I think I made the right choice, staying here. I can’t really put my finger on it. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to find interesting research to consume my life.
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ごめんね
The phrase 「ごめんね。」is a rather strange one. 「ごめん」is about the most casual way to say “sorry,” but the particle ね adds a different tone to it – a more friendly tone, maybe, but it definitely lightens the apology, but in the case where an apology is still necessary.
For example, if I accidentally kicked a friend’s arm while sparring, I would say 「ごめん。」or, more likely, 「ごめんごめん。（＞＜）」 On the other hand, if a guy friend were walking me home and was complaining that transporting his bike was making his arms tired, I’d say 「ごめんね。」because, while I do feel bad that walking me home is causing unhappiness, I’m still glad that I’m being walked home. Another example: (song lyrics)「いつも迷惑をかけてごめんね。」 つまり、I guess the difference is that the addition of ね implies that the speaker is receiving some benefit from causing trouble to the other person.
Then again, I’m not Japanese, so what sounds natural to me doesn’t necessarily sound natural to Japanese people. Apply this disclaimer to anything I say about Japan, btw. 
超笑う
Yesterday was a good day. I bought a new camera (because my last one mysteriously broke when I wasn’t looking). Practice was really hard and really brought out my best tkd, then 由-chan helped me with a combo in such a way that it suddenly became really easy. After practice, some of the kids’ moms made dinner and I ate so much and it was so tasty (the next day, I’m still full, I ate so much).
And today, I’m going out to see the new Conan movie… with someone from lab. Hopefully today will be a good day too~
春合宿
Just got back from lab spring camp. It sounds awesome, but there was about 8 hours of sitting through presentations in a 24 hour period. Don’t worry, there was a nomikai splitting the seminar into two sessions over a two day period.
Highlights:
All-nighter in lab. And not being the only person there or the last person done. 小 was the first to leave, at around midnight, and I think 松 left soon after that. 石 slept in lab until around 3 am, woke up, still didn’t get anything done, and basically did his presentation after the nomikai the next day. Around 2 am, 清, one of the B4 students, came by and had me/中 look over his presentation, since all the slides had to be in English. 中 apparently left around 6 am, but I was already showered and sleeping in the seminar room by then.
Lab English. Sometimes I laugh/chuckle at inappropriate times, because I’m easily amused. But sometimes other people laugh, so it’s probably okay. Like when one of 石’s slides said that the mechanism he was studying was “still not unclear.” And I’m pretty sure that 小 said some strange things. But 中 was the only person whose English was corrected, which was strange because he actually has relatively good (written) English. Actually, I discovered that 田 has pretty good English, or at least it’s the least accented of the M students.
A giant bath that was practically unoccupied because I’m a girl.
Nomikai. At one point, 山-sensei told me that I could teach the lab English for 10000 yen/hour, but then he would take half as a managing fee. I would probably fail at teaching English, but for 5000 yen/hour, I would be willing to try.
ovenless thanksgiving
The Friday before Thanksgiving was my first payday in Japan, so I decided to attempt a Thanksgiving dinner on my own. This my first attempt at cooking bulk Western food while in Japan, with its unique challenges, such as expensive meat, cooking materials that I can’t always read, and difficulty finding American staples. In addition, being Japan, the only cooking appliance I have access to is a two-burner stovetop – Japanese kitchens seem to not come equipped with ovens naturally, and I haven’t bought so much as a rice cooker or microwave yet. With this in mind, I decided that making my own Thanksgiving dinner in this environment was a worthy intellectual challenge.
Right away, I figured I probably wasn’t having a whole bird or a turkey. Still, since the oven seems to be a staple of Thanksgiving cooking, I consulted the best source for making up stuff as I go along – Google. I found some sites that had suggestions for crockpot cooking, and I ultimately decided on variations of recipes from this post because of the sheer number of recipes offered.
I was pleasantly surprised to find boneless chicken breasts for a decent price – around 500 yen for about 2 lbs. I slow cooked the chicken breasts layered in stuffing in a giant wok I picked up in a 100 yen shop for about 500 yen while I cooked the rest of the dishes. The stuffing was improvised with substitutions such as croutons for toasted bread pieces (yeah, they’re about the same, but it felt sketchy) and the mixture was cooked in yuzu wine. I may have used a little too much yuzu-chu, because yuzu is a pretty strong flavor, and everything tasted citrusy. I let this cook for a couple of hours, which was apparently too long, because afterwards the bottom of the pot had charred food stuck to it.
As the chicken/stuffing cooked, I made the rest of the side dishes. I made deviled eggs with some wasabi snuck into the usual deviled egg stuffing. I made mashed potatoes and used the extra sauce from the chicken as gravy. I also cooked some eggplant and onions. (Yes, there are both bulb onions and scallions in there. I had extras.) There was also a recipe for hot chocolate for which I used milk, hot chocolate mix, sugar, and some vanilla extract.
It was surprisingly good, with the exception of the mashed potatoes, which were kinda bland. The hot chocolate, vegetables, and deviled eggs were especially tasty. The chicken didn’t dry out with future servings, which was nice, but the yuzu was a little strong and could have probably been diluted more for the sake of people who don’t like the taste of yuzu (I was starting to get sick of it by the end of the week, myself).
My Thanksgiving meal (celebrated the Sunday before Thanksgiving):
Once the starches ran out, I started eating chicken and stuffing over white rice. Good times.
In hindsight, I wish I would have invited some tkd people over for Thanksgiving (or, more likely, crashed someone else’s place with food; the dorm isn’t the best place to entertain others), but at the same time, the challenge of making this dinner was fun enough so that I don’t regret it too much.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!
