Necesse est mihi studere =(

I think I horribly offended my host family because although their response to my first, generic "はじめまして！” email was instantaneous, I have yet to receive a reply for my second attempt at correspondence (featuring fewer standard, polite how-are-you phrases because I opted for poorly constructed Japanese to ask about their interests and so forth). Also, I totally had to replace "less" with "fewer" in the previous sentence because I'm now conditioned to hear Justin's voice in my head correcting my grammatical errors, although it seems he hasn't quite cured me of writing in impossibly long (but still grammatically correct) sentences. Win.

I'm done packing! I talked to Elliot last night and we arrived at the mutual agreement that one suitcase and backpack would be optimal, and I did actually manage to fit everything I need (with room to spare!). Now I just have to find something else to do for five days in my rather blatant attempts to procrastinate on studying for the placement test. I finished 1984 (really good book!) and I started Camus' The Plague at David's suggestion. It's surprisingly pretty good---more a remark upon my surprise at David and I agreeing about something for once than a statement about Camus. I'll get around to reviewing for Japanese eventually, a statement which pretty much summarizes my general fail academic habits. (Also, I apply the word "fail" religiously to just about everything in case you didn't notice.)

Anyway, I generally slack off until the last possible moment where I hate life for a few days as I bury myself in my study materials and don't sleep (wait, how is that different from the rest of the time...?) and just cram as much information as I can into my head. It's actually very ironic because I wrote my Human Bio term paper last fall about the neural processes involved in memory and I explained why cramming doesn't work. However, since I still manage to scrape by on my exams in the end, there isn't much incentive for me to reform my terrible ways.

My JR Pass came in the mail today! Yay! I bought a Universal 7-Day pass for my post-program travels to 東近江 to meet/visit my cousins, possibly involving a sightseeing stop in Tokyo beforehand. For the uneducated, that means I have unlimited use of the Japanese Railway (which essentially runs through ALL of Japan) for 7 days. It's a pretty sweet deal, and I highly recommend it for anybody who plans on traveling. Apparently Ashok misunderstood my query about whether or not he had bought a JR Pass and ended up buying several to cover two months of traveling--失敗. If he'd read Yale's really handy SAC guide, he'd have known that the JR passes (or tram passes) which we'll use to commute to school can actually be purchased in Japan, unlike the aforementioned Universal ones which have to be bought overseas. I suppose he still doesn't quite beat my future college roommate on terms of fail though---she called the other morning to tell me about how she showed up for Summer Session at Yale, moved all of her belongings onto the 4th floor of Trumbull, checked her schedule, and realized she was signed up for the July Summer Session. Yeah. I kind of love her.

As I was saying, it'll be pretty epic trying to converse with my dad's side of the family (they immigrated from Equatorial Guinea to Japan, you see) in broken Vietnamese and Japanese, like I did on the phone about two month ago, which was a disaster. I also don't really understand Vietnamese honorifics, where my 30-something year old cousin has to use respectful terms to address me just because my father is older than my uncle. I also hate referring to myself with the honorific terms, so I just end up saying my own name a lot and speaking in the 3rd person. Oh well.

I think I'm going to go for a run, eat a large bowl of coffee ice cream and undo my entire workout, and then study. Promise. At the very least, I'll review the 219 Kanji we covered over the year. You would think that this whole no facebook thing that I have would be conducive to some level of productivity, but that hasn't really worked out so well since I just end up talking to Ashok for hours every night. Kevin would tell me that I lack discipline. Well, actually he'd tell me that I "rack disciprine." And now, Bubba's whining in my face and demanding to be walked again (I'm pretty sure that Kim & Nathan just took him for a walk), so I'm off. Toodle pip cheerio!