Current mood:

hungry

and i hated your friends best of all
today's pics: 20030515 matsuri parade etc

today i went with jenn to maruzen (big 9-story bookstore on kawaramachi) and bought an electronic japanese dictionary, a Canon WordTank IDF-4100 (pic). so much easier than carrying around all three of my dictionaries (english to furigana, furigana to english, and kanji) like i've been doing. now i just have to figure out how to use it, cuz the menus and instructions are all in japanese. it was a little expensive, but everyone says having one on hand will help your japanese grow incredibly, because you can actually learn new kanji etc as you see them rather than just going "huh i wonder what that means" and then forgetting about it. plus this model also has the Oxford english dictionary built in as well, so i can keep using it once i go back to the states as well.

at maruzen i also found a copy of "The Art Of Nausicaa". awesome. it wasn't that expensive, for an anime art book, either. about $24. woohoo.

i realized i havent taken any pictures of my host family, house, etc, so i will do that tomorrow. i started with some of my room, but the family has gone to bed, so i'll take the rest tomorrow morning.

ah, sam just told me via phone email how to switch the dictionary into english menus, and confirmed that you can in fact look up kanji by radical etc without knowing the pronunciation. im much happier with my purchase now, i was worried that it couldn't do that (and also that i'd never learn how to use it).

p.s., ever wondered where the phrase "eat humble pie" comes from? the dictionary (who will heretofore be referred to as Jimmy The Pro, since im sure the yellowjacket who previously held the appelation has since passed away) says that it comes from a pun on the old word "umbles", meaning "offal", which was considered an inferior food. hmm.