I've started school, and most of the other students are from China... Of course I ended up joining a class that is way above my level, so while I'm floundering around with my limited vocab and my slow sentence construction they're bounding around making jokes with the teacher. It's a pretty fun class and everyone seems pretty nice, so that's good, but it's stressful when I'm put on the spot!

Right near my place is a street I've walked past multiple times, thinking it was an innocent little street, only to find that it was Kappabashi; renown as the one stop spot for anyone opening a resturant or stocking up their kitchens!

Each of these photos is of just one store, so multiply the picture to corner store size arrays, then say there's about 10 of each specialty store (of course some have more than 10!) and that's the kind of street this is!

Plastic food fridge magnets (I was going to get some for you guys, but they cost $10+ each!!), knives, chairs, neon signs, crockery, lacquerware you name it, it's here...

As you can see my flowers did end up blooming late, but white not pink and they died shortly after... I think it was too cold in my room...

The shot of the snow on the first day when we got there... Consequently there is not very much snow around... Compared to what was there later!!

Think I'll be going back up to Hakuba for a few days the weekend after the Easter weekend, the last weekend of March. Looks like it's then I'll be saying sayonara to Tokyo before hitting the slopes, exploring some of the smaller islands, studying for about a month in Kyushuu and then... Heading north where it's cooler. Perhaps a couple of months in Osaka, go climb Mt Fuji (12 hour hike!!), then a couple more months studying in Sapporo before heading home (waah). The itinerary page/footnote changed a while back when this plan did... So you can keep an eye on that even if I don't post my change of plans.

Moneywise... I don't know what's going to happen. Babysitting bubs at church for a couple of hours on Wednesday mornings, picking up odd jobs here and there, maybe in Osaka I'll find something more stable since I'm there for a full couple of months.

Only 4 weeks left in Tokyo, I'm kinda sad to be leaving Tokyo Baptist so soon, but the show must go on! (Or rather, I just wanna travel!). Looking forward to posting that box of ski clothes/manga books/winter stuff back in about a month and a half's time... Then I'll have space in my backpack! Or rather, it won't be dying...