Sakana!

My host family took me to a sushi bar for the first time yesterday. If you've never seen one before, basically they have this conveyor belt running around the table where everyone sits; the sushi chefs will stock it with whatever dishes seem to be lacking at the moment, and the customers take whatever looks good as it passes. All the dishes cost the same (at this place, 100 yen for what was usually two pieces) so the waitress just counts up the plates at the end to tally your bill. Pros: everything's fast but fresh, and you can adjust your meal size to match your exact appetite. Cons: If you aren't careful, you can run up one monster of a bill one piece at a time.

Watched "Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi" (Miyazaki's last movie, known as "Spirited Away" in America) afterwards... raw. (As in, no subtitles, no dubbing.) Porco Rosso I had at least seen subbed before I tackled it in pure Nihongo, so this was a whole new experience. Didn't help that the setting was so bizarre: it's a very "Alice in Wonderland"-type movie. Thankfully, Miyazaki movies are mostly about the visuals anyway (beautiful, as always), but there were some bits that I simply didn't get and probably won't until I watch it in English.