othello tuesday

it would be tough to write a post today without mentioning silver week. yesterday was respect-for-the-aged day (thanks happy monday law, enacted in 2000.) and tomorrow is autumn equinox (seriously, i love a country that makes that a reason for a day off!) and then today? well, today is the othello of holidays. too bad silver week won't happen again until 2016.

my silver week has been fairly anti-climatic. though, i guess being unemployed does that to most holidays. i have been hearing of traffic jammed highways and overpriced airfare, but otherwise it just meant crowded trains, stores and restaurants on what would normally be a lazy tuesday afternoon.

i met up with Newbie for some shopping at kinokuniya (i love bookstores) and lunch. we also spent a fair chunk of time just standing in the rotary at shinjuku station people watching. fascinating things, people are.

i can spend hours in kinokuniya. today, my main reason for going was to get my application for the JLPT test in december. (yeah, ugh.) we spent a good couple hours there though, browsing the japanese study books, english magazines, a book with all those cat photos (i'll admit, some of them are pretty funny, especially when Newbie does the voices) and even ventured into the cooking section.

i bought this book: but my bigger purchase was a huge set of flashcards (903 to be exact) for all the kanji of level one of the JLPT. apparently i'm a huge nerd because i got so excited that i had to open the box at lunch "just to see what they look like!!" i was like a little kid at christmas. they were a little expensive, but are really nice and will save me hours of making my own. and mostly, well, i love flashcards.