Day 121 - 29th of December

11:02pm　セミナーハウス
天気：曇り
Today was pretty lazy; didn’t end up waking up till, 11:30. I had no food, so I had to go grocery shopping. But, I had no money, so I had to get to an ATM first, and since the university was closed, I went to Hirakata station by bus. I bought some lunch from the bakery, and browsed the shops for a while, not buying anything. Then I walked back to Kirindo and Fresco. On the walk back, I stopped at Lawsons (it’s a chain convenience store). I just remembered I wanted to find the Final Fantasy XIII Elixir; and I did. The box came with the can, and a figurine. I got Lighting, the protagonist; I was thrilled. The drink was pretty gross; some sort of energy drink, but I kept the can. I picked up a heap for cheap (lolz) at Kirindo, and then made my way over to Fresco.

I noticed that 橙 (daidai – bitter orange), are being sold for decoration as well as for the 鏡餅 (kagamimochi – lit. mirror mochi) in preparation for New Years ~ Daidai means “generations”, and symbolises the continuation of family from generation to generation. It is placed on top of the kagamimochi (two round rice cakes, a smaller atop a larger that symbolise Yin and Yang, and the like); bit of trivia for you, xD. After walking back home, I spent the rest of the afternoon talking with Alex, and reading a webcomic. At about 6, I went out again, this time to Sanko, to get meat and fruit; got some great deals. I should have bought a daidai, just to try the taste; oh well.

Getting back, I made stew for dinner, and had my first injury in Japan; cut my thumb on the edge of a tin. I’m going to get tetanus now and die; sorry I shouldn’t joke about that. I’ll be fine though; it was a surface wound and I put some witch hazel on it and band-aided it. Now I’m glad I got all those band-aids from Carly and Diego. While my stew was cooking I talked with Ryan and this other guy I’d met before who was staying in seminar house 3, while watching comedy on TV. I heated up the leftover stew from a while back, and added the new stew to that; really yummy. Had rest of canned peaches, and some mandarin for dessert, then came back down here; going to get my blog up to date…