Rainy weekend

So yesterday I mainly behaved myself and studied. However, I decided to take a break from it at one point in order to go buy a headset for use with Skype, since everyone I talked to using my laptop's built-in microphone accused me of generally sounding like had had a sock stuffed in my mouth. So, I looked up where an electronics store is. That alone took some effort: I kept finding distribution companies, or design offices, or service stores, but finally I did find one that had a web site that clearly displayed that they are a store.

So I hopped on my bike and scooted down there, not bothering to bring a map since I now know the area well enough to do such nonsensical things safely (yay!). The building was exactly the kind of thing the ADA eradicated from the US: the bottom floor was a small cyber cafe, and the store was upstairs, with no elevator of any sort. It was filled with a cornucopia of electrically powered gizmos, including personal computers, external hard drives, Skype-certified headsets (oh, good), light fixtures, refrigerators, rice cookers, air conditioners, TV's, mp3 players, and digital cameras. They even had my exact camera there:

That actually works out to being about the same price as I paid for it, surprisingly enough. Anyway, I got the headset and a game pad so I can twiddle away at some non-soul-sucking games that still manage to be more engaging than solitaire and minesweeper. Need some entertainment here and there.

On the way home, I stopped by a grocery store and got some more food items. Shopping by bike seems to necessitate pretty frequent store visits, since I can't carry much home at a time. I continued home in a light rain and passed by a bike shop... hey, they have US brands! Maybe they have helmets! Most Japanese, you see, do not wear helmets, so most Japanese bike shops don't even carry adult helmets. I've seen five bike helmets being worn since I got here: two on Japanese guys decked out on European-branded, very-high end road bikes and all the matching attire, and three on infants being carried around by a biking parent. So helmets for adults seem to be considered attire. Anyway, this shop did have two types of helmets, both the same brand, and the first one I tried was quite comfortable, very ventilated, and weighs approximately nothing, so I dropped the approximately US $72 on it and rode home feeling much less nervous.

Since I wound up spending way more than I had planned, I was feeling somewhat broke and skipped on the karaoke outing that a big group of students here were going on. Yup, only because I was feeling broke, definitely not due to any other factor.

The rest of the night and pretty much all of today, I continued studying kanji. It rained pretty steadily for quite a while today, so I didn't have much incentive to go out and about.

My brain is pretty much toasted now. I did relocate to the downstairs lounge for a while, and half-studied while chatting with other people, showing off pictures of Colorado and the Boundary Waters, and watching Japanese insanity on the TV. We were all trying to figure out the rules for the bizarre game shows, and not having much luck. I'm closing out my day after having learned 86 new kanji today. In the morning I'll probably have forgotten half of them, but that's okay, because I'll get to be distracted by the placement interviews first thing. Those should be terrible. :)