Tank da Lawd iz oba

Guess that's not an American paper huh?

Yes the first term of my Masters course is over. Whew. Not that it was excruciatingly hard or anything but I was in a bit of a mad scramble at the end to finish my final essay, quiz and postings. My final essay was a comparison of Canadian and Jamaican Englishes and my research was pretty exhausting.. Finally, the all-night reggae sessions with bong upon bong of Jamaica's finest export will now come to an end. I've got most of the results back for one of my classes and unless my Internet discussion postings just really sucked it looks like I will walk away with a High Distinction grade, which is the highest you can get in Australia. Good on ya mate!
Last weekend I, as per usual, headed off to Tokushima to be a weekend wedding warrior. A few things out of the ordinary happened this time though. Firstly, I saved a cat. The choir at my chapel told me there was a cat stuck on a high, raised platform on the building across the street and had been there since the day before. Telling me was as far as they were prepared to go to help it I suppose so it was up to me. During my lunch break I borrowed a ladder from the chapel (they use it to change lightbulbs in the ceiling) and rescued the poor kitty. It was a little weak and hungry and I wanted to give it some food when I brought it down but when I got back to Terra Firma it just leapt away and took off. I hope the little fella's ok now.
The other interesting thing is that there was a 2 day Tanuki (badger) festival in Tokushima. Actually it wasn't all that interesting but you readers are so damn demanding that I've got to write something. It was just an excuse to setup various stalls selling snacks, fried foods, toys, and various other promotional booths for local companies. I asked if there actually were any tanuki around Tokushima and no one I talked to could remember seeing one outside of a zoo. However the weather was nice and the kids seemed to be having a good time. So were many adults who were getting pretty plastered drinking 'tanuki beer' alongside the river. I did manage to snag one of the ultra-hip tanuki masks that were, mysteriously, only intended for children.

The Tanuki Princess working her magic in the kitchen.

Well I'd love to stay and blog, but I've got some Japanese to start studying now. I'll leave you with some reviews of movies I saw in the last few weeks.

Funny Blogspot spellchecker recommendations:

Jamaica's - kamikaze
lightbulbs - lustfully
blog - blows
Yukiko - yokes or huskies(?)
Saudis - sautes

Bushwhacked

Well what can you say. As much as people denied it, it seems that the majority of American voters like Bush.
I was in Tokushima when I heard he had taken the lead. There was a strange moment though as I sat at my favourite sandwich shop there watching CNN when they announced that Ohio had become a 'green state'. I thought the unimagineable had happened, the Green Party had won Ohio! However I quickly found out that green was a colour code used by CNN to mean that it was too close to call between the big 2.
Yukiko was pretty disappointed by the result too. The Japanese aren't big fans of his. The majority of Japanese are against the Iraq war.
Now for some good news. I'm just about finished the first semester of my linguistics course. I've just got to finish up my last essay now, and luckily I've got no school today. Yesterday I ran into one of the English teachers from my school on the train and he told me that there were also no classes on Friday as there is a sports festival that day, so in fact I have Thursday and Friday off. Excellent.

American Election Day

I can only hope that our American friends come together and do the right thing. If enough previous non-voters should turn up then it will be an easy victory. With all these like-minded, good-spirited people together then finally, finally, the Green Party will win.

Although I'm sure the election will be bogged down with multiple problems far greater than last time and the results won't come out for weeks.

But it's 5:30 AM here and I'm off to Tokushima for weddings again. Yawn.