I Don't Miss American Waffles

今日の日本語の言葉: kanransha (観覧車) - ferris wheel

This word was brought to you as a continuation of yesterday, since nothing noteworthy really occurred today, and "waffles" is not worth the "Japanese word of the day" title.

I woke up at 7:30 this morning, to the calls of "Maggie! Breakfast!"—a call which I'm usually wide awake when I hear. It was definitely a surprise, and I totally jumped up and ran down. But I actually woke up late! I guess I was more tired from yesterday than I thought I had been. 

I had a nice conversation with Anna as I got ready for school. I managed to talk a bit more about our trip, which is coming together nicely. We've picked out our onsen, and it's now only a matter of purchasing tickets to and from Hokkaido, which is about $100 in one direction, which I think is a pretty good deal. Doesn't happen much in America, that price.

I left for school without lunch, so I was starving! I decided that it was finally time to break down and try a waffle from that delicious smelling waffle shop right outside of Akihabara station. It has these interesting waffle sandwiches and some very good looking regular waffles. I got a plain regular one, and a rare cheese waffle sandwich. The regular waffle is a lot sweeter than its American counterpart. It tastes more like my idea of what a Belgian waffle does, but is still even sweeter than that. It's like... sweet cream bun tasting. The sandwich was even sweeter, though it had the nice tartness of the occasional raspberry punch, which balanced it out a bit. Nevertheless, all in all, it sadly was not worth the money. *sigh*

Yet, I still don't miss American waffles. In fact, I don't miss American food at all. I still crave Japanese food every day, and I miss Thai food a little, but that's about it.

My time in school today was spent furiously writing whenever I could. I've been having chapter 2 problems for quite a while now, with flow, ideas, witty dialogue, etc., and I just made a breakthrough late yesterday night. It was an eye opening moment in which everything fell in place, and in the end, I had to force myself to go to bed as it approached 1:00 a.m. I haven't really stopped writing all day (even as I write this post, I'm taking periodic breaks to write paragraphs of the chapter). It feels great to have inspiration run through your veins sometimes.

After school, I dropped by the convenience store with Saya, and you know what I saw? Two very interesting things. First was Monsters candy. That's right. Candy with the brand name of my latest Japanese drama obsession on it. I want Saionji and Hiratsuka candy! Although I don't know what flavor it is, since all it says is "original" on the package. I mean, does anything other than original exist at the moment? If so, I couldn't find it, and I didn't get the one I did find.

The second interesting thing was a nikuman, except pizza flavored. I got this one out of pure curiosity. Inside it was cheese, meat, and tomato sauce, like a regular meat pizza. It didn't taste half bad, actually, but I still definitely prefer pizza over this. There's just something fundamentally missing when there's a lack that nice crisp crust.

OH! Fun fact: the actor who plays Hiratsuka is in a band called SMAP, which is actually quite good. You really should look them up. What they don't have in looks, they make up in actual voice quality. I mean, when they're acoustic, they still sound spectacular, and that's a pretty difficult feat this day and age (sad, I know).

Whenever I look at a performance of theirs, though, I keep seeing Hiratsuka singing. It's like seeing Cumberbatch in a band all of a sudden. Will you ever think of him as anything other than Sherlock? I've never even thought of him as Maj. Jamie Stewart from War Horse or as Peter Guillam from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. How weird would it be if he was suddenly in a band? Can you imagine if famous American actors ended up in bands? Brad Pitt singing alongside Matt Damon? It happens so often over here—and it's not just actors on the caliber that Justin Bieber is an "actor," but it's like how weird it was for me when I saw Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) singing in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." It just... doesn't happen in the states, does it? Robert Downey Jr. in his boyband. xD

Anyways, I had a great dinner of pumpkin, rice, and fish today, which I wolfed down quickly before sitting down to do my homework. Since I've been bored by the level of my homework and schoolwork recently, I've started to endeavor to write everything in kanji, in order to challenge myself. My homework, I vowed, would have the grammar of a beginner, but the writing of a pro. Some of the kanji, like 優 (yasa(shii) - nice/easy) and 勉強 (benkyou - study) are especially difficult, and took me a while go get down with the right stroke order. But I have it now, and, though it took me a good twenty minutes, I did both sides of my homework all in kanji (well, the parts that are naturally written in kanji, of course; I'm not at the point where I can just make up random kanji where they don't belong yet. xD). 

I know there wasn't much to say today, and on a usual day like this, I would take this place to tell you something profound and interesting, but honestly, I'm dying to write the rest of chapter 2. It's so close to completion that it hurts. So forgive me if I don't have anything interesting to say here!

Well, I guess I have one thing. I've been watching some late night T.V. off and on with Yoshiko-san at night, and there are some pretty weird shows out there. There's a late night thing that teaches Japanese people English, and the stuff they teach is the weirdest stuff. "Last night, did you feed John's dog?" Tell me, have you ever said this in your life? Why don't they teach stuff like how to hail down a taxi and give directions or something? And there's this wonderfully sassy gay guy that leads all the American speaking parts to the Japanese hosts. He's great! And he always has such interesting scarves on. xD

Anyways, I know it's short, but it's here that I shall leave you for the day. I really want to finish this chapter tonight, so I'll cut the blog post in favor of keeping my fiction fans happy. I'll see you on the morrow!

また明日、
マギー