Ha! I only let 2 weeks slip by between posts this time. Go me! I apologize for any random m's, k's, or n's that pop up - the soda I spilled a month ago on my keyboard is getting a bit temperamental and changing letters that it likes to add repeatedly. At first my computer wouldn't let me type those letters, but now it seems determined to make up for this fact by adding extras to every sentence. What's better, I sometimes don't even push k, but it adds a random k just for the heckk of it. And I can't be bothered with typing this in Word first and then doing spell checkk, so you'll just have to live with it. :-) Apologies.

On Allergies
Currently in Japan, we are going through allergy season. I believe that everyone is saying that it is cedar allergy season. They say that cedar pollen is getting to everyone. When they do the news every night, they have a separate time during the weather when they broadcast how bad the pollen will be for the week (instead of suns to show sunny weather, they have little animated heads. A really bad allergy day is represented by someone wearing a mask kand coughing, whereas a mild day is someone wearing a mask and looking somewhat constipated).

Anyhow, literally everyone around me is suffering intensely. The staff rooms are full of nonstop coughing, sneezing (which they don't cover their mouths to do, and they appear to try to do is as loudly as possible), burping (? not sure of the connection to allergies, but the instances of random burps in the staff room have risen of late), hacking, and (shudder) sniffing. The composite of all these makes it sound like I'm working in a rat infested plague pit. I've never encountered cedar allergies before, but they seem to make everyone in Japan absolutely miserable. And I can only assume, based on the continuous and annoying nature of the sniffles, that said cedars are growing inside their nasal cavities. What's more, these allergy sufferors seem to be trying to keep said cedars INSIDE their noses, while at the same time, the allergens are trying to convince the cedars to come out and frollick in the snot-covered fields with them.

And the thing is, there’s no medication here that can help because all the semi-strong sinus and allergy medication is ILLEGAL in Japan . That’s right. Even something like Tylenol sinus is too strong and is considered highly dangerous. So instead of helpful medication, people are forced to go to nose and throat clinics where the doctor gives them water in a squirt bottle and 28 different kinds of sugar pills and tells them to come back in a week if their symptoms haven’t cleared up. So for 2 months, they sit in misery, making others miserable, too, as their noses run nonstop. I miss America, where we can just go straight to a doctor who says, “oh, you have allergies.” And he gives us some medicine with warning labels like: may cause drowsiness, slight mood swing, loss of appetite, seizure, blood clot, insanity, bed-wetting, etc. And we wake up the next day next to 10 dead bodies of people we’ve killed in a sleep-walking rage and say, "Hey, he was right! No more sniffles! This stuff is great!"

Another Quick Update

You know it's been a good birthday when...
it takes you 30 minutes to email replies to everyone who wished you a happy birthday
the weather is over 50 degrees and you don't have to use your heater for once
you battle your apartment back to a state of semi-ungrossness
you finish a horrible, boring, upsetting class before your birthday and never have to do it again
you watch a good movie
you have time for a nap

On Signs
So I've been gaining weight lately. And I know this for a fact. I'm not like one of those girls who gain 1/8 of a pound and start complaining to their friends and saying, "I'm such a pig!!! I'm never eating food again!" I've seriously gained a bit of weight. And I've taken proactive steps recently by buying a treadmill. But I still buy dessert that I know I probably shouldn't because it just makes me fatter. But just the other day, I got a big hint that I really need to start losing weight. I went to the store desperately wanting something chocolate-y. So I bought a chocolate pudding pastry. And to go with it, I bought a chocolate latte. And since it's been warming up lately, I decided to get an ice cream bar in case I wanted something cold later in the week. Feeling a little guilty, I went to the register, where I received a clear sign from above. When the cashier rang up my healthy purchases, I looked at the register to see my total. Much to my dismay, my dessert total was 666 yen. Now, if that isn't a sign that I'm supposed to lose weight, I don't know what is.