Metamorphosis

So close, only a few more days!! It didn't really hit home -how close it really is- until I was at the grocery store the other day, checking the expiry dates on yogurt containers and realizing, "Hey! I'm not gonna be here when these expire!"

Not that I plan on letting my yogurt expire, mind you.

I'm finding it harder and harder to concentrate on studying as the date gets closer, but it doesn't stop me from trying...

While downtown to pick up my visa at the Japanese consulate last week, I stopped by the UofT bookstore (something I've been meaning to do for months) to check out their Japanese book selection, as I hear it's pretty good. Pretty good doesn't even begin to describe it. They have, by far, the most extensive collection of Japanese language/culture books I have ever seen in a single physical location. An entire wall. It was like searching for "Japanese" in Amazon and seeing the results appear right there in real life. After perusing for a good hour, I found 6 books that peaked my interest, and being the responsible shopper I am I made a list so that I could go home and thoroughly research each of the books on the net before making the plunge. Being the irresponsible online shopper I am, after reading one or two favourable reviews of each on Amazon I ordered them all.

These are the books:

• Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers by Janet Ashby
• Words In Context: A Japanese Perspective on Language and Culture by Takao Suzuki
• Making Out In Japanese by Todd and Erika Geers
• Oxford Picture Dictionary English/Japanese by Norman Shapiro
• Breaking Into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text by Giles Murray
• Japanese Beyond Words: How to Walk and Talk Like a Native Speaker by Andrew Horvat

The links are all to Amazon.ca and I keep talking about Amazon because of their review system, but I actually bought all the books from Chapters.ca as they have really caught up to Amazon.ca in terms of price competitiveness, title selection and perhaps most importantly at this point, title availability - when I ordered the books last week, each was available and "ships in 24 hours" on Chapters, but not Amazon.