Been a while

Ok, first off: New pictures in the photo site. From June 14th onwards. I haven't uploaded the recent ones yet, because I have no time. I'm sure you guys can tell with the inconsistency of this blog. Next: I've been working hard in lab the last couple of days and have been having a blast. Here are some pictures of my fruits of labor. Just look at all the .bmp's in the folder. In the last couple weeks, I co-threw a large party in Tuan's room, hanging out with friends more, Skyping with some people, had a couple of finals, and just going to lab infrequently (although last 3 days, I have been there until midnight). My finals are for the most part, a complete joke. The japanese finals are fun, but the non-language classes are just ridiculous. My "computer engineering" final was 2 questions, one of which was "What do you think of this class." Moreover, you only had to answer one of them to get 100% in the class. I, of course, answered both since it is my major, but you could pretty much write that you thought the class was stupid, and get 100%. To be fair, the professor (who also teaches at Stanford....hm......grade inflation??) doesn't believe in the Japanese education system, and constantly reminds us. This could have been a protest of sorts, but I'm not sure. Next up, more lab (my final presentation/research is due next Tuesday), and more fun. Please leave me comments on what you want to know, because I talk to so many people, I forget what people know and don't.

Also, before I forget, some fool tried to steal my bike. I parked/locked it at the Sendai Int'l Center for a couple of hours, and when I came back my lock was open. Also, someone had put their own lock on the bike, so I couldn't open it. I ended walking across a giant bridge/park, looking like a thief (carrying my locked up bike) to a police station. After I gave the police man my name and where I registered the bike, he cut the lock for me. I guess the stupid thief thought that I wouldn't come back soon, or *gasp* forget that I had a bike. Speaking of the police, the 4th of July was fun. Only it was raining, so we lit fireworks on the 7th. Good advice: Lighting loud fireworks near houses, on a working night, is not usually accepted in Japan. Anyways, 10 of us went to a clearing near a bridge, and light a lot of fireworks that we bought at 7-11 (yes, you can buy fireworks at 7-11). About half an hour later, this ridiculously angry 20-something-year-old japanese guy started yelling and screaming at us. Of course, we pretended not to speak any japanese (an advantage of a foreigner), so he walked away, calling the cops. We moved further down and starting lighting more fireworks, when 3 cops *stopped* our fun. Actually, the cops in japan aren't really cops, at least they don't act like normal ones. They basically were really nice to us, kept apologising profusely, and told us to continue tomorrow afternoon. Then they spent about 20 minutes talking to us about how we're finding life in Japan, and what our home countries are like. Olen (from Colorado) even gave one the cops his cell number, or something. Weird. Anyways, the whole epis0de turned out to be more interesting with this twist. From "We just light some fireworks, it was cool," we can now say "Dude! We totally got shut down by THE MAN on Independence Day. That's messed up!" Japan is fun.