I left the house at 8 this morning (after a Circle K milk run no less), in order to bike to the Embassy before it opened at 9 to apply for my passport. I decided to just use the terrible pictures - the photo place wasn't open before 9 anyway, and not that many people are going to see that picture, so it shouldn't matter that much. (I may regret this over the next five years though!)

In the end, I got to the embassy about 10 minutes before it opened, and then when I got down to the passport office, I discovered that part is only open from 9:30-11:30! Luckily they had comfy couches and a vending machine, so I waited until 9:37 when they pulled up their shutters and handed in all of my forms and everything. It was all much more efficent once they opened than in Victoria, especially now - I've been seeing crazy lines on the news as people rush to get their passports before the US regulations go into effect (and screw over Canadian tourism, but anyway...)

Once I filled in the missing blanks, etc. It was about 9:55 -l uckily the embassy is close to work! I ended up being about 10 minutes late, but I stayed late, so it was OK.

I got a ton of assignments at work today, all relating to China Town (we have a China special coming up) - I'm writing something about China Town tomorrow which will possibly be the feature, and otherwise will be the travel section, and then I'm also doing the 'On my Street' (but not MY street), working on the kids pages, and writing up the sports article. I get to go to Yokohama/China Town tomorrow to spend the whole day doing research which will be a fun field trip :)

I spent the morning doing preliminary research on China Town (and discovered that there is a ramen museum in Tokyo where you can go try lots of different kinds of ramen, I def. have to do that!)

After lunch, Anthony and I went to Suji's to interview a woman for the sports section - she's a Canadian (from Mississauga) over here with her partner for his work, but starting up super simple and short self defence classes for women, drawing on her lifelong taekwando (and other martial arts) background. It was very interesting to talk to her, and I definitely plan to at least take the initial self defense class from her... she also does some private taekwando classes which would be cool as well - stretchy and kicky!

Left work at 4:30ish, ate left over curry for a snack and then went to teach, the little girl had so much homework! She claims it was all from today (due tomorrow), but I'm not sure - it was a loooot and she barely gets any, so I'm wondering if she was hoarding it :) Funny response to this question: Something you can play music on_________. Here I'm thinking 'radio, CD player, tape deck, or record player even', and she pipes up with 'ipod?' Um yes, clearly that's correct too, and clearly I feel old now!

Biked home and got back around 8, no sign of Peter, so I watched a couple of episodes of Friends and worked on some Japanese for a little bit longer... When I knew when Peter was going to be home, I made breakfast for dinner (so unhealthy but good - fried tomatoes, beans, sausages, an egg, one piece of toast and a toaster waffle). We watched the Apprentice, which luckily Sascha TiVo'd and was able to FTP to us, and then chatted about his new project a little bit (its very cool, stay tuned for details in the spring)...

Kind of a short blog today - it was busy, but not so exciting, mostly just work stuff or whatever, but tomorrow there should be some good China town pictures hopefully!

D