I got off my lazy tuchus and uploaded some more photos. Also, Santa brought me a shiny new cellphone for Xmas! (Unfortunately, I was at work, so I had to reschedule delivery for today, the 26th.)

The sweet potato vendor was out night before last. They're pretty darn tasty when it's cold out.

edit: LJ's "rich text mode" is too dumb to realize that when you do <href a=....> it might - just might - be a URL you're trying to link. Durrrrrrr.

I predict that in twenty years, not dissimilarly to German in a sense, most Japanese nouns will be written in katakana. Why? Because they'll all be English loanwords. I was in the grocery store, looking for some matcha; I didn't want the loose-leaf stuff because it's a pain in the ass to futz around with it in the office. Finally found an (expensive) little jar of the stuff with all the right characters and whatnot - but then in the ingredient list it said (in katakana) "instant tea".

WTF?

I've so far been very very unimpressed with my Symbian phone. It's slow, and the interface is pretty damn awful. What's somewhat redeemed it, though, are the j2me apps available for it: specifically, that I've found kana and kanji quiz/flashcard programs. (Also, the rikaichan extension for firefox, which will popup kanji definitions upon mouseover, is pretty damn nifty. Much better than moji, I think.)