「なくした約束を星に～」

I'm a little worried that I'm not getting enough sleep lately.
...I write, at midnight, when I have to get up at seven tomorrow... >_>
I do think I need to make more of an effort to sleep properly, though. I don't generally feel too drowsy during the day, but I think that may just be because there's no time to be drowsy. I do feel kind of fuzzy, or more so than normal, and it's hard to concentrate. I took a nap today, which I think was very helpful to writing my paper later. Hm.

Anywho~

Reflecting on how successful our studying was in the cafe on Sunday, I decided to go to Gasuto to write my paper today. Gasuto is quite well suited to this for at least the following reasons.
1. Gasuto is a family restaurant, which in Japan means you stay as long as you like.
2. There's an "Grand Cafe" option, which is free-access (all you can drink) to the soft drink bar.
3. It's located very close to the dorm - an easy five-minute walk.
4. It's quite reasonably priced, and most importantly,
5. Because there's no internet access.

When I got there, it turned out that Erika and Etienne were already there, so I joined them. And, like magic, in just a few hours I got a draft of my paper for Asahi done, read the reading for Japanese... And also probably consumed 1500 calories of hot drinks, but that's another issue. It was excellent for my productivity, though. I'll have to do that kind thing more often.

On another note, yesterday I went into Book-Off (used media store) and picked up the first two volumes of the Honey and Clover (or rather, here, Hachimitsu to Kuroobaa) manga for a couple hundred yen. I've been a little unsatisfied with my "immersion" in Japanese language so far. That's in large part my own fault, though, so I thought reading manga in Japanese, especially manga I really want to read, would be a good way to try to work on it. Plus, when, for example, riding the train home in the evening, I'm generally too tired to have the will to get out my flashcards and study, but reading manga in Japanese (also a form of study, I'd argue), though challenging, is fun, so it's much more doable. And, extremely gratifyingly, I have been pretty much able to read it so far. Yesterday I was using my electronic dictionary a lot when reading it in the library, but today, reading it on the train, I didn't, and still didn't really have any problems.

Because of this, I thought about it, and realized it's been almost exactly four years since I first watched Honey and Clover. Four years in a couple weeks, I guess. High school and university, these four-year cycles... An entire one has passed. Four years is, I guess, in my consciousness now, a very meaningful amount of time. Perhaps the time it takes to grow up and go from one stage of life to another.
Yisha, the other H&C fan in AIKOM said, when we went on the Cosmo Clock 21 (the Ferris wheel in Yokohama that appears in H&C) that H&C is special in the way it stays relevant each time she revisits it. I guess I have the same experience. When I revisit other old favorites, I think I relate to them in a very different way than the first time. I see the work and enjoy it directly, but there's also a feeling of nostalgia, which brings with it a certain double vision. I'm reading or watching (or whatever) the work, but I'm also kind of watching the old me that absorbed and reacted to it last time. It's almost that who I was at the time I first took it in becomes forever attached to it in my mind, and really imprints it in my perception even much later. On a different point, I also think H&C has gotten, in some ways, closer to my heart, or at least stayed close because, in terms of viewing the world through art, which I suspect all or most people do, and I definitely almost always do, H&C is definitely one of the more major works to shape some of the lenses through which I see some things.
It's pretty cool that I'm reading the manga (which I've never read before) in the original Japanese exactly now.