No Class, No Sun

So as mentioned yesterday, no classes today.  But there was also no sun today, but there was rain.  Not so cold though, still Baguio-like weather.  This might become the usual day for me after a few months.  Whole day in front of my computer, reading, studying, writing, organizing stuff.  Except at lunch break, then to the gym to play basketball or lift weights or run, and then dinner.

I was supposed to go to the Atsugi City Hall to pick-up my alien registration card, but I thought I am going to the Immigration Office on Monday anyway, so I can hit 2 birds with 1 stone and save JPY 520 in transportation costs.  So I did not go.  Besides, it was raining.

For studying, I did a little review for our Nihongo class.  So now I supposedly know these Hiragana characters already:
あ い う え お
か き く け こ
が ぎ ぐ げ ご

That's:
a   i   u   e   o
ka ki ku ke ko
ga gi gu ge go

It's interesting to note that the g* syllables are the same as the k* syllables, except there's a symbol similar to a double quotation mark.  Notice the similarity?  Now I only need to remember the ten vowels and the k* characters, and I already know 15.  There's a total of 71 basic Hiragana characters representing vowels and two-letter syllables, plus 33 Hiragana characters representing 3-letter syllables like "kyu" or "ja" (equivalent to
"dya"?).  Yikes!

Well that's Lesson 1 so far.  I have to review Lesson 2 before the next class.  If I play "Mahjong" often, I would have known at least 9 Kanji characters - the Kanji for the numbers 1 to 9!  Actually I do know 1, 2, and 3: 一, 二, and 三.  Easy enough, eh?

One interesting thing today is...  we were able to play 3-on-3 basketball!  Our 4 fellow PhD students from India decided to join us for a little exercise... basketball!  But basketball is not a very popular sport in India, just as cricket is not popular in the Philippines or in the US or even in Japan, and so...  Well it was a different kind of basketball, but it was still fun.  I think our newly baptized basketball buddies had fun as well.

Well that's it for today.  Wish I could taste some steamed chicken breasts.  Ja ne!