In Japanese class we had another quiz today, and then learned a few more grammatical structures. In culture class we talked about some differences in what is considered manly or womanly in American culture versus Japanese culture, many stemming from how many people commented on the Japanese men's hairstyles.

After normal classes, we had another meeting with our team for the Rube Goldberg machine project. We watched some more videos from the Japanese TV show "Pythagora Suicchi" (Pythagoras Switch) which has some really interesting examples, and then started planning our own devices. Most of the other people on the team are engineers, so they are much better at this sort of thing than me, since I mainly work with computers. But their ideas seem reallly ambitious. Each machine is made by 3 teams of 2, or 6 people, so each team builds 1/3 of a machine. But each team of two designed almost looked like it would satisfy the requirements for the whole project. I think we're being a bit too ambitious, but if they think they can pull it off, hats off to them.

After class the Americans from my project went out to lunch at a place called number 8 ramen. The guy who owns it is good friends with a teacher from one of the other schools involved with the program, and speaks good English. He even gives a discount to exchange students like us, but it's still a bit expensive.

After dinner, we went to the 100 yen grocery store again, and I bought some crazy Sunny Delite like orange juice, some cheap Japanese cereal, and some whole milk now that our culture teacher taught us how to tell the difference between the types of milk. I also bought some toothpaste, but I tried it tonight and realized it's flavored with salt. It tastes like gargling salt water, it's pretty awful. I'll have to buy a different kind tomorrow.