I had my first meeting with my conversation partner today, a nice young woman named Chisato Nanbu. It wasn't a very long meeting (we fit it into the hour lunch break between classes), but I think it was at least mildly productive; I finally got a chance to eat at Koko's California Restaurant (think something along the line of Denny's. There's one pretty much attached to the JCMU academic building, so it's been a fairly frequent stop for students. I haven't had the inclination to 'eat out' so I hadn't gone there previous to today). There was a surprisingly long wait to be seated, which gave us plenty of time to make some rather broken small talk, but meant that when we finally got a table, we had to eat fast so that we wouldn't be late getting back to class. I ended up just getting a caesar salad and a cup of chicken noodle soup, a fact that would slip my mind when later that afternoon I decided to bike on over to Vida City (the local mega-mall complex). It's about a half-hour's brisk bike ride from JCMU, and I wondered why on the way back I felt so run down all of a sudden.

I did splurge a little at the mall, but since I wasn't driven by the need to acquire DDR related products, my spending was much more reasonable. I picked up a used copy of Soul Edge for the PSX for about Y700, and rounded out my manga collection with the first volume of Trigun, some more Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu (the Jungle was Nice, and then along came Guu), and the first two volumes of Great Teacher Onizuka, the moving tale of a former Motorcycle gang member who inspires students to good grades with his burning passion for teaching! I think that I'm going to have to model my behavior when I come back to teach after Onizuka… well, except that I won't have a gang of motorcycle toughs to call in when the school delinquents get out of hand, and I'm sure that there is some sort of rule (and if there isn't, there should be) about suplexing the principal, and if I _have_ to fall off the roof of the school, I'll try really hard _not_ to land on the principal's car.

Our first midterm is coming up Friday. I pretty sure that I'll be able to take it in stride, since unlike back at State, I've managed to stay completely on top of my schoolwork. I've fallen into a very workable schedule, where I do the homework right after class, then do whatever else needs doing in the afternoon, and then study after dinner. I'm getting everything done, and I don't feel like I'm under any sort of extreme pressure. So this is what competence feels like. I should try it more often.