It's Her Birthday and She Can Cry if She Wants to

Today Sucked.

In short, the reasons were:

1. I had a lot of frustration at the cell phone shop- I had to call my program adviser to translate for me and it was a big mess and the 3rd time visiting the shop.

2. I was running late for picking up the test results, and hurrying while still annoyed over number 1.

3. We got Japanese placement exams and I got "Level 1" and the guy who didn't write anything for the essay portion got "Level 3". So now I have to mess with the registration to hope I won't be bored, but of course doing so in the most closeted-japanese-polite way.

4. I realized that the in-English classes I registered for happen at the same time.

5. The "registration" thing (number 3) that took several hours today happened to be unnecessary and all of the hurrying and anxiety and non-english-speaking-registration trouble was pointless.

Basically I summed up today until 3pm as the height of Japan-frustration-so-far, and decided to go SHOPPING (買い物） with the other exchange students!

We visited Keio Department Store and Tokyu Department Store, both are over 7 stories tall and HUGE!!! Tokyu has a "food court" that is pretty neat-- lots of imported foods.

I bought a sweatshirt today with the school logo- it is pretty cool looking. Plus it is COLD right now- there was thunder, lightning and a bit of snow today (or at least it looked like snow) and the sky looked like a jaundiced-person's urine. (it was *really* gross)

THE BIRTHDAY STORY BRIGHTENS

After shopping, I was a bit happier and returned home for dinner. We had a delicious salad with pine nuts and olive oil... and my host mother had bought a strawberry cake!! They lit two candles (one per decade) and sung to me! It was soo cute!

My host father even got me a card-- with a ticket to a Mozart concert in June! They made me feel right at home and it was very touching. Shigeo wrote beautiful Japanese prose inside (I had to use my dictionary 電子辞書). :)