Hot Summer

IT IS CURRENTLY MUCH TOO HOT.

Have you ever had one of those days where you absolutely needed to exercise, but there were one or more things that made exercising a bad idea?  Today was one of those days.  It was too hot to even think about physical activity, but I had to.

First of all, we FINALLY got to go to Majin Buu.  It really happened.
The inside looks like this:



It's one of those places that's just a counter with seats in front of it.  The space between your chair and the wall is probably one whole foot.

Anyway, here's the reason I needed to exercise today:

There's no way I was going to eat that much ramen without balancing it out somehow.  Some Korean students were coming to our school from Kyung Hee University today, so I decided to make the bike ride all the way there despite barely being able to move.  I ended up missing the Kyung Hee students by a few minutes, so I just sat around in the lounge for a bit talking to people.

Does anyone reading this remember AKB48, currently Japan's most popular and most manufactured (keep in mind that I don't considered "manufactured" a bad thing) idol group?  Well, people around here ask who my favorite member is frequently enough that I decided I should go ahead and pick one.  Though I still don't have any personal interest in AKB as a whole, I eventually decided upon Tomomi Itano as my favorite.  Here she is:


When pressed regarding what I like about her (they WILL ask that), I have decided it is her teeth, as she has that weird, snaggly canine tooth that Japan just loves to bits. Also, even though she's twenty-one years old, she's still four feet, eleven inches tall, so that's something. Overall a very successful choice.  To legitimize my choice, I decided to go to Kawagoe and, in true idol fan fashion, pick up her photo book that came out a few years ago.  I knew of a few book stores there, and probability dictated that at least one would probably have it.  All the walking it'd require was my intended exercise for the day.

Since it was so hot, I absolutely needed something to drink.  It was getting really bad, so I ran into a Lawson store and bought grape juice.  It's specifically labeled as muscat juice, because Japan actually cares about those distinctions when it comes to food.

When I walked past this sign, I could not help but laugh loudly enough to make the people walking by stare a bit.  Yes, sign.  You can dressy.  It's okay with me.

When I got back to school I gave Lucas the thing I'd bought him (more on that later) and helped Kayo with her homework.  She had to write three minutes' worth of speech on why watching movies at home is better than watching them in the theatre.  Getting that sort of length from that topic is hard even in English, so I was a little concerned for her grade.  Luckily her accent made the tiny bit she already had come out to around a minute and a half, so I think she can get it done.

So once I went home, I remembered I had to buy my tickets to see Kousei from Ghost this weekend.  I went to Family Mart to do that, but it turns out the number I was given was not the one I needed for the tickets, so I had to go all the way back home and come back with the right number.  Family Mart is a little over halfway to school, so it was a bit of a trip.  Again, though, exercise.

Did I mention it's the loneliest Family Mart ever, surrounded by rice fields on all sides and usually having no customers in the parking lot?  It was fun to be there at night.

Here's my prize from my jaunt around all the book stores in Kawagoe.  It's not THE photo book I was looking for, but it's a small, inexpensive one that has some pictures of Tomomi at concerts and such.  They were cheap, so I bought Lucas one for his favorite member (though he did pay me back).  Overall a very successful day, if not an eventful one.  With any luck I'll be able to finish the two papers I have to write for class tomorrow, or at least before the concert on Saturday.  Then I'll be done with most of the hard stuff.