Well, November and December have come and gone. From what I can remember, it was spent working most of the time, including weekends, either making up classes or fulfilling committee requirements for Nichi-Dai’s freshman entrance exam (which is a Japanese cultural phenomenon in itself, as each university has one of its own, and which almost 100% of my students will tell you has been the greatest challenge thus far in their lives). Come December, the semester was coming to a close, and I serendipitously had one of those chance meetings while aimlessly wandering around Tokyo’s “oldest temple town” - Asakusa, searching for a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) that my parents could stay in come New Year’s Eve. Of course, I had forgotten the paper that I wrote it down on, so I was hitting up
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