Friday's English (time to stop being lazy?!?)

Since coming back to Japan, with a refreshed mind, I'm thinking I should start to study Japanese again. I gave up a few years ago, for various reasons. Some of the reasons were good, some were silly.

I finished Japanese for Busy People I and started book II way back in 2000, I think. I'm still halfway through book II... Since I came to Tokyo I've been lazy about studying... (One good thing about the Japanese for Busy People books is that you can get a Kana version, which doesn't use romaji and forces you to learn かな quickly.)

Well, I think I'll get the book out again now.

Let's see -- I think I was "stuck" on Lesson 16, "The New Showroom Design". It's trying to teach the ば/ければ forms, like:

早い　早ければ　早くなければ

Wish me luck!!

But this is probably boring so I should try to write something interesting.

Top 10 things I like about fall (autumn):

10) I can wear a suit again without losing 10 lbs sweating every day (no cool biz at my job...)
9) mushrooms (aren't you tired of me talking about mushrooms...)
8) no more cicadas (yeah, I know I waxed poetic about them last July, but enough is enough...)
7) reasonable electricity bills (because I run the air-conditioner all summer. I should move to Hokkaido...)
6) reasonable sunrise times (the sun glaring down at 7am in August is... too early...)
5) praying mantises (I'm not really a "bug person", but I think they're cool...)
4) oden back in 7-eleven (well, it never really left...)
3) Halloween parties (haven't actually been to one in Japan, but there's always this year... My best costume was as Nosferatu ;-)
2) my birthday (which means my annual camping/survival trip to northern Japan. Yeah, I'm strange...)
1) I can wear my Gap sherpa jacket again (even though the arms aren't long enough...) It looks sorta like this one.

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PS: one of my friends said "you're doing it backwards! why are you starting at 10 and going to 1??" Well, I'm trying to do it like the David Letterman show. It's good on his show because all of the top 10 are jokes and they get funnier as you get close to #1. Mine aren't funny, so maybe my friend was right!?

PPS: fall also means a few bad things, however. Like 1) no more fishing for trout in Japan 2) the plentiful Tokyo cleavage goes into hiding and 3) typhoons.