I AM A MAJESTIC TAIYAKI

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, everybody.  Guess who was actually accidentally food poisoning herself the whole time.
Hint: It's me.
So, uh, after eating more servings of pork noodles than I care to freely admit* and wondering why every time I ate them I started feeling horrible afterwards, it suddenly dawned on me that sometimes correlation is causation.  What I think happened is that my pork went bad, 'cause it was in our sucky fridge** and then I cooked it into a huge batch of noodles and then the noodles became a breeding ground for bacteria and...well, anyway, the lid of the container looked like a petri dish when I finally threw it out.
All together now:
EW, GROSS.

Fortunately, I stopped food poisoning myself in time to be somewhat recovered to meet Kocchan on Saturday for Crazy English Practicing Times, which was actually more like 45% English, 50% Japanese, 5% unintelligible Japanglish (on my end).  I also discovered that matcha lattes don't actually have coffee in them, and are really good at settling upset stomachs.  Crazy!  But anyway, after I got horrifically lost on the subway (oh gods, don't try to navigate the subway while you're sick) and Kocchan was nice enough to not punch me for being 30 minutes late (HOW COULD I MISTAKE TENMACHO FOR YABACHO I AM A FAILURE slknrekbarebjareha;) we had a nice chat and talked about moose and practiced being cooperative in English.  And then we went to Loft, which is a very difficult store to describe, except that it is like someone decided to pack RIDICULOUSNESS and FUN into a store.  It has things like Taiyaki costumes (which Kocchan got a picture of me in) and Mount Fuji costumes (which I got a picture of Kocchan in).  Also, we practiced using the word "majestic," as in "that taiyaki is SO MAJESTIC."  I teach important English phrases.***
...also on the way to Loft I got stopped on the street by this girl who said I was adorable and asked me to model for her because apparently she's an artist at a famous beauty salon in Sakae????  And she asked me if I was half and I said I was half SOMETHING but that something wasn't Japanese.  And then I said I was very sorry but make-up makes me break out and thus being a model is not the greatest idea and her response was, "Oh well, you're cute anyway!"
So that was a new experience for me. Nobody has ever asked me to model for them before.  And I can probably count the number of people who have non-ironically called me cute in the past five years (without following it with "in a really scary way" or "but terrifying") on one hand.  So, uh, yeah, it was kind of nice?****

What else have I been up to?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, I stopped food poisoning myself.  So pro.
I foisted books (specifically Powers and Feed, go read them) on Louki and apparently she is some sort of reading demon because she has already given me Powers back.
I am reading The Basic Eight, which has once again convinced me that I Did Puberty Wrong, because I did not spend a great deal of time skipping school to go shoes shopping.
I went to the Immigration Bureau today to get a re-entry permit (for when I go tour grad schools), which was a lot easier than I expected it to be.  Everyone I've spoken to has described it as being like visiting the DMV and has also said that it takes hours and hours, but I was in and out in 15-20 minutes.  It really wasn't bad at all.
I bought my Shinkansen tickets for my upcoming crazy travel,***** which was kind of like carving a section out of my arm, except that I cannot ride in comfort across Japan on a section of my arm.
The dorm had a nabe party tonight, where everyone brought a single ingredient.  If you've never had nabe before, it's basically throw-stuff-in-a-pot-and-cook-it-until-it-tastes-good, so in our case it was kind of like Stone Soup and also SO DELICIOUS.  Oh gosh, I'm going to try to recreate a couple of them 'cause they were amazing.

Also, I bought NEW HEADPHONES.  My headphones, being cheap and lame, finally bit the dust, which is to say that the sound on the right side died which made me very confused when a friend sent me a comedy routine in which apparently half the dialog was silent.  But now I have NEW HEADPHONES which were also cheap and will probably break at some point, BUT THEY ARE SO NICE.  I've been listening to my music, and SUDDENLY I CAN HEAR ALL THIS STUFF THAT WASN'T THERE BEFORE?  Like whole countermelodies?  And suddenly there's a bass line?  Which makes me believe that A. my old headphones were seriously lame and B. my computer speakers are cheap and lame.
...of course, Geoff just sent me a load of MLP:FIM fan music, so I can revel in good music AND my glorious new headphones.
...I am not obsessed, I swear.

*四回食べちゃった.  Yeah.

**I could write haiku about why our fridge is so sucky.

Our fridge likes to freeze
everything solid sometimes.
Oh no, not the ice.

I am not sure how
cold our fridge is normally
but it seems warm-ish.

Cold fridge turns my food
to ice but warm fridge is a
breeding ground for yuck.

You may shower me with praise now.

***Okay, to be fair to my English teaching skills, apparently Kocchan actually used stuff I taught her on her written test and she passed with flying colors, so I am not a TERRIBLE teacher.

****Actually, it's just generally nice hanging out with people who think I'm kind of quiet and shy except when I'm super enthusiastic about something (which is pretty often) rather than people who think I'm scary/intense/terrifying/[whatever other adjective].  Being "scary" is vaguely amusing for a while but then it just gets really isolating.

*****Tentative plans are:
February 24: Travel to Takeo!  Crash.  Hope Mary doesn't draw on my face while I'm sleeping.
February 25: Adventures with Mary in Takeo!
February 26: Adventures with Tatara-san and Alyssa and Mary!  There will be CASTLES involved.
February 27: Adventures with Alyssa and Sara in Fukuoka!
February 28: Adventures with shrine priest Tatara-san knows!
February 29: Adventures with Alyssa and Sara and Alex in Beppu!
March 1: Travel to Osaka!  Adventures with Nellie!
March 2: More adventures with Nellie!  Return to Nagoya.
March 3: Recover.  Oh wait, I mean Hina Matsuri.  If anyone's doing anything for Hina Matsuri.  I haven't heard anything yet, but that doesn't mean much.
Hopefully somewhere in there: Hear back from grad schools????