France too.)

And here are a couple of pictures I took the other day off my back deck.

Theres a new Snakes on a Plane contest out there, and if I can get 2000 people to go to this link and vote, I can get a free SoaP poster. And in the incredibly unlikely chance I can get like way more than that, I might win a SoaP viewing party, which I will of course invite all those people that voted for me to go to. So, GO VOTE!

For several weeks now I have been pondering going on a road trip for my birthday on July 31. Since coming back from Japan (well ok, with the exception of the first month being back) I’ve pretty much been working every day on something inside of the house. Painting, assembling furniture, collapsing boxes, cleaning the basement, even putting together sheds outside have been the mainstay of my past month. I’ve been to busy to even apply for jobs (which at this point I think its probably a fruitless attempt and soon I’ll just be concentrating on securing a job starting in September). So, without much opportunities for having fun, I thought that going on a little trip ala Japan would be a nice departure from it all.

So naturally, I’m pondering going to a Hard Rock Cafe that I’ve never been to before. Mostly for the fact that they give you free things on your birthday, and also for the fact that I suppose now I have to make it my goal to visit all HRC’s in the US and/or North America. The challenge though was deciding where to go. I’ve already visited all the HRC’s around Michigan (Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto), so anywhere I went would involve a few hours drive. My mom suggested going to Niagara Falls because I have never been there, and after I discovered that there are *2* HRC’s there (one on the US and Canadian side), I figured that would be a perfect place to visit. Its only about a 5 hour drive from Ann Arbor, so it would make a perfect 2-dayish trip. While looking up information on HRC’s, I discovered that there are also two of them in Toronto, while at this point I have only been to one of them (the one located in the Sky Dome, next to the famous CN tower). And with Toronto only being about 1.5 hours away from Niagara Falls, well, why not take a detour on the way back home? Of course I would try to visit a few other things in Toronto, besides just the HRC. Talking to my friend Khoi tonight he told me he liked Toronto’s China Town, so that would also be a great place to visit during a day in Toronto.

With this plan in mind I’ve asked a few friends if they wanted to go with me and so far haven’t found anyone. Cassidy is interested in going but can’t get off work on my birthday. But I’d rather travel with her on a non-birthday day then go with anyone else, and it would just be nice to get out of this house, birthday or not. So stay tuned, because maybe I’ll soon be able to report that I’ll be going on a trip soon…

Before leaving for Japan almost one year ago now, my car stereo was on its last legs. The CD player would get so hot that after about 30 minutes of playing, any teeny tiny bump in the road that I would go over would cause it to emit a high pitched noise for a split second, which would eventually turn into horrible screeching staticy skipping as time went on. Well, now back from Japan it was one of the things that I would be buying right off the bat, but it seemed to behave properly…at least for two months. Now with a possible road trip coming up, and with my mom giving me a home-made gift certificate redeemable only for part of a car stereo, I finally got off my butt and did a bit of research and decided on this: Pioneer DEH-P6800MP. Why this one? Well, Pioneer seems to be a good brand name for car stereo systems, so hopefully it will last me the rest of the life of my car (now 6 years old). It has the capability of playing an mp3 CD (which I’ve wanted for years), has a 2-line text display and even lets you sort through folders on a disc of mp3’s. The ipod compatability I couldn’t care less about (ipods are evil and I’ll never buy one), the animations it can play will probably be turned off, and the fact that the face has to open to put in a CD is a bit annoying but that’s how they all are these days. Despite the local Circuit City advertising ‘Free Installation!’ I was told it would be “best case scenario of $20-$25, and worst case of $40″ when I went in to check it out, and while I have faith that I could probably install the thing myself (might take me a while, but I bet I could do it), if I fubar myself it would be like $60 to take it someplace and get it installed after the fact. So hopefully Wednesday will be the day…..

And also, someone tell me why all new car stereos today come with wireless remotes? Last thing I want is to hear that the person who just rear-ended me was having trouble changing songs with their car stereo remote…