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The title says Happy New Year's because I celebrated Japanese New Year's (Part I) with my friends from the dojo. Actually, the whole thing was made somewhat more exciting by the roof caving in due to heavy rains. Not completely, just the inner portion of the room due to getting waterlogged by insanely heavy rains. So we just covered up the floor with plastic and placed trashcans in strategic locations.

The celebration itself was cool. We ate mochi and drank sake. Two people announced their engagement (squee! dojo wedding!) and I ended up giving an impromptu speech about dumb stuff I did when I was a kid. This is the year of the boar (or, as we were calling it, the year of the javelina), so someone passed out little boar stickers...they came in pink, blue, and yellow. As one person put it, pink was for girls, blue was for boys, and yellow was for the sexually ambiguous...just as someone stuck a yellow sticker on my lapel... xp

So I've been taking rowing lessons.

No, not canoes. I mean the kind of competitive rowing (sculling) that they have in the Olympics. It's really fun, but it's way harder than it looks.

My second lesson was today, and I had horrible allergies from all the trees out on the river, so I did more sneezing than anything else. It was also my first time out on the water in a shell. Yesterday was just learning how to row on a stationary dock. I had gone out in a kayak by myself for a couple hours before the lesson started, and by the time I got back, I was soaked, freezing, and very annoyed.

So anyway...once you're in the water, the boat is fairly stable. I didn't really feel like I was going to tip over at all. The hard part is steering. In a shell, you sit backwards, with your back towards the direction you're going in. So basically, steering is totally backwards from a canoe or kayak. Also, you have two oars to keep track of. There's a "rowing" stroke, which makes you go backwards (but the boat is going forwards) and a "backing" stroke, which makes you go forwards, but the boat is going backwards. Can you see why I was confused?

But when you actually get headed in the right direction and away from any submerged branches, it's a lot of fun. Sculls are the undisputed kings of the lake--all the kayakers and canoers have to get out of your way because you're going about ten times faster than anyone else.

Next time, though, I'm going to have to remember to get myself some waterproof pants and take some allergy pills beforehand.

How obvious is it that I'm only keeping this journal for the gold? xd

Anyway, I went to this Christmas shopping thing, and I found this really cool stall of this lady who was selling all this antique jewelry from all over the world. She told me all these cool stories about what the different pieces meant (they were all from India, or Tibet, or Egypt...very cool). I bought some stuff, but I hope I run into her again sometime.

I also got to hear one of my favorite local musicians, Carolyn Wonderland. She has a totally awesome voice, a lot like Janis Joplin.

Ah, the joys of the weekend. Unfortunately, I was really sick last night, and I've been feeling pretty crappy all day. On the other hand, tomorrow, we're going to the Armadillo Bazaar, which is this giant outdoor market that people say is really good for Christmas shopping, which I definitely need to get started on.

I've been having weird dreams lately. Mostly math/physics anxiety dreams, but Jrockers also figure disturbingly prominently. Like yesterday. I dreamed that my physics teacher was screaming at me for getting a 1.3/100 on a test, and that I had to pass the next one so I wouldn't flunk physics. I recall getting a 49, because it was normal physics questions, and then halfway through, bam, it's a bunch of complicated word problems all involving the former members of Malice Mizer. I woke up trying to calculate the torque of Gackt and Mana sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. A few months ago, when we were studying vectors, I had this dream about Jin and Kame from the Jpop group KAT-TUN, and, well...I woke up laughing, and still trying to calculate vectors.

In one of my classes today, we watched a clip of a movie about Frida Kahlo that contained my two biggest...well, not exactly fears, per se, but rather things that freak me out. Skeletons and anesthesia. There was this one animated scene with these skelatel doctors dancing around with syringes, and, well, my brain wasn't functioning too well for about half an hour. Funny, since I've had Robert, my pet human skull, sitting on my nightstand for over two years now...

Tomorrow I'm gonna have to borrow that movie from the teacher so I can watch it at home.

On a totally different subject, I looked up Frida Kahlo on Wikipedia, and she was one pretty lady.

Hm...I'm trying to pull off a cool Christmassy look...I'm off to get some reindeer antlers after I post. What I've got now is just sort of holding over until I can think of something more interesting. Unfortunately, every time I've tried to do something creative this weekend, a sinusoidal graph pops into my head. And it's laughing at me. Damn Pre-calc.

We tried out a new Japanese restaurant. I ordered unagi-maki (grilled eel rolls, my favorite, but a bit mushy), Nagano duck (very spicy) and tempura ice cream. I also mooched off my brother's shrimp tempura. He also tried the eel rolls, and surprisingly, liked them a lot. Very pleasant evening overall.

My brain is fried.

Yep, another physics test. I swear, the teacher just stands at the top of her staircase and throws them down and grades them according to where they land. She scares the hell outta me, but she's a good teacher nevertheless.

I still miss the craziness of teachers from back home, though.

Okay, I gotta go to bed so I can wake up bright and early and do more homework.