After sleeping in, and feeling decidedly unmotivated to do much and annoyed about that (I really didn't need to do all those surveys you sent me, Andee!) I decided to trek out to the Canadian Embassy today to get started with getting my passport renewed, which of course, was not as simple as it should have been! I'd mostly filled in the forms, so I finished that up, and then headed to the station near the Embassy, where, Peter promised me, there was a photo place in one of the towers of the Aoyama Twin Building, where I could get Canadian passport photos done. Well, there was a gorgeous paper shop with a cafe in it (yes, a random combi!), a book store where I bought a few early readers to use for teaching for 105Y each, and some other random shops, but no photo place.

I walked down the street to the Embassy, where the very nice lady in the passport section gave me a map to the local passport photo place, and also told me that they only accept applications between 9:00 and 11:30 AM, not so helpful when I'm there at 3! I'll go on the way to work tomorrow I guess. I also got my ppt132 form, where basically since I don't have a guarantor here in Tokyo, I can pay them 5000Y, and then someone there will vouch for me. It doesn't seem especially secure, but I'm glad they do it, it means I can get my passport done here, and for less time than if I were applying from Victoria, no less. The whole guarantor thing (when done traditionally) has its flaws too, so who am I to judge - I'm sure the innocent Canadians aren't lying on their applications about who they are either ;) (watch this blog get read and me get put on some kind of watch now, as a suspicious person or something like that)

Anyway, I walked down to the passport place, and had likely the worst photo ever taken! When it flashed up on the screen, the guy was like 'daijoubou?' in this really doubtful tone, and I was like 'hai?' in an equally unsure sort of way. Peter kindly pointed out later that there was no way to explain the number of things wrong with the photo, in any language. I didn't realise quite how bad it was till I got it home tho - in the photo, it looks like I weigh about 400 pounds, and there is no separation between my head and neck, at all. It's brutal! I mean, yea, maybe I put on a few pounds since I got here, but if I took that photo through customs, people would be congratulating me on my drastic weight loss success. It's terrible! Peter's like - 'I've never seen you look like that. I will pay for you to go get new photos done!' It truly is that bad. I guess if the place is open early enough tomorrow, I'll get them done, and otherwise, well that saying 'if you look as bad as in your passport, then you really need the vacation' will be true for me!

Came home and chatted with Navina for a bit (I really hope you can come out here!!!), and got the latest breaking news from home.. I don't feel old enough to have friends who are married...with children (well in 7 or so months from now, anyway). I mean, congratulations to her, I hope she's very happy, but ahhhhhhhhhh I'm currently running back to neverland!

Spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out, watching a bit of Sex and the City and Friends while studying Japanese. I can now say 'this, that, and that over there' which I'm sure will be helpful at some stage (likely when I begin to learn some nouns to go with them). Luckily Peter came home to clear up some confusion about big numbers (they kind of stack numbers here, so instead of having a new word for forty, they just say four ten, which makes sense, but can get confusing to keep track of when you get up to like 10 452 and you have to say 1 ten thousand, 4 one hundreds, 5 tens and 2).

It was Indian Night for dinner in Oyama-cho - I fried up some thin beef I bought on Friday (it was sooo tasty!) with a red curry, I think my favourite we've had so far, and rice, and then also baked (frying= too messy, and besides after that passport photo I think some kind of crash diet is in order :p) a few samosas, which packed a pretty good punch for little guys! I also heated up some poppadom, which was good, but didn't puff up like it was supposed to, not sure what the problem was there... It was all very tasty though!

We were hoping to watch the Apprentice:LA today (which is, as promised 'intents'), but TiVo preempted it with lame hockey, so we're trying to find it somewhere else (you can't watch the free stream off the NBC website unless you have a US IP address...) as it doesn't re run at any stage during the week. I guess we might watch a movie or something before bed - I have to get up early tomorrow to make it to the passport office before work, so I should probably sleep fairly soon!

D