The bento isn't very Japanese today. The pasta salad has fried yellow squash, diced pimento olives, chick peas, and grated parmesan cheese with a creamy vinaigrette sauce. The 'flowers' are made of turkey pepperoni and more olives. The side cup is pear, shaped into balls and topped with cinnamon.

Read Day 1
Read Day 2
Read Day 3
Read Day 4

Day 5
Our final day began with us waking at 6am to catch a mini-bus with about ten other people at the hostel. You see, for the price of about 15 dollars, they'd take us to the wall, and back again. That's a good price considering Mutianyu was over an hour away. We drove through the city and out into the countryside. After living in Japan for so long, I felt that everything in China was so spread out in comparison. I was exhausted though so the trip passed in a bit of a haze. Once we got there, we had to hang around for a half hour or so (a blatant attempt to get us to buy souvenirs and food from the shop there) before the wall officially opened up and we were allowed to head up. We all chose to hike the path up to the wall rather than take the gondola, and I quickly learnt that all the walking from the previous days was catching up on me. Eventually we made it to the actual wall. Only a few people were ahead of us and they'd largely disappeared so we had the place to ourselves. We got lots of pictures of the wall without people on it, so my only regret is that it was so smoggy. We had a lot of fun taking pics while standing on the top walls of a guard tower (Sauron-chan climbed as well.) I was surprised to see how small the cannons were. Entertaining to watch was also the poor martial arts group who were forced by their teacher to run all the way up the wall then down again.

The thing you quickly noticed was that the wall was insanely steep with steps of varying length, width and height to break up the monotony and give your knees and legs a really good work out. Unfortunately, I had smashed up one of my knee ligaments quite badly about five months before, and while I thought it had healed enough to bear the trip, the steepness (and the several kilometres we climbed) caught up with me. I had already been close to limping before Nish suggested we climb up the right side of the wall right to the end, but gamely decided to give it a go. I regretted it when I realized I was nearly climbing vertically at times to get up those steps. See? Here we are at the top. My grin is because I'm allowed to rest. The view of the further off, unrepaired sections of the wall was probably worth seeing at least. I walked very slowly down those steep steps, feeling the agony growing with each movement but thinking I could make it down. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the middle of the wall, my knees actually gave out on me and it took me ten minutes to climb down only one short flight of steps since my knees were trembling so badly and would give out every once and awhile. I told Nish there was no way I'd make it down to the parking lot on foot, so we decided to take the toboggan which wound down the side of the steep hill. It was awesome, if horribly historically inaccurate (the archaeologist inside me disapproves, the ten year old thinks it was ace). We avoided the pushy sellers and people dressed as Mongols at the bottom of the hill. We finally got home and the long bus ride, plus an hour's rest at the hostel allowed my legs to recharge enough to survive a short walk to the shopping area where we picked up last minute gifts (I was down to my last ten dollars, which stretches pretty far in China, but still). Then we caught a taxi to the airport and headed back to Japan. I don't remember much of the flight only being exhausted, happy to see Fukuoka airport, but annoyed that there was still a long train ride for us to get home. We made it though, and you can check the day 1 report to see the results. Ja ne!

Read Day 1
Read Day 2
Read Day 3

Day 4
Our morning began with a long, expensive taxi ride to the Summer Palace which took us by the, then being built, Olympic stadium. The Summer Palace is a misnomer, of course, and actually is a giant park filled with temples, palaces, houses, stone boats, and natural beauty. This is a view out over one side of the main lake. (A close up on the buildings). It was also my birthday, as the park's weather forecast notes. A lot of people were at the palace enjoying the good weather. They carried supplies for picnics with giant bottles of sun tea slowly brewing at their sides. Everyone bunched up into crowds at all the famous places, and it quickly became clear that you'd need another day or two to see the whole place, so we picked a few things that looked interesting and gave them a go. First was entry into the dowager empress' summer house, where there was another massive opera stage. They put on a show of dancing and music using a few, long stringed instruments and oddly shaped bells (which can be seen behind the dancers). There was a (mostly boring) museum display inside of glassware and a few of the dowager empress' things, but we did have fun being extremely cheesy and dressing up as the empress to get our pictures taken.

Outside, we joined the crowds again, exploring random buildings and their pretty, if familiar decoration. This is the entrance to the longest covered walkway (in China? in the world? no idea). It was insanely crowded and we only made it several meters before we forced our way out of the crowd again and decided to climb the big hill towards the temples. I was getting a lot of looks btw because I'd decided to take advantage of not being in Japan to wear a tank top to combat the heat. Once we reached the top, we went inside the green and yellow temple at the top of the hill to see the Buddha (and cause it was cool temperature wise). Then we took some pics from above looking down on the tower of incense (which did have incense in it, we checked). From the tower, you could look down on the temple complex and the lake. Going down was much easier than going up and we soon found ourselves looking up at the tower instead, and enjoying the temple's beautiful courtyard. That was it for us and the Summer Palace.

Rather than have the taxi driver take us to the hostel, we had him go straight to the Pearl market, said to be a good place for cheap electronics and jewellery on the upper floors. We stuck to the lower ones. I bought a cheap mp3 player for ten dollars, and then went into hard bargaining for some of the more intricate silk robes in one of their shops. They were more expensive than Xi'an, but the fact that I bought three silk robes and that it was my birthday (that got me a set of silk purses thrown in) meant I still got an amazing deal, and supplied silk robes for my whole family (except for my dad who got a watch that projected the time and date with a laser on the wall). I half heartedly bargained for silk shoes (somehow getting an extra pair for free), then was talked into some pretty hair clips which they had to teach me to put in. Nish made some amazing deals as well, probably because we'd both noticed that the less you wanted something, the more likely you were to get it cheaply. Our taxi driver stiffed us on the way back, but oh well. We were dropped off in the main shopping area, and wandered around the mall, visiting an expensive tea shop, and noting that it was generally like every mall you ever visit. We ate this in the food court there (I'm not really sure what it is since we ordered by pointing). It was surprisingly spicy, but not bad. Of course, I'm fairly sure it's to blame for my food poisoning/illness once I got back to Japan, but oh well. We went to sleep early since we planned on accompanying a small group from our hostel heading to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in the early morning.

Read Day 1
Read Day 2

Day 3
This was our view of Xi'an in the morning from our hotel room. We joined all the Japanese tourists at the buffet breakfast (good bread products and condiments and cheese, awful hot food), before checking out. Since we wanted to understand Xi'an more and it was pretty early, we decided to walk through the local neighbourhoods until we hit the drum tower and marketplace. This wasn't a mistake, but it was obvious we weren't in the richest parts of the city. I had to talk Nish out of buying a hammock (how would we have gotten it home?), while we searched for the Great Mosque which was supposed to be in the area. Instead, we ended up at a Buddhist temple that was being refurbished and did our first haggling for some jade in a nearby series of shops. From there, we made our way to the Drum tower (which, yes, has drums in it). We circled around it, hitting a cheap dvd shop which kept a puppy in a box in it (this was often the case, it seems). Then we came to the actual market place and it was just amazing. We haggled for silk robes and souvenirs. I was very pleased to pick up a gorgeous jade stamp from the last century (which even if it was a fake, was still worth the money). I had a lot of fun just haggling and taking pictures of the amazing displays of merchandise. Everything was super cheap (I got silk robes for $12) and it was just interesting to wander. We'd have stayed there all day, but eventually decided it was time to head out to Emperor Qin's tomb to see the terracotta soldiers.

The tomb is pretty far outside the city (but closer to the airport), and even reading about it never gave me the sense of scale that seeing the main pit, gave me. (A close up). We walked around the pit, taking more pics and noting the place where they were slowly piecing together more of the figures. Next up was Pit 3 with its war chariot, and high ranking officers in situ. Pit 2 was very dark, so although you could see the outlines of chariot wheels and whole pits of archers, it was very hard to photograph. I enjoyed seeing the various stages of excavation in regards to removing the collapsed roofing material of the tomb (it can be seen as rows of long humps in the main pit photo). Another building had individual finds like this amazing, mini war chariot.

Having seen the whole thing, we headed to the airport, where we grabbed a meal, then waited patiently for the (of course) delayed plane back to Beijing to take off. Once again, we arrived late in the evening at Beijing, though this time we knew enough of how to take the bus and how to walk to the hostel ourselves. It was the same one as before, so I didn't anticipate any problem, and walked in weary from our long walk and long day, but anticipating a nice evening only to discover that they'd given away our reservation and there were no cheap rooms free. I pulled out one of my copies of said reservation (annoyed that I hadn't thought to print out another copy of the actual email) and went to town in proper silent and scary way. The clerk took to hiding behind the counter as much as possible while he made phone calls and sorted things out to eventually say, "Well, yes, you did have a reservation, but we gave it away. Sorry." I then suggested very politely that they discount one of their more expensive rooms so we could spend the night since they had inconvenienced us. We'd move to the cheaper rooms when a bed became free in the morning. After some haggling (and I suspect he was telling his supervisor I was going to kill him if they didn't offer the deal), we were handed the keys of the more expensive room (which was sort of like a cheap version of a hotel room with two beds and an open shower head in the bathroom) for a lower price. We enjoyed the privacy for the evening though Nish said she never wanted me as an enemy.

It's come to my attention, that I never posted a travelogue of my full trip to China. So here it is, with lots of pics to admire and a lot of time spent rushing about.

Read Day 1

Day 2
We woke up early on our second day, beating most of the inhabitants of the hostel to breakfast which was some toast and tea for me. The hostel had a nice atmosphere with circular screens and airy furniture - it was a pity they couldn't handle money or reservations very well. (I became addicted to the 50 cents sweet iced tea they had in their fridge.) Since we had very little time for this trip (five days in total) I'd packed our schedule with visiting all the important places you have to see while in Beijing and Xi'an. Nish, for some crazy reason, mostly went along with this;) So, we had the morning and some of the afternoon to visit the Forbidden City, eat lunch, then catch a taxi to the airport to fly to Xi'an (our bags consisted of one backpack each).

We walked to the Forbidden City (henceforth shortened to FC) since it was only several city blocks away (yes, this is why no one goes on holidays with me). If I had understood how big the city was (ie, it's actually a city), I probably would have got us a taxi, though it also probably wouldn't have made a difference in the long run. If you've walked several miles, what's one or two more? Walking gave us the opportunity to see the culture anyway as we passed through the back alley where our hostel was into main shopping roads which sort of reminded me of a very spread out Japanese rural town. The city areas with the shopping malls and districts looked no different from any other city excepting the really wide streets. We finally hit the edge of the FC which was a very pretty man made lake we meandered along until we hit one of the red outer walls. Once we rounded that, we found soldiers marching, and opposite them, one of the outer gates to the FC. The key to that sentence is 'one of' since we had to pass through a few more to get to the heart of the city. So at first, you take lots of pictures of the architecture and decoration, and then you realize that pretty much everything is decorated this way, and that the sun is very hot and while the yellow roof tiles are pretty, they're also reflecting the heat back at you... The inner areas of these gates have various 'shrines' set up with imperial objects which I was mostly able to see by holding my camera over my head and taking a picture of their dark depths over people's heads since they were invariably packed to the gills anywhere in front of them. This is us after exhaustedly pushing through them.

Anyway, the famous thing to see here is the dragon screen (those dragons, always chasing after pearls *snerk*). Opposite it were lions guarding the entry into the FC's garden (there might have been a museum in between), which was as extensive as you'd expect it to be. My favourite wall in the city was here, but amusingly, it was the outside wall of the women's restrooms. I should mention that often the ceilings were gorgeous throughout the city, but very few people ever looked up. More than the scenery, the garden thrilled us because we found a bookshop. I was insanely excited to find a three book edition of Journey to the West for about twenty five dollars (usually, it's much more expensive). Shipping to the US was very cheap (even if you had to wait a few months) so I bought that and a guide to Chinese tombs while Nish bought her own things and had them shipped to Japan.

Our next few hours were long corridors punctuated by visits to various museum like displays on the eastern side of the city (we never made it to the west). There was a display of Shang/Zhou bronzes that I spent far too much time in, and an unfinished pleasure palace (that was going to have aquarium walls!). We found the famous 9 dragon screen, which was justifiably so, though my favourite bit was the part about how the only damaged part of the screen was removed and replaced with wood (see it?). In yet another museum area was an opera house, jades and costumes plus my favourite door of the trip.

Exhausted, foot sore and pressed for time, we dazedly made our way out of the FC, dodging the efforts of a Chinese student to get us to see an art gallery to emerge (after far too many gates) in Tiananman Square. The guards didn't notice me taking this pic. We wandered to the left, wanting to find somewhere to eat. We found pretty canals, walkways, art galleries, and eventually, a place to eat. I chose eggplant with sour brown sauce, and it was amazing. I wish I could have gotten a recipe. After our meal, we walked quite a ways before spotting a taxi who took us to the airport (here's the toll gate). Once there, we discovered we were about an hour early, so Nish, in one of her most brilliant moves, dragged me upstairs and booked us in for a half hour foot massage with oolong tea to sip while doing so. It was a life saver after all the walking we'd done. They heated up our legs with hot towels and washed them before giving a very nice massage. (Also very cheap at about twenty dollars for the whole thing.) It was good we were relaxed since our flight was delayed leaving the airport and delayed even more getting into Xi'an, so our 'we'll arrive in Xi'an around 8pm plan' became 'we'll arrive around 11pm'. It was a long ride from the airport into the city, though they have awesome multicoloured lights on the side of their highways. Finally, we hit our hotel which was a 4 star monstrosity (booked in Japan for $30 a night *L*), and collapsed, planning to wake up early enough to grab breakfast, showers and enjoy our next day in Xi'an.

Everybody who's ever tried one knows that green tea kit kats are the bomb. I tried quite a few flavours while I lived in Japan and couldn't say that was the case for a lot of their other weird flavours (pretty much every single berry flavour they have was poor tasting, though it was only the apple one that made me gag). Today, while browsing around, I was linked to the official japanese kitkat site (weird, weird place), so I went to see what other flavours they had to offer. I was kinda impressed since not only did they have ones I remembered, but also corn, shouyu (hard liquor), miso (yes, as in the soup), and wasabi. (Scroll down to see.) I can actually see the corn and shouyu ones tasting good because corn does taste good sweet and shouyu has barely any taste at all. I'm not sure if I'd dare try the miso one though, and the wasabi one either tastes brilliant or is so awful it makes you retch. Needless to say, I totally want to try the wasabi one *L*

ps. I need a food icon since it feels vaguely wrong to be using Larry the Cucumber...

I kinda love this clip by the daily show, even if I'm a bit depressed thinking that it was probably too subtle for some people. (I was just discussing the non-comprehension of sarcasm in the US recently. Case in point, the proper response to me saying, "I keep souls in peanut butter jars." is not "Really?" *headdesk*)

In other randomness, does anyone happen to know the amounts of ingredients needed for sweet and sour turnips/carrots? Cause I bought some from my local Chinese supermarket and loved them, then saw that the only ingredients were vinegar, salt, sugar and msg. If I just knew the amounts of said ingredients, I could make the dish myself.

Last night, I started watching Atashinchi no danshi which is a jdrama about a young women who inherited her father's 1 million yen debt and lives as a homeless person to hide from her creditors. While running away from them, she is 'rescued' by an eccentric toy company owner who pays her debt in return for her marrying him and being his companion for the last month of his life (it doesn't seem to be a sexual relationship, but it is pretty weird). Of course, once he dies, she discovers that he had a few more conditions, namely that she had to stay in his house and become a mother to his six (adopted) sons, and also run the company. It's a fun show to watch with lots of cute guys and silliness. You get annoyed with the main character for not investigating the full contract (dammit, make them unroll the whole thing so you're not so surprised when new conditions are mentioned!), but other than that, it's just easy watching.

While Japanese continues to be a bore (excepting a hilariously long rant today about how much the professor was shocked! utterly shocked! by that Mongolian sumo guy and how she was glad he quit), my history of India class is quite fascinating. The readings are long and rather repetitive, but they contain so many topics I'd never heard of before (I didn't even know Jainism existed until last week), it's been really fun to learn so many new, interesting things. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to take the course.

Bujinkan tonight was a lot of fun. I keep getting roped into training with the new girl who started training, and I kinda hate that - not because I mind training her (and I really don't most of the time), but because it's based on the faulty assumption that the new girl should train with one of the two women in the class because we're the only ones who'll be nice to her and not scare her away. And I find this kinda weird cause I barely ever trained with M. or R. (the only two women who were training when I first joined) when I first started, and I found it insulting when I was regulated to training with one of them by the assumption that we're the same gender so of course we'll train together. Of course, I'm pretty weird and the things that scare the majority of people away from buyu didn't stick with me *L* Anyway, since I wanted to really get some training in today, avoid training with the new girl, and save C. from having to train with him again, I chose the father of the new girl (also a newbie) to train with. He's a huge guy who body builds so he's built like a large (Amer.) football player. I thought he'd be a lot of fun to train with because of that since a) I could use his height and size against him, and b) muscles provide enough cushioning that I could hit a lot harder without really hurting him and c) he'd never trained with me before so he had no preconceptions.

Jack did a sort of 'escapes plus reactions to someone attacking you' quickly theme. So the first was someone just trying to grab you with both hands and you went into kamae with your arm straight to take the space (on their T) in the middle of their chest, then again by digging into that notch in the clavicle. Then we did shrugging off a quick punch (lift your shoulder and throw it forward a little, sink your weight) which is something you really need to learn in Buyu cause someday someone might just attack you from behind like that (as Jack can attest... the soke siced someone on him at a taikai). Then there was thwarting a football tackle (you have to spread your legs out and slide your body weight forward while taking the space around their arms) and getting out of a football tackle (forearm to the throat with you hand on their shoulder acting as the fulcrum of the lever). Then we did various full body grabs like a bear hug from the front, behind etc. Those were easiest cause I've done them all before, though it was pretty cool when the new guy really squeezed tight on a behind bear hug and I had to drop my weight and really work my arms up my sides (you need to bend your elbows, preferably evenly) to get out of it. I've never had someone attack me with that much force before so it was good to see how easy it was to get out of despite the python like constriction.

Amusingly, I tried to return the favour, but of course, the guy's really built! So my arms got only about half way around him - which everybody in the class spotted and laughed their heads off about (me included). We could still train cause your arms don't really need to go around the person so long as you can put pressure on their arms, but we did look ridiculous. I also enjoyed finding out if you want to get someone's clasped hands apart and they're really strong, one cheat is to drive a fingernail into the fleshy side of the finger (I've still got a mark from where Jack did it). Weapon of the night was hung bo, and the key was coming in at the right moment either taking the space where the hand swinging the stick will be, or if they're swinging wildly back and forth, waiting for the point where you can jump in and take their foot off in the right direction. At one point I was avoiding a forward stab with the stick (you aim for the hand holding the stick with your opposite hand, but barely move the rest of your body believe it or not) and I did one hit to the guy's neck which made a smacking sound (it's all the muscle) and Jack was like, "Show him the love!" *L* I taught the guy a lot of striking points on the head and arms cause he wanted to know *shrugs* He was actually pretty good for his level, though I discovered he only learnt by example and that he really wasn't conceptualizing anything I said without me demonstrating what I was saying in conjunction and him then trying it to discover it was working.

Afterwards, C. and I continued our long standing war (he pulls my braid, I either pull his belt, or smack him upside the head). I got him upside the head after class, and made sure to back away quickly, brandishing my own belt as a weapon. He backed down so I thought I was safe, but as I was heading for my own bag, I saw him pull off his gi out of the corner of my eye, then he made a perfect toss of the thing over my head (like something out of a jackie chan movie). I said, "Shit." and crouched down low and went backwards to get out of it, but it would have been too late if he'd actually wanted to hit me. It was a pretty awesome move *L*

I've taken to showing off my bruises to my friend N. in Japanese class, and she's taken to calling me a BAMF. lol.

Jack wasn't at training last night, but he wanted us to work on punching, so we ended up doing every single boxing punch/attack in existence, and in various combinations. Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it, and was shocked to see that everything I learnt while kickboxing in Japan was still very fresh. My cross still packs a very mean punch, and the only thing I need to work on is elbowing (which I'd never learnt before). All that punching for the first hour kept my adrenaline up and the endorphins really boosted my mood so I didn't really mind how hard my partner was punching (he tried not to, but he wasn't very good at it). The last twenty minutes or so, we did a few moves using those boxing punches, all of which involved ducking and a bit of weaving, bujinkan style. It was all a lot of fun, and I'm pleased that other than a few sore back muscles, I barely felt any of it. That shows I was using good form.

New bento for this evening's History of India class. It took a lot less time to make, but one of my ideas fell flat when some mushrooms I froze, spoiled. I was going to use them with the small teriyaki buffalo burger (made when I made bigger burgers on Sunday) as vegetarian buns, but oh well. The rice is chinese stir fried rice, vegetarian style. It's tasty but doesn't provide as much colour contrast methinks. Anything yellow is cheese, orange is carrot, and the white garnish is radish. The sticks in the centre are apple, and on the side are edamame (yum). Desert is the white thing next to the hamburger - it's actually a mini vanilla cupcake (made on friday and frozen). On top of the buffalo burger is okonomiyaki sauce. I'm unsure how the burger is going to taste cold, so we shall see.

Bujinkan this week was kind of meh for me. On Monday, I trained with a woman who used to come regularly but hasn't been there for months due to her job. This invariably meant that her level had gone down, so she was really really frustrated during training. I did my best to be patient and explain things, but it didn't seem to be getting through. Then on Weds. both M. and C. abandoned me *fake tear* so it was up to me to train with the newbie girl. She's not horrible for a beginner, though she needs to really learn to pay attention and observe what Jack and her partner are doing. (I had to remind myself that, yes, I did need to see things several times when I first started training before I got them.) So actually, she's doing really well. It was just kinda tedious demonstrating over and over. So much so that I managed to give myself a repetitive stress injury on my left wrist from repeatedly blocking with it (I can't decide if it's just from the repetition, if I moved the wrist too much when I did it, if I didn't stretch it enough, or all of the above). Luckily, I have ace bandages for pretty much everything and threw on the wrist one when I got home and have been wearing it all today. Hopefully, it's a pulled muscle and not a ligament and it will heal before monday. She also managed to kick me in the big toe and smack my fingers with a hung bo (right where Jack had already smacked them), thus reminding me of the real reason you don't want to train with newbies - you get hurt.

I need to work on my hung bo movements in front of a mirror. I'm raising my shoulder when I strike for some reason. Will try to remedy this at the gym tomorrow if I can remember to bring my hung bo.

This evening I had a one-hour, $1 class called Fitness Anywhere which was totally worth the money, though possibly not worth almost freezing to death waiting for the bus afterwards (NJ weather is out to get me today - I was stuck in traffic from two different accidents and late for class because of it in the morning due to the snow, then it dropped into the 20s this evening and I had to hop three different buses just to get back to my car without freezing in the intervals.) The class was taught by a personal trainer and he went through a bunch of exercises you could do on your own, teaching us proper form and how to adjust their difficulty to suit our tastes. There were a couple of exercises there that I really liked (no one ever taught me the proper way to do a squat before, for example) that I'll incorporate into my exercise routine. I also feel vindicated that he said the best way to exercise is to do it one day, then take the next day off etc, so my M-W-F schedule is just about perfect.

Am still really excited about how my bento turned out, and my mind keeps going crazy thinking of all the cool things I can try. I'm actually disappointed that I'll only be making one a week, and if the postgrad thing works out, I'll totally be making bento all the time for lunch. It's just so much easier to prep. and plan out several bentos in advance rather than make just one (or two in this case since I make one for Dad... Unfortunately, Dad doesn't like plain, white rice so I feel a bit guilty forcing it upon him. I have no idea when *I* started liking plain, white rice, but I blame Japan:P)

Now I must go and study for my Japanese lesson test, and finish catching up on my annual Bleach reading.

I made my first bento ever today. I had a lot of fun thinking of different combos of things I could put in without making the ingredients too expensive or having to search for things you can only find in Japan. I also tried my hand at making tamagoyaki for the first time and it turned out tasty, but wow is it a pain to make. You can look at it here. The stars and triangles, plus the white sticks next to the apples are sweet and sour carrots and radishes (soaked in vinigar mostly), which contrast well with the apple sticks. The moon is made of tamagoyaki and there's more of it hidden under the apples. Underneath the moon and star are shitake mushrooms in oyster sauce, and the rice in the seaweed wrapper has mushroom/fall flavouring mixed in (that's what the packaging for the flavouring said *shrugs*). And that's half of a red bean mochi in the cupcake wrapper for dessert.

It may have taken me a few hours to make and put it all together, but I don't begrudge the time since it's going to be a joy to eat that during my India history class this evening. Yum.

Whoops. Looks like I forgot to post about getting back to NJ from Florida and my past week. I managed the run back to NJ in almost exactly 24 hours. It would have been less, but my eyes stopped focusing soon after I crossed into Jersey, so I had to stop and huddle under a tiny wool blanket in my car in a parking lot. Luckily, I was so tired I fell asleep before my body noticed that the temp was dropping to the low twenties. I woke up cold and still not quite awake, but decided to make the last hour run home before I crashed totally. I managed that (got in around 7am) and slept until 1pm or so since I still had to go pick up my Rutgers transcripts to send to all the places I'm applying for my phd. I slept until noon the next day since I was still shattered.

The trip itself wasn't bad. I ran 95 up, and it's a rather boring road (the South of the Border billboards are more boring than the Wall Drug ones), plus there was a fair amount of cops, so I had to keep the speed down, though I was still getting great gas mileage since my new car's quite light. Unfortunately, I had to load up the car the night before and unknowingly injured myself. I lifted with my legs of course, but that didn't stop me from pulling one of my back shoulder muscles deep within my back. The wheel on my car is kinda stiff too so the pain just got worse through the drive, even when I stopped to massage it or drove one handed. As a result, I ended up using pain killers to finish the last part of the trip cause the pain was getting to be too distracting to drive. My other problem was the damn GPS which I adore most of the time, but hated with a passion when it hit DC and actually sent me down into the middle of the town at 3am on a giant circle so it could get me going the other direction on the road it put me on. Since I'm unfamiliar with the roads around DC, this was possibly necessary (though, dear god, I hope someone shot whoever designed the highway system there), but when I discovered that part of the turnpike in NJ was closed down and tried to detour the GPS spent literal hours trying to convince me to get on the turnpike even when I'd long reached the point of no return. I'm worried that it wouldn't reroute itself like any good GPS should.

Anyway, after recovering from the pain and lack of sleep, I dealt with my transcripts, then had to deal with financial aid and a bunch of other crap before I was ready for classes which began on Tuesday for me. I have Japanese three times a week and a class on India's history. I always wanted to study South Asia while I was at Edinburgh but decided Islamic history was more important (which it was, but only at the time), so it's nice to have a chance to do it now, even if the timeslot (three hours through dinner on Tuesday) on the furthest campus from where I park is not exactly the best. Still, the teacher is really interested in her topic and encourages questions and class participation which is nice and the topics are new and interesting to me so eh. Japanese, unfortunately, is a snooze since the teacher goes so easy on her students, it's not even funny. She doesn't test on kanji, and she gives the vocab tests in ten word (or so) bunches every day while setting them at the end of class so people can study in class for them *headdesk* It's no surprise that a lot of her last term student's levels seems really low. (Nor is it surprising that when they hit the 300 Japanese classes, a lot of students are overwhelmed.) I'm very bored in the class. More so than last term. It's a shame, but I'll just study kanji and stuff on my own and in class. Oh well.

There's are a couple of new people training at Buyu right now. A father, his daughter (a teenager) and her friend. As a result, a lot of the upper levels are having to train with them. I took the girl on Monday, but lucked out on Weds to grab Ja. who is my favourite training partner after C. We're working our way through the sanshin no kata (which is what we always do in January). Monday was ka no kata (fire), and Weds was fu no kata (wind). The basics of it were simple enough though both Ja. and I were working on staying on the line and keeping on balance and in the right space. Jack emphasized not leaning in to do the hit, nor pulling back to far. If you replace your block hand with the boshiken hand and stop there, the person will run into your hand if they attack, and you'll be safe (the other two ways, you can get hit). We practised this (after doing it against pads several dozen times) by doing it on the other person, then keeping your hand in the space in front of their chest after they run into it. If you do it right (ie, cross their T), their front foot won't move, and you can (still keeping the chest space), bring the other hand down and grab the back of their ankle and pull back towards you. This sends them down. That part I got, but Ja. and I spent a lot of time working on perfecting the take downs we were taught afterwards. I've always been awful at foot takedowns so I'm glad Ja. figured them out then taught me. Basically, they were foot and ankle locks. One involved putting your arm over the foot (while you're on the inside of their legs, blocking a kick from the opposite leg with your nearest leg) around the ankle, sort of nestling it up in your armpit, with your hand braced under their ankle. If you took all the space around the foot, pulled all your muscles taunt and sat up straighter/stood up a bit, the lock went on quite well. The other lock was a crazy ankle lock which involved... Well, if it was their right leg you wanted to attack, with you facing them between their legs like before, you'd snake your left arm around the outside of their leg, curving around to grab the outer edge of their foot from the inner side of their leg (your palm ends up across their foot), with your other hand braced over your first hand. Then you took all the space around the foot and moved it in an infinitesimal circle in three dimensions (moving about a centimetre all told), without bending their foot, and voila, ankle lock. Not my favourite lock by a long shot, but by the end I could make it work at least (when I didn't dyslexically mix up which hand snaked around the leg *L*). Weapon was sword and it was all about staying on the line. Jack didn't yell at me when he watched me do it, though he didn't praise me either, which means I'm getting a bit better at least.

Unfortunately, all the locks were actually a lot more painful in the long run for me since my forearms are covered in small bruises from being pressed against bones in ankles and feet. My arm was aching from it as well. It's not a very strong pain, but it was persistent with me waking up several times in the night (despite being on a muscle relaxant) because there was only one position I could lay in in which my arm didn't hurt and I kept naturally rolling out of it while dreaming. It didn't help that I had to unload the car for my mother earlier in the day and re-pulled the muscle in my back shoulder area. I made sure to heavily medicate for the pain today. Training was fun at least, and I'll probably take one of the newbies next week just to give C. or M. a break.

As for my dreams, I apparently dreamt up a complete justice league/avengers world at some point before last night since I returned to a dream world where I'd been following a bunch of new superhero teams (the next generation) who were trying to make their way up in the world. (Like one group accidentally graffittied Giant Androgynous Person (I'm apparently very politically correct in my super heroes) and the graffiti was still there in this dream). Some of the older superheroes were recruiting the young ones, and one very smart super hero decided to recruit super villains since most super villains had been wiped out and the ones wandering around were super villains for the silliest/lamest of reasons. So I walked in while they were recruiting a guy who'd become a super villain because no one would acknowledge and watch his favourite football (soccer) game with him. The smart super hero got a room full of fans of that team together and staged a giant, game watching party which I joined in on since it was my building they were using for it. I have no idea who I was in this particular dream, but it was entertaining. And we did hook that super villain into becoming a super hero before it was over and I woke up. There were tears in his eyes when we fulfilled his dream.

I really hate Florida. I hate all the pastels (I used to think it was because it's tropical, but now I've been to enough colourful tropical places that I know it's just Florida). I hate the uncomfortable grass. I hate that you can't even walk on it without checking for ants that will swarm and bite you. I hate the overuse of palm trees. I hate how generic the place looks around the retirement communities. I hate how they think 60 degrees is cold, yet go to the beach anyway. I hate that I never see any alligators. I hate all the drivers who are either young enough to think they're immortal or old enough to be okay with dying (and really shouldn't have their license in the first place). I hate that it's usually too hot to enjoy yourself. I dislike that Florida has pretty sunsets but they're almost always blocked by pastel buildings and palm trees.

Things I like: Lizards that live in your house. My grandmother's club house's spa. Thunderstorms. Uhm. I once went swimming at night here and there were frogs in the pool with me. That was cool. The food is usually pretty good too (at least when you eat out).

Okay. Enough ranting.

I'm at my grandmother's house, planning on leaving early tomorrow morning for my drive up to NJ. I have had lots of good food. At the Cousin's Club (ie a meeting of all my cousins every month), I actually met a cousin of mine and her husband who are total geeks. We'd read/watched pretty much all the same books/tv shows/comics/movies. I was impressed and had a great time talking that night. Definitely my favourite dinner of this trip.( ps. My granduncle thought I was 15 when we went to visit.)

One of my duties while I was down here (besides filling in on grandma sitting duty) was helping mum go through the house removing anything expensive before the assistant starts taking care of grandma here, plus just thinning out all the junk that's accumulated over the years. I can not believe how many toothpicks, sponges, umbrellas, and napkins there are in this house. There are 14 umbrellas in the garage alone! It turned up a lot of unexpected, interesting finds like an unused carving set for me and a pasta maker. And expected things like a mahjong set (grandma can't play anymore cause her memory is bad), the liquor cabinet, and the dvd collection. My car is stuffed.

I caught the first three eps of Chuck. I though it started out slow, but hit it's stride again by the second ep. and I really enjoyed the third ep of the season (but anything with Awesome and his obligatory shirtlessness is awesome;)). Chuck is one of those few shows I don't mind if they hit the reset button a bit (though it's more like characters evolve, then regress to make the plot work and be closer to the formula) because the whole point of it is parody. I think it's hilarious how they're using the actors in car comercials during the show too.

Now I must go do a few more things of prep. G'nite.

I head to Florida tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it, especially since I seem to be bringing the cold weather with me (they're expecting snow... *headdesk*), but it's only a week then I have a long drive home and a shiny, newish car. Keep your eye on the prize and all that. Oda (my netbook) has been packed up and will be taken with me but I doubt I'll find internet so I intend to mostly use it to watch videos and work on my book.

Bujinkan tonight had Jack warning me and my partner not to hurt each other which considering my partner nearly broke or crushed my hands and elbows (not to mention almost smashing my face into his knee) and I managed to rip his skin open with nails that were just a tiny bit too long (I keep them cut short for just this reason, but sometimes it gets away from you) was probably a good warning to heed. This guy was really strong so he just kept trying to force the moves on top of everything and since we were doing gyaku (hand/arm throws) which have to be done perfectly on me, it meant I spent a lot of time gasping in pain. I'll be taking a muscle relaxer soon in the hopes it will spare me from some aches tomorrow. Gyaku's are hard to do on me since I am a) hyperflexible in my shoulders and b) instinctively move to a position where I can twist out of them if you give me an inch. This meant that I spent a lot of time twisting out of my partners gyaku, especially his onigadaki cause he wasn't taking all the space. Jack gave him a long lecture on less strength and more being the right space, but that didn't stop Jack from taking me down several times with a grin on his face. One time, he took me down with inside (its spirals in) gyaku then pinned me there by driving my own fingers into that fleshy area to the side of your armpit. There's a nasty mark there and it hurts to touch it now. Jack's corrections today made me feel good though since he made it clear he expected me to go beyond what your average person was doing and make my techniques more efficient (and walk! walk! walk!). I always have trouble with mushadori (I think that's it's name... it's a type of arm bar) which is weird since I swear I didn't used to have this much trouble. Maybe it's because I'm more aware of the possibility of breaking someone's elbow/face? It might also be because I've been fighting a lot of strong, tough guys too. Will have to keep working on it.

I'm going to miss bujinkan and exercising while I'm gone. It's been a pain to pack only carry ons for this trip. It was fine when I was expecting summer weather, but winter weather requires sweaters which take up more bulk. Not to mention, it's impossible for me to take enough shampoo and conditioner to last several days (since I have long, fine hair) in those tiny sample bottles you're required to use for carry ons. I expect I'll run out and get to show off how weird my hair gets off my normal hair products.

I had the first migraine of my life on the evening before new years. It started with an aura, which is sort of a visual hallucination which shimmered in a jagged circle in front of my eyes for quite awhile before expanding outwards and leaving me with a pounding headache. Only 30 or so percent of people get migraines with auras, so yay! I went to sleep soon afterwards since painkillers had no effect, and slept for 10 hours before getting up on New Year's eve (I had very light nausea for which I am very grateful). rinzei and havenward were coming over for our usual celebration so I took another nap in the afternoon (and had this awesome dream where I was joining Methos on an archaeological dig in the rainforests of South America... pity I woke up after we'd just met) in the hopes of feeling a little less dead. It amazed me how much the migraine took out of you. It's actually messed up my sleeping habits since then so I finally gave in and started setting an alarm, and that combined with bujinkan tonight will hopefully be enough to get me back on my usual circadian rhythm.

New years itself was spent drinking alcohol (less for me due to the migraine), catching up on each others lives, and watching things, as usual. We had a delicious dinner at Red Robin's then snacked copiously at home. They hadn't seen Wonderfalls before so we watched about eight eps of that, then we switched to Mendol which is a jdrama about three girls who want to become idols and get their dream, but only by becoming a boy band instead. It was a lot more... raunchy then I expected it to be, though just about as cracktastic. Not a show for everyone, as witnessed by the fact that havenward refused to watch it while even remotely sober;) We called it a fairly early night (you know, around 3am) which was good for me since I was still exhausted and slept until noon. We hung out and watched more Wonderfalls before calling it a day.

I've been catching up on my reading and watching over the holiday (unfortunately, not my writing. I haven't written a thing in weeks. Stupid apathy.). I finally got to see Zombieland which I watched last night with my dad. It wasn't as good as Shawn of the Dead, but it was a lot of fun, and strangely relaxing to watch. I noticed I spent all of my drive today picking out which car I'd want for a zombie apocalypse though... I actually sat down and read an entire book on Sunday. Our heating went out (again) so I huddled on the couch in front of our new fake fireplace space heater (it's adorable and almost as satisfying as a real fire) and read the book from cover to cover, stopping only for hot chocolate and cashews. It was Enchanted, Inc. which wasn't bad, though apparently the rest of the series goes down hill.

The hardest thing I've done on this holiday is go to bujinkan tonight. For some reason it always feels like you haven't trained in a month rather than the week we had off between christmas and new years, and therefore, it's hard to motivate yourself to go back to that first class after the new year, especially since January is devoted to reviewing the basics. Be that as it may, I went and was glad I did. Jack was bored or something cause he spent a lot of time watching and helping me and even made me teach. Part of the theme for the year is 'lower' ie, bending your knees a lot, so I know I'll be limping tomorrow, though it's not as bad for me as for some. I think an individual theme for myself is going to be 'waiting' ie, not moving in, but instead letting your opponent run into your fist or foot or whatever. This requires holding back and waiting to strike until that perfect moment (ie timing) and I tend to get anxious and jump the gun. We did front rolls with a little jump before them which was a lot more fun than the slow rolls from last year. Then we did punching, ending in a low position (the key is to twist your spine towards the leading leg just slightly before you move), then blocks (which eventually bruised my left knuckles. pads hurt.), then kicks. All started with the pads, then we did a practical application. I had a good partner, and Jack's criticisms balanced out his praise (I even surprised a 'good!' out of him with a side roll *L*) so it was a pretty good start to the new year and I appreciated getting my adrenaline flowing again.

My netbook has now lost it's temporary name of Chibi and is officially named Oda after Oda Nobunaga (most powerful warlord in the Sengoku era in Japan). I figured the netbook would need a powerful (but short) name to fulfil its destiny;) The final makie stickers for Oda also arrived so his decoration is done and I can show him off - like so. (Isn't he cute?) I also had to strategically place some stickers around the keyboard cause the one problem I keep having with it is that the keyboard is so flat, my fingers lose track of where they are on it and drift in the middle of typing. Hopefully the raised bumps of the stickers will provide enough clues to keep me on track in the future.

Much to my shock and joy, someone dropped Int. Jap. 202 on Saturday, right before web registration closed for the weekend. I spent the entire weekend (excepting a trip to visit rinzei at her house for good conversation and food) in a nervous wreck about getting into that one spot when registration opened up again at 6:30am on Monday. Consequently, I woke up at 6am this morning and waited patiently for 6:30 to roll around, refreshing constantly until it let me in. I had hoped that none of the other several people who wanted the spot had noticed it was open this weekend since it is right in the middle of the holiday, and I was either right or beat them to it anyway. So, yes, I am finally registered for Japanese next term. Thank god.

My brother and I have basically spent this whole holiday watching Rifftraks and Top Gear (Rifftrak only makes Twilight a little more bearable in that you start to think, "Wow, with a different plot, characters, and focus, this could have been a decent story.") I discovered my bro hasn't seen the Top Gear Africa special so I'm trying to get ahold of that to throw at him.

Food wise, it's been a bit silly here with me cooking inari sushi and chocolate chip cookies for lunch on Christmas Eve with okonomiyaki for dinner in the evening. Being Jewish, we had our traditional meal at a Chinese buffet on Christmas day, though I don't think I'm cut out for buffets any more since I was nauseous for much of the evening afterwards. Didn't eat anything else until lunch today when I drank eggnog and made chocolate chip cookies, with strawberries on the side.

We went to see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas Day and, as someone who's actually read all of the annotated Sherlock Holmes, I was pleased with it. It's a good interpretation of canon. ( Spoilers )

I've been so stressed out studying for my finals today. I had a few little things go wrong in the days leading up as well, and was pretty depressed by the time I went to sleep last night. I'm not very happy with my Japanese exam either. It was infinitely easier than the last Japanese final I took, but I know I'm going to lose points to stupid mistakes (why did my mind blank on the grammar for 'hazu'?!), and it doesn't make me feel much better to know that all the extra credit on the exam will probably make up for them. In short, I could have done better, and it annoys me that I was in such poor form. It was also 16 bloody pages with certain grammar points belaboured to death while others were ignored in their entirety. Gah.

Exhaustion from staying up late to study then waking up early for the exam meant I had to resort to caffeine to survive or at least be awake for my Spanish exam at 4pm. I actually had a pretty decent lunch break, catching up on the friends list on Chibi (my netbook), then working my way through every single Spanish note I had over the next few hours. When I got to exam, I discovered, as I suspected, that I really needn't have bothered, but what else did I have to do for five hours? The Japanese exam took me every second of allowed time (ie 3 hours) while the Spanish one I finished in 1 hour and I dragged it out. Unfortunately, I had had Dad drop me off in the morning to give me an extra hour of sleep, but picking me up in the evening at 5pm on that particular campus turned out to be impossible and I almost froze to death outside before giving up and going back into the building to let my toes regain feeling. An hour and a half later, Dad finally showed up. I was so exhausted and stressed out by that point. I'm glad he suggested we eat out, and I asked for panera bread and their sourdough soup bowls which calmed me down (their hot chocolate sucks though).

I have been gradually relaxing more all evening and look forward to tomorrow where my only obligation is going to bujinkan. Unfortunately, since I don't actually drink caffeine (since it gives me headaches which I warded off today by just taking the painkillers right after the caffeine) I am wide awake right now and not certain if I'm going to be able to sleep. I guess I'll just watch things I've been ignoring until I feel tired.

One of the things I forgot after living in so many countries that don't get regular snow (Japan doesn't count cause the part I was in didn't get regular snow) is how annoying snow shovelling is. I once burst a blood vessel in my eye from shovelling snow (Apparently overworking can do that. Who knew?) so it's got all sorts of negative connotations in my memory. I consoled myself by making a few snow angels (See?) and with a cup of the last of my good hot chocolate with caramel as a reward when I got in.

We were all in witty good form at Bujinkan tonight.

C: Well, I'm 50% redneck so it's good for me to practice math.
J: I'd say more like 80%.
C: That's half, right?

Me: My evil plan is to steal 5 cents from all my friends. Then I'll have - a dollar! *evil laugh*

Training was actually really interesting. It started with us practicing moving out of the way of a punch and forcing your opponent to only throw punches on one side. Then we moved on to hitting (on the wrist was the target though C. managed to light up my whole arm at one point or another) the punch, followed by a disruption rather than a retreat of letting the other person's throat run into your waiting hand (Jack was happy to point out that in my case, if it was too far to reach, I should hold my fist lower (ie groin level) and let nature take it's course). From there, we moved on to taking the person down not by pushing or pulling on the neck, but holding it firmly and widening the space between the person's head and their arm and the rest of their body. Like using a wedge. If you got the right angle, it worked perfectly but it felt very weird cause it took very little force. It was difficult for all of us so it was good training. The only thing annoying was all the strangling cause I've already spent the week coughing and it aggravated my throat again.

I had a lot of petty problems in the past few days tracking down lost recommendation letters and finding out that I'd forgotten a useless piece of paper that was still required in one of my applications (it was a checklist with a list of things they already know I submitted *headdesk*). Also, I'm reading Smallville fanfic for some reason. (Considering I dislike the show, it's rather weird, though I suppose, much like SGA, the fanfic is better than the show.)

After a decidedly average season this year (I miss when the Dexter writers actually considered their viewers intelligent enough to figure things out on their own), Dexter's S4 finale was great. ( Spoilers )