deralte | cold, ginger, "My boss, my hero"

As is usual with me, my mild cold has gotten much worse. I don't have a fever, but every other usual symptom is present. I lost my voice yesterday morning which was interesting since I had to teach a 2 hour conversation class first thing. Luckily, I had a copy of Mr. Bean's Christmas which gave me some time to drink enough tea so I could at least croak a conversation. Voice is still just a croak at the moment and I'm coughing up bits of phlegm.

M. gave me her last two packets of ginger tea, and amusingly enough, she stayed around to watch my reaction when I drank it for the first time. Unfortunately, I have no sense of smell and the tea actually tastes really sweet and nice to me (a sure sign that I'm sick since I've drunk actual ginger beer before and wasn't impressed by the way it numbed my mouth). It does seem to help a little. One of the fun things about living in foreign countries while having a cold (okay, the only fun thing) is that you get different cold advice from what you grew up with. Here in Japan, the first thing most people have told me is to drink ginger tea, so I figured, why not, ne?

At M.'s recommendation, I started watching My Boss, My Hero the other day (the J-drama, not the Korean one) which is a comedy about the 27 year old son of a yakuza boss who can't properly add five plus five to twenty seven. As a result, he botches a major deal and is told by his father that if he can't pass the last year of high school (without giving away his identity), the sucession will go to his brother.

The idea is cracktastic and excellently executed. Japanese comedy tends to over the top in regards to reactions and facial expressions imo and since this one is a total parody it plays that to the limit. I'd recommend it to anyone. Where else can you see a twenty-seven year old yakuza spend an entire episode trying to get some home made pudding? My favourite scene in the first ep is when he ends up with some high schoolers trying to get some money out of him and he stops and thinks "I'm being bullied by high school students." Hehe. I watched the two eps I've been able to get ahold of subtitled, and then gave up and watched the third ep in Japanese, which actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I just kept pausing and looking up words. I caved in to wanting the English so I've bought the Chinese-made dvds of the show rather cheaply off of ebay.

I really want this book *sigh*

I keep forgetting it's Hannukah. How appropriate that I opened an ebay account *L*