Tuesday Freakout

Yesterday after sessions with Takako and Taiga, I was suddenly invited for a shinnenkai (New Year's Party; celebrating it this late in the month seems suspiciously like just another excuse for Japanese people to get drunk on a week day) for my advisor's zemi (thesis seminar). It was really great - just the guys showed up (the class is primarily male) and there was much drinking and back-slapping. We did some good ol' hashigozake (bar-hopping) and the group slowly dwindled as the night went on. They once again impressed me with their ability to nimbly bounce between debating about economics and politics and talking about s-e-x. At the end, the zemi's resident loud mouth Tanabe (it seems like every Japanese class has one loud mouth kid that is the leader) crashed at my place since he couldn't get home that late. He's the type of guy who still yells everything he says to you even when it's 4 AM, silent, and you're sitting like six feet apart.

So following that little adventure, today, I freaked out. I have so much work to get done this week and in the next month and so many little annoying errands to run and places to go and people to see, etc. and YET I still went out last night and I'm still leaving for an extended vacation of domestic travel in four days. So I freaked for awhile, made some phone calls to gather my nerves into neat little bundles again, then stayed in my room all day working, forgot my wallet when I went to go buy dinner, and ate snack foods while crunching Japanese divorce statistics.

I am now going to bed. Good night.