Today, I went to K-ON and practiced guitar as well as started officially learning bass. I looked up the notes for the frets, major scale, and some easy tabs. What's interesting is that pressing hard on the thin strings of the guitar hurts the fingertips of my left hand while plucking the thicker strings of the bass hurts the fingertips of my right hand - at least it's balanced. It was a lot of fun! I was also able to practice some Japanese with fellow members.

As the rain began to fall harder and I opened my umbrella, I was utterly shocked to see that my umbrella became two pieces - it broke. I love it so much though! It's a rainbow! It still works but sometimes comes apart. Apparently, a tiny piece that helps lock the two posts together fell out. Maybe I'll find it tomorrow, but...we'll see.

So I will not be bringing my laptop to my Tokyo trip for safety and convenience purposes, meaning that I cannot post daily my Tokyo adventures. It will have to be backlogged during the next week. However, I'll have my handy dandy notebook so I can remember details (and my camera of course).

Today we had "nabe" - basically boiling mushrooms, hakusai (lettuce/cabbage/bok choi vegetable thing), tofu, green onions, and pork but boiling them on the table. Then dipping them in various sauces and have Chinese style soba. The soba was particularly delicious. Unlike regular soba, this version was golden and had a different flavor. It was so good. Then we finished the Winter section of the 4 season sweet box they received from the parents of their middle daughter's boyfriend. It was really neat - fruit inside this sugary casing which the outside cracked like ice but the inside was a clear gelatin. What was also fun was us all choosing certain dishes to match whatever season we were "eating." The picture below is spring - beans. Sweet beans are a popular dessert and snack here and they are actually pretty good, in almost every variation I've had so far.

So excited for this weekend! I'll finish preparations tomorrow!