わすれる。。。to forget

I've been forgetting a lot of things lately, so when I get home and plan on writing in my blog, I can't remember what happened during the day. It's really annoying, and I feel like a complete idiot, because it happens a lot more frequently than I'd like. But I'll try to remember some things that happened yesterday and today.

First of all, when I took the bus home yesterday, I was actually pretty scared that the bus was going to crash, because the driver was driving like a maniac. He took the turns way too fast, and he started up and stopped too suddenly. I'm pretty good at staying still and upright on the buses here, now (whereas I used to lose my balance all of the time), but I could barely stand. When a seat finally opened up, I grabbed it immediately...but that was after fifteen or twenty minutes of standing already.

I had to present the other day in my culture class, and yesterday Sumi-sensei gave our evaluations back...we got 30 points, and at first I was like, "out of what?" but then I checked just now, and apparently it was out of 30 points! I have to say that it was the crappiest presentation I've ever given, though...it definitely didn't deserve full credit.

Speaking of things that I'm disappointed about in school...yesterday at lunch, Lindsay was doing her Japanese homework, and then she kept asking people for the answers, and everyone basically did all of the work for her. She just copied it down word for word. And when I say everyone, I mean all of my friends here. Emily even offered at one point to show her her old workbook (since they're in different levels). I don't understand how everyone can be so cool with cheating. It's like they expect that everyone else cheats, so they do it too. I always keep my mouth shut when others ask me for the answer to things, because I would never let someone copy off of the answers I spent so much time on. When I have trouble with things, I ask questions about how to do things, or what a specific word means, but I do everything else on my own. How else am I supposed to learn? I don't know...I was just really, really bothered by it.

This evening, after watching the very good, very first episode of Last Friends starring Nishikido Ryo and some girl I don't really know (Ryo's the abusive boyfriend, oh no, how could they let a Johnny's boy do that kind of role?! XD I think he's a much better actor than Yamapi and Kame, though), I watched the original Bangkok Dangerous movie. I'd seen a preview for the new one starring Nicolas Cage (ugh) a few days ago online, and thought it was an original movie. In fact, I was kind of interested in seeing it. But then I was scanning through some Asian movies online, and suddenly I saw a Thai movie with the same title. Being my suspicious little self, I of course clicked on the summary, and all of the names of the characters were the same, and their descriptions were generally similar, though there were a few differences...like in the fact that in the original, Kong is the main character, and he's deaf and mute. In the Nicolas Cage one, Cage plays Joe (Kong's friend), and is the main character, obviously. Kong is still in the movie, but he's not blind or deaf. There's other things that are different, but I'm not going to list them all here. Overall, though, I enjoyed the original movie, even though it wasn't great. You need to know how to appreciate the way Asian films are made in order to appreciate the movie. Since I'm used to the fact that they have lots of long silences and staring scenes, and movement with exaggerated effects (music or otherwise), I really liked the movie even though most of the reviews said it wasn't very good. I'm sure the remake will be good in American eyes, but I don't think the emotion I got from the Thai one will be as piercing in the American version...if they even kill off the certain characters that were really important in the original. I'll have to see the new movie in August and compare the two, haha. (Sorry for that being completely UN-Japan related...)

Tomorrow Marina and I are going to grab dinner at the Asian Kebab place by school after we get out of class, since I've been wanting to eat there every time I pass it on my way to school (it smells sooo good, lol), and time is running out. Then, weather permitting, we're going to head over to Tokyo Tower so we can finally go up and see the city from inside. I see the Tower every single day, but I still haven't gone up in it. XD I hope it doesn't rain, since it's been nearly raining non-stop for the past three days, with only a small break yesterday until the evening. The forecast says it's supposed to be okay tomorrow evening, but we'll see.

Hmm...I feel like that's everything, but I'm sure that as soon as I finish posting, I'll remember something I left out.