I’m Not Dead, Just a Little Hungover

It’s been a crazy couple of days around here, I hope you’re ready for a massive journal! Thursday’s talk by Amartya Sen was interesting if you’re the sort of person who gets excited when Alan Greenspan comes on CNN, otherwise, it was pretty dry. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the inherent importance of economics, and also the indisputable credentials of a Nobel Prize winner who also teaches at Harvard. Even with that in mind though, it was a struggle to maintain focus in light of the early hour. APU provided simultaneous translation via radio-headset for the Japanese students — I thought that was pretty cool. Moving on…

Thursday night found me struggling to study for my midterm in Theories of Sustainable Development, as did Friday morning. The T of SD class, as you may or may not remember, is taught by Prof. Zhang, environmental Chinese old dude extraordinaire. Well Friday afternoon rolls around and perhaps 60 nervous graduate students are assembled in a large lecture hall waiting for our first significant academic trial of the semester. Prof. Zhang slowly hands out our midterm, after assuring us it was easy, and then gives us 45 minutes to complete it. The exam itself consisted of five true/false, three fill-ins, one short answer, and two essays. It certainly *seemed* easy…

Apparently, it was not. Two hours after I returned a class-wide email from Prof. Zhang was waiting patiently in my inbox for my attention. His message was brief – I’m paraphrasing here: “That exam was only practice, do better on the next one please” at the end of which he included the correct answers in a document file. Having reviewed the attached answers I can tell you proudly that I got ALL of the True/False questions correct, and pretty much NOTHING ELSE! Actually, I was reasonably clued-in on all the questions, but my answers were no where near the specificity he desired. I suppose if one is going to utterly bomb a midterm though, doing so as a show of uniformity with virtually every other classmate is the best way to go! My only other comment is this: if someone bombs a midterm, and then gets a free pass, what lesson does that teach?!

Now for the main event. Saturday night was the go-time for our 2nd 4th Floor Team party. This week’s plan was all-you-can-eat dinner at a Yakiniku restaurant, followed by a few hours of karaoke. Last night’s cast consisted of Ting, Satoshi, Yun ji, Mina, Shiori, and myself. You’ll notice the names of three new ladies who have joined in on the shenanigans. Yun ji is a freshman at APU from Korea who lives on our floor, and Shiori and Mina are Japanese freshmen who I’d met previously and invited along. Yakiniku restaurants are pretty awesome. Generally you buy an all-you-can-eat meal which in Japanese is called “Tabehoudai,” although they do enforce a 90 minute time limit. Each table has one or two gas grills installed in the middle and you collect various meats, vegetables, and other assorted victuals from a huge buffet and grill them to your satisfaction at your seat.

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Bless my ignorance, it allows me to try things I otherwise might avoid. For example, on my first trip to the raw meat buffet, I unknowingly brought back a plate of pig intestines and pig tongue. I proceeded to grill and happily eat these, since they were delicious, again unknowingly! In addition to the tabehoudai, the men opted for the nomehoudai as well – note the magnificent beer mug collection.

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Having concluded our feasting, we waddled happily down the sidewalk back towards downtown to our chosen place of karaokical debaucheration. We rented our own room for two hours and quickly ordered another round of drinks. At this point, things started to get silly.

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There’s not really all that much to say, other than that karaoke in Japan is way more fun than the ongoing embarrassment-factory that is karaoke in America.

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Rather than punish strangers in some bar with your uncooperative vocal cords, you punish your friends –

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– and generally you do it with copious amounts of the legal liquid intoxicant of your choice…

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Ladies and gentlemen, if melodies could be weapons, I was packin’ HEAT!

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The Casbah was rocked most vigorously by stirring renditions of Loser(Beck), Under the Bridge(RHCP), Somewhere I Belong(Linkin Park), Pretty Fly(The Offspring), and the wild card every American carries in their deck — YMCA.

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Scattered in between my tone-deaf, beer-fueled show stoppers…

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…was a wide assortment of Japanese and Korean pop songs, and even the theme song from Aladdin, the love that Disney over here… All in all it was a great night…

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…and we had…

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…a ton of fun…

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…that just kept going…

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…on and on…

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…as the night got later…

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…and our throats became hoarse…

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…until we just about crashed.

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We stayed out until 1am and had a great time. Granted, by American standards 1am is bush-league early, but once the buses stop running around 10pm or so, the taxi rates start climbing, and it ended up costing us $30 to get home as it was… so 1am it a good time to pack it in.

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