The fact that you are reading this from the comfort of your own home or office instead of slaving away in a Turkish salt mine should make it pretty obvious that I achieved #4.
You're welcome.
This is my superhero pose. And though I'm wearing my underwear under my pants, you'll notice that I'm not looking at the camera. Superheroes never look at the camera. They teach you that at the Academy. And they always have this determined look on their face, as they stare optimistically toward the future (which is apparently to the right of them, where ever they happen to be standing).
This is my membership card from the place I get my hair cut. It's called C's and is very close to Miyazakidai station. I usually get butchered there, but this time, it turned out quite well.
I normally get my hair cut by some punk kid, and I don't really care because it costs just over 1000JPY (which is nothing here for a snip). This time, I must have gone when the kid was on lunch or something because I got a plump, jolly fellow (the two qualities usually go hand in hand) named Watanabe.
I found out that Watanabe-san used to live in LA 10 years ago, where he worked as an on-set hairdesigner for 3 years. Cool. He told me that his English sucks ass because he spoke Japanese the whole time he was there. I understood completely.
So, this is what people do here when they want to learn something. They buy a bunch of little cards and write down whatever they are trying to memorize. This is a shot of me with the katekana grid. Brings back terrible memories of Chinese school.
When you finish writing, you slip them all onto a metal ring and *presto* you have a portable learning centre that fits in the palm of your hand. I've been trying to read everything I see around me and it's satisfying to see the progress. I'm really bad with languages, so this will be a slow and painful process.