Random

When someone asks me if I speak Japanese, should I just say 'no' rather than 'a little'?  The moment I say a little and hold up my fingers indicating the smallest little bit, they break out the full-on complicated Japanese sentences that require a coherent answer.  The response they get instead is me blinking in shock while crickets chirp in the background.


The other day at a celebratory birthday lunch for a friend of the sister missionaries, this friend started talking about how people aged 30 to 50 are middle aged.  I started laughing but wanted him to continue.  One of the sisters spoke up though and told him that I was 30 and then he got very embarrassed and refused to continue his thought further.


I was in the lab on Friday night/morning until 2:30 am watching a demonstration of a technique created and implemented by the graduating PhD student.  It was a fascinating demonstration but I'm really left wondering: Do these people never sleep?


Today, I spent 10 hours running experiments with Kitashima-san at Katahira Campus.  We spent four hours running experiments, and then four more hours rerunning the experiments because we had set up our motor wrong.  (The last two hours were spent trying to make up for lost time by actually running something new for the first time all day) Oops.  Needless to say, it was a long ten hours.


Katahira Campus is one of my favorite parts of Tohoku University.  I told that to Katashima-san today and she admitted that most of the campus had to be rebuilt because of the damage from the earthquakes.  What I thought were old buildings were actually new.

This past week I met a Japanese kid whose name is Yuu (it sounds like the English 'you') and a Chinese kid whose Japanese name is Boku (which means 'me').  This means, when they introduced themselves in their non-native languages they are saying the following (respectively).  "Hi, I'm Yuu (you)."  "Hi, I'm me."


The other day I was determined to find a new running route so I took the bus up through Aoba Mountain and on up to Yagiyama Mountain.  I ran for twenty minutes, walked for twenty minutes.  Then I stopped and rewarded myself with two ice cream bars.  After that, I felt guilty and pretty lost so I ran for an hour until I found myself in a part of Sendai I had never been to before.  I ended up far enough away from home with sore legs that I rode the train home.  Rather than get my road-weary legs home, I hobbled around downtown Sendai for an hour looking for the latest publication of the Goethe Magazine that Hasebe-san was supposed to make an appearance in.  (I'm the worst fangirl ever as in I've done so little fangirling since I got to Japan that I figured I owed him this much).  That ended unsuccessfully so I finally went home.  The end.