A long-awaited first ! And second !

Yeahhhh last week I finally had my first karaoke experience. And second! First on Monday, with tutor Ryu and his buddy whose name I still can't remember. Unfortunately, Tareq and I were the only ones out of our group to join, so it was presumably less fun than it had potential to be if everyone would've come. Anyway, it was still great. Karaoke is really awesome. There's like 10^10 songs from around the world (English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean), so it ranged from Ryu's buddy's Chinese pop to my Jpop to Tareq's enka(!) to Ryu's voice being actually quite nice (in a girly way). Didn't make it too late...and the next day was Titinart's birthday (the girl who's leaving in 2 weeks to prepare for her studies in Europe after having been here in my identical situation for the same amount of time), so I convinced a couple of us living in Oubaku to get up before 6 to give her a nice surprise breakfast (a tradition I've had since I can't remember when).

Since Wednesday was actually a day off because of the university's birthday, Tuesday was perfect for celebrating Titinart's birthday, and we did so in contemporary Japanese style - first to an izakaya-kind of place for drinks and food, and then to karaoke with all-you-can-drink included for about 2 hours. Then the last train home, and a small afterparty in my room, until drinks were gone and people decided that it might be a good idea to sleep a bit before having to be at an academic workshop in Kobe at 9 am the next morning. Hehehe...

Which songs can you make out on the karaoke pictures? ;)

Ah, and the first pic is an illustration of the rainy season, which has now officially begun...most days are upwards of 70-80% humidity and a lot of rainfall; today was dry though.

Finally, before I head off to town, the choreo for our show is done! We practiced for about 7 hours last Saturday and at the end it was born. Cool stuff, I hope I can get a nice video recording for you all to see.

Fast Energy Flow

Recently, I've been using every spare minute in the rare boring class to study useful things, cooking most of my meals (saves money), listening to Japanese conversation podcasts instead of music while commuting, watching 2-3 episodes of One Piece/South Park/docu's per day, sending e-mails to my friends in Tokyo to find out about their summer plans (I have to start buying tickets if I wanna do anything cheaply), downloading a ton of old and new music (King Crimson, Nightmares on Wax, Voivod, Elephant9, Los Amigos Invisibles, Scott Henderson, Jazz Liberatorz, Bootsy Collins, Junkyard Scientists, Yellowjackets...), reading Digg regularly, sleeping good amounts (had a nap dream today involving the movie Top Gun, which I've never seen), making new friends, chilling with old friends, getting drunk with all of them at different parties and gatherings, gathering a ton of study materials (websites, software), indulging in 30-degree afternoons, worrying about the entrance exam, e-mailing my professor about the details of the entrance exam, choosing songs for my first dance show (in less than 3 weeks from today), planning a Gion Matsuri kimono date with Misa (I'm borrowing one from her parents, hand-made by her great-grandmother (who is obviously still alive at 93!)), and feeling slightly impatient with regard to the progress I'm making conversation-wise. I'm TIRED!

Here's an interesting article I found on Digg: Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

I also went to Osaka for the first time a week ago with Misa, to see a friend of hers and her Spanish fiance. Osaka has a very different atmosphere than Kyoto - more fashion-conscious, faster, bigger, less old people. Looking forward to going there again many times!