Home stay assignments were supposed to come through today, but I alas, did not get a family. Today at least. Apparently someone finally noticed that little 'diabetic' note I wrote on my form, because I got called into the office to make sure that I knew that Japanese food tended to have more sugar than what I was probably used to, and would that cause problems? Oi. After I reassured the office staff that I knew how to take care of myself, and that the wrenching shift to Japanese home cooking would not strike me dead on the spot, I think things are back on track. Hopefully I'll have my family assignment tomorrow. I would be a bit more offended if I didn't make a hobby of tracking down 'idiots abroad' anecdotes.

We had our first test today, and I think I did pretty well on it. The classes so far have been a mixture of new material with a lot of review of the stuff that I already did at State. I'm actually feeling competent going through the material this second time. In Japanese at State, I felt like I was able to hold onto the material long enough to regurgitate it for the tests, but I had trouble actually gaining a decent understanding. Now that I'm in class four hours a day, and constantly exposed to the language outside of class, stuff is really starting to sink in. Memorizing kanji is still a lot of work, but that's always going to be simple brute repetition.

We have our first field trip tomorrow. The whole group is heading off to Shiga University. I'm not sure what we're going to do there (aside from wandering around and looking foreign), but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

Banking hours here suck. I though National City back home was bad, but it can't really hold a candle to Japanese banker's hours. I was going to go to the bank today after class so that I wouldn't spend another day hoping that five hundred yen would be all I needed to make it through til the morrow. Well, after class I decided I might as well get homework out of the way first, lest I find many reasons to procrastinate, and then head to the bank. Well, I finished my studying, which took me a couple of hours, then headed off for downtown Hikone. At which point I was rather rudely confronted by this fact: banks here close at three. Unlike what some people may expect, I did not make even a little spectacle of myself, instead turning around and biking back to JCMU, swearing that tomorrow I would fill my wallet with tasty yens. And of course tomorrow is a fieldtrip, taking me far away from all banks… It's time to play a new game: let's see how long I can go on eggs, oatmeal, and one hundred and fifty yen.

Sheesh. I was sure there was no way I could go through that last ten thousand yen in less than a week. Darn you DDR, and your dancing-y goodness.