In 11 days Tim and I will be flying to Japan. It will also be Christmas day, which is also great, but I’m more excited about the Japan thing. Here are some things that I’m psyched for:
* Going to the hyaku-yen shop(s)
* Having okonomiyaki in Osaka
* Trying takoyaki in Osaka
* Meeting up with Mayumi & Erin
* Going to Hakone (Jasmine showed me some photos today from when she went to Hakone. It looked awesome. She ate a black egg)
* Admiring the shiny coating of kinkakuji
* Shopping at konbini (コンビニエンスストア, konbiniensu sutoa – thanks Wikipedia!)
* Riding the shinkansen up & down Honshu
This will be the second year in a row that I won’t be in Australia to ring in the new year. I’m also hoping for snow, although we might not get to see any, even in Nagano. Snow is the best part of winters in the northern hemisphere (purely from a touristic point of view), and it’s the reason I usually travel overseas during Australian summer. I’ll cross my fingers but won’t hold my breath.
It was just me and Mike at trivia tonight (in our team). Kristen couldn’t make it, neither could Tim (aka Brain’s Trust) since he’s in Melbourne. We bombed out, like I knew we would, but Stefan joined us for the second round and actually prevented us from coming last, since he got a couple of questions we wouldn’t have gotten. It will be a lot better next week because Tim will be in Sydney and trivia master Jason Dean (full title for indexing’s sake) said the crossword will be Simpsons themed. Woohoo! Genki will recover from this week’s embarrassing results! Hopefully.