Burglary, boredom, and sushi

Hello all. I hope things are going well. Let's get right to the updates.

Just received a call from the Big Rapids police department. Apparently someone broke into my car and rifled through the glove compartment. There really wasn't anything of value in the car (other than a large ratchet set) for the hosers to take but it doesn't make me feel better about it. My landlord found a door to the car open and said it may have been like that for as long as 2 days. She also said that as soon as I left last week, someone put a for sale sign on it. The police called the number and reached a voice message for a dude called Roger. The general consensus is everything has been the work of bored teenagers. I just hope my stuff is there when I get back! (Oh, and the cops took some papers to lift fingerprints from. They must really be bored.)

Speaking of bored, I am very, very bored. After a week at home, I think I've spent 60% of my time trying to think of something to do, 30% sleeping, 5% reading, and 5% walking around. All of the people I knew here moved away. Even the people I spent college with up in Eugene are gone. Of course it doesn't matter because I don't have a car. That's back in Michigan being molested by teens. Anyways, I'm probably exaggerating how little I've done but I'm still mostly just sitting around. Yeah.

I did, however, make a brief dent in the boredom by going to dinner last night at the new sushi restaurant in town. Seeing how I will probably be eating some in Japan, I wanted to try it here first. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of eating raw fish (and I still haven't gotten over it 100%) but I will say that most of what I had was very tasty. The tuna rolls were particularly good. I just hope I don't go back to being squeamish.

I've been diligently studying what to do in Japan, seeing how I've focused mostly on the Chinese portion of the trip. I bought a few phrase and guidebooks and they are mostly helpful. The phrase books present a problem in that they all have different sentences, words, or pronunciations for the same translations. The best book I've used has been the Lonely Planet's guide to Tokyo. Super helpful.

All right, enough of the boring you. Take care.