Well, so...

..yeah. It's been a busy week or so since I got back, been dividing my time between studying and working in the library. For the first couple of days I wound up cleaning the shelves and making sure the books were lined up correctly...partly because of a Japanese tradition of New Year cleaning, and partly, I suspect, because Yukino the librarian doesn't know what to do with me now that I'm there on increased hours. And in case la inmigra is reading this, I'm still legal...just about.

The rest of the time I have devoted to getting that damn Ogai paper finished, and thankfully it seems to be near completion, which means that I might even have that rarest of things, a free weekend. Term starts on Tuesday, and I will be taking the usual round of classes - things totally useless in the real world, like Japanese poetry. The seminar is on Basho and is taught by Donald Keene, a hugely respected figure in the world of J-studies, so I suppose I'm very lucky to get to study with him.

I've been meeting a few people here and there as well; Rich Shelley, of Shiroishi fame, popped in on his way to a friend's wedding, and we met up for a beer (literally - it was late when he got in touch). Bizarrely enough I also ran into Steve O' Connor, a guy I knew at Wadham who has spent the last five years here at Columbia. We used to play on the same football team in college, and I never knew. He sort of remembered me, my surname at least.

So, here we go. Reasonably optimistic about the next six months. I'll have a Master's soon enough (a proper one, as opposed to the fake Oxford one), and by March will even know where I'm headed next. I'm going places.