Wasted Day

I slept in until nearly 2:30 this afternoon, partly because I might have been tired after going for a run the previous evening, partly because I drank some coffee at around 10pm, partly because my right knee was sore and I had difficulty getting comfortable enough to sleep, and partly because the room I was sleeping in isn't very bright in the mornings so I am not bothered by the sun. It was quite annoying. I had no idea that I had slept that late. Nobody bothered to wake me up, so I blissfully traveled around Egypt in my dreams.

After a sanma and miso soup lunch, Mom and I trekked off to Yokota to run some errands. When we got back, it was already approaching 8 and Hitoshiojichan was cooking spaghetti for dinner. It was a little amusing to watch him and Obaachan eat it with chopsticks and slurp it up as they would any other noodle dish. Mom and I used forks. We were the odd ones.

Now that I wrote that, I am bothered as to why they are called "chopsticks," as that makes no sense to me. Wikipedia knows all, apparently, so 30 seconds after that thought I found this knowledge nugget:

The English word "chopstick" seems to have been derived from Chinese Pidgin English, a pidgin where "chop chop" meant quickly.
The Mandarin Chinese word for chopsticks is kuàizi (筷子) or kuài'er (筷儿/筷兒). 筷 is a semantic-phonetic (xíngshēng) compound with a phonetic part of "快", which means quick, and a semantic part, 竹, meaning bamboo.

My curiosity has been sated.

I did not mention that Gackt is on a samurai drama broadcast weekly here. It's weird. Mom says he looks foreign. I told her that he was born in Okinawa, which seemed to explain everything to her about his appearance. Beat Takeshi is also on some weird variety quiz shows. Mom says that he looks mean, and when I told her that I've only seen him in movies where he is either a Yakuza member or a sociopath, she nodded, knowingly. My limited knowledge of Japanese pop culture is less limited than hers, apparently.

I have decided that I need to start getting out more in these next couple weeks. I probably won't be getting out of the Tokyo area, but there are so many things to do that it doesn't even matter. Here are places that I've decided that need to visit:

Roppongi
Asakusa
Ueno
Akihabara (I didn't spend much time there last time)
Edogawa
Kanda

I also want to go back to Mt. Takao when it's a little cooler and the trees have turned colors. Suzukoobachan had a lovely calendar in her bathroom with a photo of Mt. Takao surrounded by beautiful orange and red trees. It's only about $6.40 round-trip, and I think it'd be worth it, especially to take a hike up the mountain trail for the fantastic view. And Ome is like $3.20, and there are neat things to see there, too. Maybe I should go tomorrow. I want to sightsee away from the city a little bit.

It's very late, and I didn't even realize it. I hope I don't oversleep tomorrow.