As the weeks fly by

I find it kind of hard to believe that i've been here for almost a month now, partly because its gone so fast, and that now it just feels like i've been here for ages. Oh well.
Anyway, so this week marked the beginning of Japanese lessons and my lab placement. The Japanese lessons are just boring, there isn't any other way to describe them. My lab work h0wever, has actually been thoroughly enjoyable. My DNA purification worked a treat, and we're well on our way to determining the role of NMA111 protein in ERAD in budding yeast (long story short, good news).
This has been a very fun weekend indeed, we went clubbing on friday night, then walked home from Sakae to here (about 2 hours), but instead of sleeping we went and queued up for the bazaar, that was supposedly amazing. So we queued up for a bout 4 hours to find it was effectively just a garage sale, I did pick up a water heater/boiler thing (no, its not a kettle) so I can now make tea.
Saturday evening, we had a cocktail party for Sarah's birthday (from Oz), which was a lot of fun. Today, me and some of the others went to Kirin beer park (beer factory, why its called a beer park I have no idea) where we got to eat malt and drink the wort, which wasn't as bad as you might think. It was a very interesting tour, explaining how they make it all etc, and we got free beer too.
This week is gonna be tough, more Japanese lessons, and the research is gonna step up another level. But on the plus side, my lab-mates have invited me drinking with them on wednesday, which will be fun, followed by clubbing on friday and saturday... obviously.

One additional note, we watched a Japanese horror film on wednesday night called "Noroi" (2005). I definately rate it as one of the best films i've ever seen. It draws you in straight away and doesn't let you go. It's about a man who investigates paranormal goings on with his cameraman, and the whole film is either footage they have shot or clips from variety shows or news broadcasts related to the story, which makes fo a very interesting narrative. The plot itself is quite complicated and you do have to pay attention to notice the details, but putting the effort in definitely pays off at the end. Which makes for a very, very disturbing end to a mystery of a film.