ASHITA YASUNDE Y/N

Still fandom-hopping. Still not sleeping. No hope of salvation in sight yet.

Okay, got off of school today 'cause I came down with this gross-sounding cough. Like, really gross-sounding. As in Possible Return Of The Prepubescent Bullfrog (a persona I briefly and unwillingly assumed some winters ago, so named for the profound similarity between it and my own decidedly uncute, borderline-croaky voice at the time) gross-sounding. At first I thought it came from Nobu, but it turns out he's just got asthma (which explains why nobody raised much of a fuss the first time I heard him trying to bring up his left lung some time in early April) and that I developed this annoying thing all by my lonesome. And then my parents were like 'oh, so, ASHITA YASUNDE Y/N?' and I was like 'UM PLZ'. (Ashita being 'tomorrow' and yasunde being the conjugated -te form of the verb yasumu, or 'to rest'.)

Aside from the cough, little to report on except for karaoke, which needs to be reintroduced to the West as a viable form of cheap and socially acceptable entertainment, like, today. I went for two hours with a handful of other exchange student friends, and it was A Good Time. (Especially considering that a private room for two hours, limitless Diet Coke, and a softserve ice cream cost somewhere in the neighborhood of five dollars, it was A Very Good And Inexpensive Time, which meets all of Sara's standards and then some.) Unfortunately, this was my first day with the cold, so after the first song I pretty much lost my voice, but it was all good nonetheless. (You don't need to be able to sing 'Hollaback Girl' anyhow - just yell it.) Then we did purikura, which - like pretty much everything else in Japan - is four hundred times more fun than its Western equivalent. 'Purikura', which is short for 'purinto kurabu' - literally 'print club' - is basically you taking photos of yourself with your friends and then drawing all over them digitally, which is - unsurprisingly - great fun, especially when the booths provide things like digital afros and goatees and bunny ears you can put on people's heads and sparkly borders and whatever. I myself have a couple purikura stickers where I sport a rather dapper moustache while a caterpiller crawls over my shoulder, presumably in quest of the stick of dango (sweet dumplings) I appear to be holding. All while surrounded by gigantic peaches, of course. Yes, purikura is awesomeness incarnate. (It, too, is remarkably cheap. Incidentally, the more people you have the less it costs, since you're splitting the price for a sheet and all. Lovely, quite lovely.)

In other news, WHY DO I NOT HAVE THE NEW PERFUME ALBUM YET. Every time I go looking for their CDs, there's nothing, and God knows I have looked. I have found Muramasa. I have found Amano Tsukiko. For God's sake, I have found Rurutia, and nobody knows who she is. I thought Perfume was, I don't know, popular or something. GAME is still in the Top Three on the Oricon charts, and I'm sure the only reason they're only no. 2 at the moment is because nobody can find their bloody CDs!! AUGH. This is even worse than when I was trying to get my hands on Utada Hikaru's 'Heart Station'. I even asked a musically-inclined friend of mine in homeroom for help with CD searching (by 'musically-inclined', of course, I refer to the fact that she would willingly rip off her own right arm if EXILE's Atsushi asked it of her - at times, I will admit, she reminds me of Cathy and her crazed passion for the Jonas Brothers), and all I learned was that she had gotten her Perfume -Complete Best- album at an electronics store in Sapporo. Well, damn. There goes that.

Other than that, life continues. I wake up, go to school, fail at communicating, go to kendo (I finally got my kendo hakama dry-cleaned, so I can at least look like I'm part of the team), bike home, eat, shower, sleep. Sometimes there is origami (I'm two cranes away from breaking 600), and sometimes there is reading (I found this huuuge bookstore with an actual English novel section, and their selection actually isn't too bad - lots of Nick Hornby books, curiously enough - so you can bet I'm going back there some time soon), but usually I just read the Daily Yomiuri, which, aside from conveniently being in English and being about Japan, the school library ever-so-kindly resubscribed to upon my arrival. Accordingly, my knowledge of current affairs and paranoia of the world at large have swelled appropriately, and now I am very serious about my earlier comment involving a crowbar and me leaving Japan. Like, seriously. The shit going down over Tibet and the Olympics and the Myanmar cyclone? It's almost denting my optimism. (Ah, yes - my invincible Japanese optimism. It's very interesting, that. Ever since I came here I have been almost totally unable to stay melancholy about anything, anytime. Even if something really stupid and annoying happens, my mind automatically finds something upbeat and positive about the situation and focuses on that instead. It is the weirdest thing evar, but I really can't find myself complaining too loudly over it. It's cool.)

Anyway, that's all I have time for today. I intend to finally force myself through 'Invitation to a Beheading' this afternoon, and this may be the last bit of free time I have for the week. (Although, really, why do I always find myself forcing my way through Nabokov books when he's one of my most favorite authors? If ever I had a literary idol, he'd definitely be it, but reading his books are like wading through crocodile-infested swampland in the nude. Augh.)