Been a long time since my last update, huh? Predictably, I've just been too lazy to write (and nothing much has happened).

I had a fun Christmas break which consisted of watching movies and anime, reading manga and fanfics (I even briefly found my interest for Harry Potter fanfiction again but lost it again in a few days) and just relaxing. In other words, I had a lot of fun. I didn't do anything special for New Years but I'm not exactly feeling sad about it. On Christmas day I had lunch with two friends (from Japan and Korea, respectively) and we all brought in something we had cooked, so it was a nice, international Christmas meal. We even had snow on the ground. There was actually a week or so around Christmas where we had so much snow that the town almost stopped because it's used to any snow that we happen to get melting away right away. The 200 meters to the grocery store felt more like 10 kilometers because no one had cleared the sidewalks from snow and my legs sunk up to my ankles or even knees with every step. I was tempted to take the bus. I had some impressive icicles hanging out on the balcony, but some handymen came and took them down because they were getting kind of dangerous. Luckily I managed to take pictures before that.

( Winter Wonderland )

Now all the snow is gone and it's raining. For some reason very few of the locals use umbrellas and are satisfied with hiding under their hoods. Someone told me that the locals are just so used to rain that they don't want to bother carrying around an umbrella all the time. Everyone complains that it rains a lot in here, but as far as I've seen we get either as much or more rain in Finland (and most people carry umbrellas!).

The Winter Quarter started today and I had most of my new classes. I'm taking four classes but those are only worth 12 credits which is the amount required to maintain my visa. I wanted to take on a smaller workload than last quarter so that I'll have time to try to search the university library for something I can use in my Master's thesis. I also bought two extra books unrelated to the courses I'm taking. They're for a Japanese history course which I'm unable to take because it overlaps with one of my other classes. I intend to read the books even though I won't get any credit.

One of the courses I'm taking is a class where we watch Japanese classic movies (without subtitles) and then write an essay (in Japanese) on each of them and hold discussions (also in Japanese). I'm not actually qualified to take it as the course requires more courses in Japanese that I've taken, but I got special permission to do the coursework in English and just take part as best as I can (I would even have gotten permission to skip the discussions, but I want to go and see how much I can understand). Another course will have me learning 50 kanji per week, on top of the 15 a week that I will be learning in my normal Japanese class. Can't wait.

Today I had a really nice day, with lots of small positive things, until I came home this evening and found out that my old roommates expensive vacuum is missing. She moved out at the beginning of Christmas break and left some of her stuff (including the vacuum) here that she intended to pick up later. The same day my new roommate moved in and asked to borrow the vacuum to clean her old room. I know I had no right to loan it and now I feel damn guilty for not checking if it was brought back. She claims to have returned it ten minutes later, but I was an idiot and didn't check (it was hidden behind a sliding door). That was the last time anyone saw it. Now it's gone and someone's got to pay. My old roommate just came by and suggested that we each (she, me and my new roommate) pitch in with 70 dollars to get her a new vacuum and so we don't have to go the university police or anything. I wish I had at least checked if it had been brought back so that if it had, my new roommate wouldn't have to be part of this. *bangs head on the desk* Funny how you can first feel like you're having the best day you've had in a long while and then someone comes and pulls the carpet from right under your feet. I just hope we can put this behind us soon and that it won't hurt my relationship with either my old or new roommate.

This weekend I'm going with my aikido group on a Misogi (purification ritual for the beginning of a new year) which means that we'll hike somewhere (first it was supposed to be Mount Baker but now we're apparently going to a beach or something) and do a thousand sword strikes. Go figure. I'm going, 'cause its one of those special events that I want to experience while I'm here.

Anyway, year 2009 seems to have begun on both a positive and a negative note (I got a fortune cookie that said I'd soon experience a pleasant surprise, I hope the few small ones I've had weren't it). Let's hope it'll just get better from now on.

Happy New Years to everybody!