A Troy in Tokyo

It's only Wednesday here, but this is actually the end of the week for me - tomorrow is a public holiday (Labour Day), and Friday we have off for the Komaba festival, which I understand to be something like a school gala/day of shows and performance. I've seen a lot of hip hop dancers practicing outside this past couple of weeks which may be in preparation for this, though one thing I noticed at each school I've been to across my three previous trips to Japan, was that there are always hip hop dancers - the Japanese seem to want to be  bboys . A quick update on my academic situation, my application for the entrance examination is almost complete, thanks to one of my previous lecturers from Victoria University I have a referral letter in my hands today after a very quick turnaround time! I am now in the process of applying for a TOEFL English exam (why a native English speaker needs to take this exam is beyond me, but so it is with the lack of Japanese lateral thinking), a...

Hi all! Been another eventful weekend (detecting a theme here!), and looks to be an eventful week here as well - got some more classes, and various projects are being worked on, so I promise I'm keeping busy! Like this here penguin I'm flying through my days! Before getting into that though, a quick update on my Masters program and all that: I've gone to my faculty's administration office and got the low down on what I need to do, and am now underway in making my application for the exam that will allow me to 'matriculate' from a research student to a masters student. Part of this requires me to take the TOEFL English test (making a native English speaker with two degrees from an English speaking university in an English speaking country is bizarre, but Japanese aren't known for their lateral thinking). As well as that, I need to get some recommendation letters from some of my lecturers at Victoria University, which is a bit of a mental thing given...