Exam Time, CNY, and Snow

It's been a rather busy exam period but for me at least, it's starting to wind down a little. Just a final report and one more exam left.

-------------------------------

On another note, here are some pretty pictures from the past week or two:

Sunset from a random building rooftop.

Symmetry: A beautiful park near my campus.

The same park.

In other news, heavy snowfall in Tokyo last night! It was kinda amazing. Until you start to feel the water/melting snow squish around in your boots/wet socks. Heh. Still... =)

A Happy Lunar New Year to one and all indeed!

Back in Tokyo

Got back to Tokyo 3-4 days ago after a 34 hour journey from my friend's place in Norway. Europe/Scandinavia was amazing, and it was so comfortable and wonderful to catch up with my friends there. Yet, the more I travel, the more I realise I don't know anything. Scandinavia is really quite an eye-opener.

Been busy rushing 2 presentations for tomorrow and well, still working on the 2nd one now. After tomorrow will be 2-3 weeks left of school, which means 2-3 weeks of deadlines, papers, and exams. Oh wowee.

Some photos to come after tomorrow!

Kyoto 23-25 Nov

Apologies for the recent neglect - caught up doing too many things and nothing at the same time heh.

Last Wednesday (23 Nov) was Labour Day and a public holiday, and since I usually have no classes on Tues and Thurs, that left me 3 days free, so I went on a solo trip to Kyoto! =)

Days 1 and 3 were on my own, but day 2 I was lucky enough to have Sze Ping come down from Osaka to join me. It was great catching up with her =)

Anyway here's some pictures from Kyoto. Even though it's supposed to be the start of the perfect momiji (red maple leaf) season, but the unusually warm weather so far meant that it was still pretty much multi-coloured with just some red trees. Still pretty though:

Famous Kinkakuji

Sze Ping and I at Toufukuji

The thousand Torii Shrine - Fushimi Inari

Kyoto Imperial Palace

It's Autumn =)

Europe next week on, but I still have lots to prepare. What's new? Heh...

Midterm Red Magic at Nikko

The past four days were the first school break in a while. Thursday was Culture Day - Bunka no Hi (文化の日); Friday was a school holiday in preparation for the Waseda School Festival on the subsequent Saturday and Sunday. So yay, no classes for 4 days in a row, and since I usually have classes 10.40-12nn, and 2.45 to 4.15pm on Saturdays, this was my first ever free weekend!

Thursday was spent recovering from the all-nighter that I pulled on Tuesday night that preceded a 9am-6pm day (with 2 reports and 1 presentation due), and so Friday we went off to Nikko (日光）to see some of the autumn red leaves.

Nikko National Park is quite an interesting place actually, with a World Heritage area, theme park area, onsen, mountains of deciduous forests, Lake Chuzenji, plateaus and waterfalls too. Definitely worth a second, and much longer, visit, but for now, mission accomplished.

More photos up on facebook.

Too bad but am now back to reality of more midterm reports, assignments and presentations.

Tokyo Hike

Waseda had an event whereby students could sign up to 'hike' - by which they actually mean saunter at your own pace - for 20km, through 5 different university campuses for one whole day.

It was quite fun, despite taking up my Sunday, leaving me with no weekend again, but then again I never usually do have free, lazy weekends.

Pictures up on Facebook.

Weather changes

It's more than midway through October; and today was the first day I felt an autumn chill. 15degC. Took you long enough, Autumn, but I did so enjoy the past month of summery cool.

Time to pile on the autumn layers and break out the furry jackets. Hooray. ...Or not. More layers do mean taking more time to decide what to wear though. Ugh.

--------

And just because I have glue and a stack of receipts (I always keep my receipts in Japan), I'm making a recycled post-it pad. It's still a baby, but I'm sure it'll stack up in no time at all. My only grouch: I just wish it were more colourful.

Butter vs Margarine

Just earlier tonight at 6.39pm, I'd thought to myself "It's a Friday night and I'm off to the library. Gosh." ^^

----

On the way back to the dorm from the library, I made my customary rounds at the supermarkets (so I guess it's not surprising at all that most of my expenditure is at supermarkets, so much so that I think I have accumulated enough food to hypothetically last me through a world war...). To my horror, I realised that the supermarket seemed to have started selling much fewer brands of butter, and many more of the cheap affordable, claim-to-taste-like-butter margarine. I've always been some sort of purist when it comes to food and ingredients: Want it to taste like butter? Then use butter, not a replacement! Want to be healthy and ingest less oil/sodium/polysaturated fats? Then ingest in moderation, but never ever replace it with less-salt/fat/etc items that more often than not compromise a lot on taste. I tested this out recently by purchasing a low-sodium soy sauce, and can I just say it must have had a totally opposite effect. Its taste is so mild and mildly off-putting at that too, that I probably have ended up putting in salt just to try and remedy the taste. Ugh. The only reason why I'm still putting up with that low-sodium fake of a soy sauce is because I'm holding out for fish sauce, which I have yet to locate.

Anyway, back to the point of my post. It all got triggered because when I got back, I checked my mail and the daily quote that I subscribe to and received today was none other than about butter and margarine!

"As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists".

-Joan Gussow

So true, don't you think?! Hehe. =)