Flirting with Mountains

When I come back to Singapore, I'm going to have thighs of steel.

On Friday, I was biking to my usual bus stop when I realized that since I was going to Tokyo for a week, I probably shouldn't park my bike at the usual place by the river. Kyoto's bike parking regulations are so cleverly set up that anywhere you could possibly want to park (like near a train station) is illegal. I usually try to avoid getting my bike towed by parking in the evening and retrieving it early the next morning.

Thus, I was left with the unenviable choice of either biking back to school and walking to my bus stop or cycling to my home in the hills.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So I decided to go straight home. After much huffing and puffing, and at one point, getting off my bike and walking, I made it to the top of the hill and for most of the ride after that, it was downhill. Total time : 1 hour. Hurray. So I was back home, with the bike I usually ride from the bus stop to school. So what happens when I next want to go to school? All that downhill becomes uphill. So here I am, back on campus, drying my socks that were soggy from sweat. All this in order to blog.

Glad to hear that Joo-sir got an internship and I hope Nigel and Joshua have been having similar luck. I just had the 2nd part of some first round interview, I felt it went pretty well but what I think isn't important so my fingers are crossed as I leave for spring break in still cold Tokyo.

So some updates on my life:
Life in Kyoto is, for the most part, pretty sweet. Just being in a beautiful city and enjoying good food every day is a joy. Yesterday, I went to Kobe with a couple of program mates and had a taste of that famous beef. The most tender part of the beef was literally melt-in-your-mouth tender. After that we visited a sake brewery and I bought a small bottle of sparkling sake which I'm going to share with my okaasan tonight. Or rather, I'm going to offer it to her but she hardly drinks so...

The English content courses here are a drag but luckily there isn't much work. I haven't done any of the readings for one of the classes and intend to plow through them on the train to Tokyo. Hopefully I'll get some work done. All my classes are pass/fail when I transfer my credits back to Brown so there's really not too much stress. My Japanese is improving but there's still a long way to go. I've started reading Samurai X in Japanese too. It makes me feel very nostalgic.

My program mates are pretty nice people for the most part but I don't feel particularly close to most of them. It's not particularly cliquish but I feel left out sometimes like when some of the kids living in apartments have gatherings but no one tells me. *sob But hey, you can't be good friends with everyone. I do have some friends that I hang out with but no one even remotely approaching ball brothers. You guys know that I don't talk very much and keep a lot of things bottled up (or *ahem stealth) and so I don't make friends very easily. I guess I could call a lot of the people I know here "friends" but they are not friendships of much depth. Friendships take time to develop and for me, more time than most. So ball brothers, despite all the times you've made me emo, thank you very much for being my friends.

Ok, let me end the post here before this gets any gayer. Political correction - Not that there's anything wrong with being gay. Oh just in case you guys are craving some OOP, this guy in my class was critizing something and said "that's gay" and then he remarked "whoops, good thing ABC- san isn't here" because he really is gay and his boyfriend's also in the program.
じゃ、またね。