"Stop thinking sleeping and start thinking baseball."

What a crazy Monday.

But before we get to that, there's the small matter of the weekend to cover.

So Saturday wasn't a particularly eventful day. Took the opportunity to travel out to Teramachi (along with, it seemed, every other gaijin on the course) where I followed Polly's advice and found my way to a big used clothes shop called Kinji. And what a delight it was! 2 parkas, 2 hoodies, 2 otaku shirts (plaid ones) for 5000 yen (about £25). THIS is the sort of money I'd like to spend on clothes all the time, not the nonsense shops are charging nowadays. Plus I hear the exchange rate is improving these days.

Then, unable to resist, I played my second game of Senjou no Kizuna. Wow is that game fun, but the inevitable is starting to eke it's way into reality. Blown up twice, I was, with only one kill to my name in both games. Still, that was enough to push me up to Rank 3, as well as earn me a Zaku Mk I suit to try. Quite like my Zaku II, though, so I'll probably stick. Then it was to Book Off to get the second volume of Steam Detectives for 105 yen. A good little book, that, though it bears a few too many similarities to Batman for my liking. A young boy loses his parents to the criminal underworld and vows revenge, lives in a big house with a basement filled with gadgets and a butler who knows more than he lets on, fights costumed villains every week in clever ways. Very suspicious. Also got around to watching the next Pokemon movie (Lucario and the Mystery of Mew) which was pretty good (check Facebook for a review).

Now, Sunday, and the day of the softball game. I must admit, I was not looking forward to making a fool of myself. The service was taken, much to our surprise, by the leader of the youth group, the theology student who greeted me on day 1, and he did a good sermon. It was on Acts 6 1-17, and the importance of prayer. Mark and I found we could understand more this week, though maybe he'd simplified it for our sakes. Wouldn't put it past him. Then it was off to the manse for a quick lunch of udon, then down to the Gardens, kit in hand. My fears were then confirmed: these guys didn't know what softball was, or how it differed (at least in my mind) from baseball.

So we played baseball instead.

I'd like to get into that game if I could, I found it a lot more fun that football has ever been. The Japanese players showed off their skills at their national game, but not to the degree that it was humiliating. Mark did especially well (curse his eyes!). All in all, a wonderful experience.

Afterwards Mark and I walked the short distance to Teramachi, as he was keen on seeing a couple of the places I had discovered the day before. We had taiyaki (fish-shaped sweet bread and bean curd, superb) and then went to a little shop on the 4th floor of the tower block called Yellow Submarine, a card gaming and boardgaming shop. Both days it was full of people, a group of about 15 gathered in the far corner to play games and be frivolous, so it was a great atmosphere. Popular card games, as far as we could see, were Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering (to a lesser extent) and a game we hadn't seen before called Gundam War.

We now both own a starter set. It's a fun-looking game, as well, and plays remarkably similar to Magic. You use Generation Cards (GCards) to deploy units, fire one-shot Commands or long-term Operations or bring Characters to the field. Rather than elements, as in Magic, you have 7 Nations with 7 colours to choose from, and Generations for each. Blue is for the Earth Federation, Green for Zeon, Red for Neo-Zeon, Purple for Freelance (stuff like Celestial Being from 00). You then get Brown for the repressed underdog characters (e.g. G Gundam's people), Black for characters forced into conflict (e.g. V Gundam's lot) and White for characters searching for ultimate peace (such as Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED), or something like that. Each colour has strengths and weaknesses. Turns out my lot are Green, lots of weak units that deploy cheaply and quickly, and Mark's are White, expensive but powerful. Looking forward to our first proper battle tomorrow.

Right, today.

Nothing special to day about language class. It was on causatives, for those who care, and was actually very straightforward. But after lunch came InterCom, but much to our surprise it seems White-sensei had forgotten. No explanantion. He just didn't show. No complaints here, gave us time to do homework and revise for both tomorrow's kanji quiz and Wednesday's grammar test.

Culture class was equally bizarre, as I had forgotten that it was the scheduled Aikidou lesson. A lot of fun that (I was picked for demonstrations twice...) as it actually doesn't hurt much, and gave me lots of chances to practice stage-falling. I'd like to get into it if I wasn't so lazy and didn't want to hold up a job as well in the future. But no, that was a nice surprise.

Afterwards Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Ben and I went off to find dinner and, after some debate, settled on Mos Burger. Happened into Tsutaya on the way back, a local bookshop chain (I wanted to check their Gundam War card prices, turns out they don't do them) and was coerced into getting a rental card after seeing the ridiculous range of CDs on offer. For 1330 yen (£7-ish) I got the Gundam 00 soundtrack, the Shin Megami Tensei soundtrack, the Super Robot Wars alpha 2 soundtrack and JAM Project's 2nd Best Of CD overnight, which are now all on my harddrive. Heck, we're allowed! Will be going back there later!

So here I am, taking a break between kanji revision sessions. It's looking... okay for tomorrow, but it's difficult to get confident after... last week. Gotta do the best I can, eh?

No letters this week.

Thanks for reading!