unsalted butter is my punishment

perhaps to keep me humble, or possibly to inspire me to stay in shape (ha! a lot of good that did), God put me together with some second-hand parts, and i've always had various trouble with my wrists, ankles, knees, and (the killer) my back. today i was hunched over my japanese book, actually studying, and i straightened up to the familar feeling of something going terribly wrong in my neck. when this happens, it all goes straight to hell really fast: the muscles around the frought, misaligned vertebrae immediately tense up, pulling everything even more out of whack and giving me a really sensational headache. if you've never had back problems, you don't understand how much strength you can lose in your extremities and how blind with pain you can be in a matter of seconds. i tried in vain to get it all right again--stretching, walking, turning. no luck.
in retrospect, it may have had something to do with the wierd poisition i was sleeping in last night. i woke from a dream in which i stepped outside after dark and saw the dim outline of a man standing nearby in the shadows, still, just watching me. what freaked me out was that even though i was looking straight in his direction, he just stayed, waiting to see what i would do. i backed inside again. so i woke up in the darkness with a slightly uneasy feeling and stayed frozen to my bed until my senses assured me that no one was going to bludgeon me if i moved.
anyway, at school i was doing the stiff-as-a-board walk...always attractive...you know, turning my head by pivoting my whole body, wincing anytime i moved too far in the wrong direction, and the like. since i had no more classes after two, they let me go home so i could finally lie down. which i did. i fell asleep to music on my ipod, something i can always do when i'm napping and never do at night. i slept to the tune of three ibuprofen and four hours, and now i'm doing what any sensible person would do--drinking a beer and blogging about it.
the good news is after i fell back asleep, i had my first-ever dream in which i spoke japanese. i only said "excuse me" and "sorry," but those are things i say a whole lot in real life, and i'm excited that they've permeated my brain enough to come up in my dreams.
in totally unrelated news, the dollar is getting stronger against the yen, and it's killing me. i want to send money home, but i essentially lose 17 percent of anything i convert. who could have predicted i'd be following currency trends...waiting for the moment The Yen lands a few surprise punches and The Dollar stumbles backwards a little.

i'll leave off with a recent quote from kara [after deciding to buy a positively minute cup of häagen-dazs ice cream (1/2 cup for over three dollars!)], "buying food in Japan is like living in an airport."