Been Busy, My Bad.

Captain's Log:

A lot has happened in recent days. Pretty much as soon as I got back from Tokyo, the intensive period started. The intensive period is basically a semester crammed into a month, it's 15 hours of solid Japanese classes a week. I was dreading it, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. What will kill me is waking up at 6:40 every morning so I can catch my 9 am class.

My biggest gripe about the intensive period, is that it's basically a chapter a day, meaning we pretty much have no time to make sure everyone has an understanding of the material. I've been kinda floundering for the past couple chapters.

Other than that, Valentine's Day was last sunday, it was the first one I've actually had a girlfriend on. It was fun. We went to this awesome Spanish tapas restaurant, then to the sky building. Valentine's Day is very different in Japan than in America. In America, it's usually the chicks getting showered with materialistic objects, demonstrating that they really are loved if their man will empty a paycheck on them in a day. Here, pretty much the only tradition is the chicks give the dudes chocolate. Which is awesome. Then a month later, they have White Day, where the dudes reciprocate with candy for the chicks. I have 3 girls I have to reciprocate to.

Last night, my lady and I had a date in Sannomiya, we went to a place called Lock-Up, which I heard was an izakaya where they put you in cages, and guys dressed as monsters randomly come up and scare you or something. The place was interesting. It was kind of jail/halloween themed. We went in and the hostess, dressed as a sexy police officer (the rest of the staff wore striped prison uniforms), asks if we had been bad. She handcuffs us and leads us to our table. We get our food and drinks and enjoy the cool atmosphere. A lot of the food was spicy (like, habanero stuff, which is pretty tough to find here), sadly, my girlfriend is Japanese, and therefore can't handle spicy. At all. At 7:20, they had their event, where dudes dressed as monsters came around and hassled customers, then the sexy police officer comes and kills them. Afterwards, the music was the Brian Setzer Orchestra for at least 20 minutes. If it weren't so expensive, I would have been in love with the place.

Other than that, there's not much to report, other than gripes about my classes, the culture (I've been saving that for an entry - I'm just lazy), and I desperately need a haircut. It's almost down to my chin again.